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Please use the following category to raise ideas for these offerings for all environments (traditional on premises, containers, on cloud):

  • Cloud Pak for Business Automation - including Business Automation Studio and App Designer, Business Automation Insights

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  • Blueworks Live

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Status Future consideration
Workspace Cloud Pak for Business Automation
Created by Guest
Created on Jul 21, 2026

RELATED IDEAS

Native validation of third-party IdP tokens for system-to-system (no-user) calls to CP4BA/BAW REST APIs using OAuth client_credentials

Problem / gap: CP4BA IAM (Zen) currently expects an IdP -> IAM -> Zen token exchange and requires a valid AD/directory user in the token subject before it will authorise a call. It cannot natively validate arbitrary external (third-party) IdP JWT tokens, and it cannot authorise system-to-system requests where there is no user in the token subject. This blocks a common integration pattern where external systems call BAW REST resources running on CP4BA.

Customer scenario : 
An enterprise OIDC provider is configured as the IdP for CP4BA IAM. External systems need to obtain a token via grant_type=client_credentials and use it to authorise REST calls into BAW. 
Three scenarios need to be supported: 
(1) a user authenticating via an external IdP calling CP4BA with a user JWT (sub = user digital id)
(2) staff authenticating via an external IdP calling CP4BA with a staff JWT (sub = staff UPN)
(3) system-to-system calls with no user, using client_credentials (client id + scope only).

Current workaround and its limitation: The Zen custom authentication handler can call an external validator service and use a template/regex mapping to extract a username from the external token response, after which the gateway internally generates and caches a Zen token so backend services never see the external token. 

However, this requires the customer to host their own validator or supply the template/regex mapping, and it does not cleanly cover the no-user client_credentials case because BAW REST APIs are role-based and expect a user with the right roles.

Requested capability: 
Provide standardised, native support in the platform for accepting and validating third-party IdP JWT tokens - including OAuth client_credentials (no-user) tokens - and mapping them to an authorised identity/scope, without requiring a customer-hosted validator. 

Validation should enforce defined/acceptable scopes and cryptographic verification so that only authenticated, scoped tokens are accepted. (Client Credentials Grant).

Idea priority Urgent

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