Integrate with Zulip

What is Zulip

Zulip is an open-source team chat application that organizes conversations into topic-based streams, enabling more structured and efficient communication compared to traditional linear chat platforms.

-- https://zulip.com

Preparation

The following placeholders are used in this guide:

• zulip.company is the FQDN of the Zulip instance.
• authentik.company is the FQDN of the authentik installation.

:::info This documentation lists only the settings that you need to change from their default values. Be aware that any changes other than those explicitly mentioned in this guide could cause issues accessing your application. :::

authentik configuration

To support the integration of Zulip with authentik, you need to create an application/provider pair in authentik.

Create an application and provider in authentik

1. Log in to authentik as an administrator and open the authentik Admin interface.
2. Navigate to Applications > Applications and click Create with Provider to create an application and provider pair. (Alternatively you can first create a provider separately, then create the application and connect it with the provider.)

• Application: provide a descriptive name, an optional group for the type of application, the policy engine mode, and optional UI settings. Take note of the slug as it will be required later.
• Choose a Provider type: select SAML Provider as the provider type.
• Configure the Provider: provide a name (or accept the auto-provided name), the authorization flow to use for this provider, and the following required configurations.
  • Set the ACS URL to https://zulip.company/complete/saml/.
  • Set the Issuer to https://authentik.company.
  • Set the Service Provider Binding to Post.
  • Set the SLS URL to https://zulip.company/complete/saml/.
  • Set the SLS Binding to Redirect.
  • Set the Logout Method to Front-channel (Iframe).
  • Under Advanced protocol settings, select an available Signing certificate.
• Configure Bindings (optional): you can create a binding (policy, group, or user) to manage the listing and access to applications on a user's My applications page.

3. Click Submit to save the new application and provider.

Zulip configuration

Zulip is a Django application and is configured using /etc/zulip/settings.py. Only settings that differ from the defaults are displayed below. Please make sure you have the latest settings.py file as more settings might have been added to defaults since you installed Zulip.

Uncomment zproject.backends.SAMLAuthBackend inside the AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS parameter to enable SAML support and fill in the following required configuration.

SOCIAL_AUTH_SAML_ORG_INFO = {
    "en-US": {
        "displayname": "authentik Zulip",
        "name": "zulip",
        "url": "{}{}".format("https://", EXTERNAL_HOST),
    },
}

SOCIAL_AUTH_SAML_ENABLED_IDPS: Dict[str, Any] = {
    # idp identifier and settings
    "authentik": {

	    # KEEP OTHER SETTINGS AS DEFAULT OR CONFIGURE THEM ACCORDING TO YOUR PREFERENCES
        "entity_id": "https://authentik.company",
        "url": "https://authentik.company/application/saml/<application_slug>/sso/binding/redirect/",
        "display_name": "authentik SAML",
    },
}

Place the certificate you associated with the SAML provider in authentik inside the /etc/zulip/saml/idps directory. The certificate file name must match the idp identifier name you set in the configuration (i.e. authentik.crt).

:::info Remember to restart Zulip. :::

Resources

Please refer to the following for further information:

• https://zulip.com/
• https://zulip.readthedocs.io
• https://chat.zulip.org/ (Official public Zulip Chat instance)