WAYF replaces JANUS by mEdit

Since 2011, service and identity providers have had to maintain their metadata (i.e., their configurations) in WAYF's registry using the system JANUS. We now, however, retire JANUS, replacing it by a new system, mEdit:

mEdit has been implemented as an extension to WAYF's metadata tool, PHPh; so, to edit your metadata, from now on you will have to point your browser to https://phph.wayf.dk. There, log in by clicking the big green Access through Your institution button top-right on the page. You log in through WAYF, using an organisational account, or MitID. If you don't have any of these, you can open an account at the WAYF Orphanage. Before you can access PHPh, however, you'll have to contact WAYF for registration as a user of the system — as no user information has been transferred from JANUS.

In the PHPh web interface you can retrieve a number of lists of metadata entries (i.e., SAML2 entities) that have been registered either with WAYF or some other eduGAIN federation. Clicking the name (in the “Name” column) of an entry for which you have editing rights (or clicking the link next to “Entity ID:” on the entry's dedicated page) will start up mEdit in a new tab in the browser; an error message is displayed if you're not allowed to edit the entry clicked. Selecting the Me filter will produce a list of the entries that you are allowed to edit.

In mEdit, every metadata entry and every user belong to one or more organisations; and every user has edit access to every metadata entry belonging to an organisation of which he is a member. It is logged carefully who edits what. Only WAYF can edit the organisational attributes of users and metadata entries; so if you feel something is wrong here, or you need to create a wholly new metadata entry, please contact WAYF.

Unlike with JANUS, with mEdit you can only edit a subset of the fields making up a full metadata entry, i.e. the fields shown in a non-grey color. Selecting Show all fields will make visible all the other fields, only editable by WAYF. On the other hand, the changes you are allowed to make are adopted in WAYF's production system without the WAYF Secretariat's involvement when you click Commit (within an hour) or Fasttrack (immediately). As a consequence, the organisation owning an entry assumes the full responsibility for keeping up to date those fields editable — including contact information, public keys, and endpoint locations.

Another difference from JANUS is that mEdit displays metadata in a form closer to the XML representation which is the canonical one for SAML2 metadata. Below the editing area itself is shown the change log for the entry being edited.

It is hoped, and expected, that the introduction of mEdit will strengthen the quality of metadata registered with WAYF for connected systems.