Project FAQ censhare and Keycloak

Onboarding

What should we do to onboard to censhare and Keycloak?

Answer

censhare 2022 wioth Keycloak bring about some important changes regarding installation, configuration and development.

It is therefore mandatory that you make yourself familiar with the product and developer documentation and tutorials before you start to upgrade or install to censhare releases as of 2022.1:

Read the following chapters:

You also need knowledge about Keycloak as some configurations and customization are moved to Keycloak and can only be carried out in Keycloak.

Authentication and user management
Keycloak documentation by Keycloak
Curated list of resources for learning about http://www.keycloak.org

Frontend customization censhare Web

Customization updates: If the project has its own customization in form of additional frontend code (placed in the censhare-Custom folder), and for any locale that is used, you need to properly build and deploy the extensions. See (2022.1) Release frontend bundles and (2022.1) Build, release & deploy bundles. This can be prepared in a local Dev environment. See Getting started censhare.
Customization workflow: Developing censhare custom solutions now involves additional steps. You have to set up a DevOps environment that allows you to track, merge, test, stage and deploy the desired scope of changes. Customizations involved building, releasing, and deploying weppacked frontend bundles. See (2022.1) DevOps environment and (2022.1) Build, release & deploy bundles.
Branding: The dynamic branding with a Branding asset that is assigned in the System asset no longer work. The Branding asset is deprecated. If you upgrade your branded censhare from an earlier version below 2021.2, you must implement the new branding. Your old branding will not work anymore. See (2022.1) Create custom branding.

Deployment

As a censhare partner, can we deploy censhare 2022 ourselves?

Answer

Please note, that you need direct access to your environments (for example, data center) to be able to deploy censhare on your own.

Are our data centers ready to roll out censhare 2022 and Keycloak?

Answer

Yes. Your data center infrastructure is ready for censhare 2022 and Keycloak.

Is censhare IT able to update/upgrade our systems to censhare 2022 and what needs to be considered for existing customers?

Answer

Yes. censhare IT is well prepared to take care of updating or upgrading your systems to censhare 2022. When updating to new censhare versions, censhare IT will install censhare and Keycloak as well.

As a partner, which development environment can I use?

Answer

We do not officially provide a development environment for partners that is supported by censhare. In some special cases, a Docker environment is requested which we can only provide as-is. You can use it at your own risk but we do not provide any documentation or support.

Which censhare release can we use as a fallback, if something goes wrong with the censhare 2022 installation?

Answer

censhare 2021.1.x can be used as a downgrade. Between censhare 2021.1.x and censhare 2021.2 and above, the database schema did not change.

Infrastructure

Will there be changes to the infrastructure costs?

Answer

At the moment, please consider 2 GB RAM per computer (ca. 20€/month).
For Keycloak, see Keycloak system requirements.

Operation

Will there be changes to SLA and support due to Keycloak?

Answer

For understandable reasons, we cannot provide 2nd or 3rd level support for Keycloak. Our support services are limited to the integration of Keycloak with censhare. As Keycloak is a third-party tool, we cannot influence or change how Keycloak behaves.

How is Keycloak licensed?

Answer

Keycloak is an open-source software product to allow single sign-on with Identity and Access Management aimed at modern applications and services. The open-source project is under the stewardship of Red Hat.

Keycloak is published under the free Apache 2.0 license.

Keycloak is based on standard protocols and provides support for OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, and SAML.