Authentication

Tasklist provides two ways to authenticate:

1. User information stored in Elasticsearch
2. Identity Authentication and Authorization

By default, user storage in Elasticsearch is enabled.

User in Elasticsearch

In this mode, the user authenticates with a username and password stored in Elasticsearch.

The userId, password, and roles for one user may be set in application.yml:

camunda.tasklist:
  userId: aUser
  password: aPassword
  displayName: aDisplayName
  roles:
    - OWNER
    - OPERATOR

On Tasklist startup, the user is created if they did not exist before.

By default, three users are created:

• Role OWNER with userId/displayName/password demo/demo/demo. To change userId, password, displayName or role for user demo use the above configuration.

• Role USER with userId/displayName/password view/view/view. To change userId, displayName or password for this user the below configuration can be used:

camunda.tasklist:
  readerUserId: aUser
  readerPassword: aPassword
  readerDisplayName: aDisplayName

• Role OPERATOR with userId/displayName/password act/act/act/. To change userId, displayName or password for this user the below configuration can be used:

camunda.tasklist:
  operatorUserId: aUser
  operatorPassword: aPassword
  operatorDisplayName: aDisplayName

More users can be added directly to Elasticsearch, to the index tasklist-user-<version>_. The password must be encoded with a strong BCrypt hashing function.

Identity

Identity provides authentication and authorization functionality along with user management.

Enable Identity

Identity can only be enabled by setting the Spring profile: identity-auth.

See the following example:

export SPRING_PROFILES_ACTIVE=identity-auth

Configure Identity

Identity requires the following parameters:

Parameter name	Description	Example value
camunda.tasklist.identity.issuerUrl	URL of issuer (Identity)	http://localhost:18080/auth/realms/camunda-platform
camunda.tasklist.identity.issuerBackendUrl	Backend URL of issuer (Identity)	http://localhost:18080/auth/realms/camunda-platform
camunda.tasklist.identity.clientId	Similar to a username for the application	tasklist
camunda.tasklist.identity.clientSecret	Similar to a password for the application	XALaRPl...s7dL7
camunda.tasklist.identity.audience	Audience for Tasklist	tasklist-api
camunda.tasklist.identity.baseUrl	Base URL for Identity	http://localhost:8084
camunda.tasklist.identity.redirectRootUrl	Root URL to redirect users to after successful authentication. If the property is not provided, it will be derived from the incoming request.	http://localhost:8082
camunda.tasklist.identity.resourcePermissionsEnabled	Enable/disable Resource Permissions	true
spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.jwt.issueruri	Token issuer URI	http://localhost:18080/auth/realms/camunda-platform
spring.security.oauth2.resourceserver.jwt.jwkseturi	Complete URI to get public keys for JWT validation	http://localhost:18080/auth/realms/camunda-platform/protocol/openid-connect/certs

Resource-based permissions

1. Resource authorizations must be enabled in Identity.
2. Tasklist must be configured to use resource authorizations (see above configurations) and camunda.tasklist.identity.resourcePermissionsEnabled must be enabled.

Resource-based permissions are defined per process definition. Process definition is defined by Process ID, which is present in BPMN XML.

The user or user group can be assigned the following permission:

Permission name	Resource type(s)	Allowed action(s) in Operate
START_PROCESS_INSTANCE	process-definition	User can start this process ad hoc on Tasklist.

For more information, visit the Identity documentation.

Use Identity JWT token to access Tasklist API

Tasklist provides a GraphQL API under the endpoint /graphql. Clients can access this API using a JWT access token in an authorization header Authorization: Bearer <JWT>.

note

Be aware a JWT token is intended to be used for M2M communication and is therefore issued for the relevant application, not for the user.

Example:

1. Add an application in Identity.
2. Add permissions to an application for Tasklist API.
3. Obtain a token to access the GraphQL API. You will need:
   • client_id and client_secret from Identity application you created.
   • URL of the authorization server will look like: http://<keycloak_host>:<port>/auth/realms/camunda-platform/protocol/openid-connect/token, where host and port reference Keycloak URL (e.g. localhost:18080).

curl --location --request POST 'http://localhost:18080/auth/realms/camunda-platform/protocol/openid-connect/token' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded' \
--data-urlencode 'client_id=<client id>' \
--data-urlencode 'client_secret=<secret>' \
--data-urlencode 'grant_type=client_credentials'

You will get something like the following:

{
  "access_token": "eyJhbG...",
  "expires_in": 300,
  "refresh_expires_in": 0,
  "token_type": "Bearer",
  "not-before-policy": 0
}

Take the access_token value from the response object and store it as your token.

2. Send the token as an authorization header in each request. In this case, request all tasks.

curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Authorization: Bearer <TOKEN>" -d '{"query": "{tasks(query:{}){id name}}"}' http://localhost:8080/graphql

Zeebe client credentials

If the Zeebe Gateway is set up with Camunda Identity-based authorization, Zeebe client OAuth environment variables must be provided.