Description of Passport Test Mode (302567)

MORE INFORMATION

To disable test mode and enable normal operation, enter a different Site ID in the Site ID field of the Passport Manager Administration utility and click Commit Changes. Note that if you change the Site ID to something other than 1, a matching encryption key must also be installed. The key, as well as the unique Site ID that is assigned to any particular participant site, can be obtained only by registering as a Passport participant site. Registration potentially involves signing agreements or contracts. For a comprehensive checklist, see the following Passport Web site: Why Use Test Mode?

Test mode allows a site to perform some initial evaluation of and development against the Passport single sign-in (SSI) service. Test mode development can occur before you register your site and request a Site ID, while you are waiting for the Site ID and key after registration. After you have a Site ID, there should be no reason to use test mode again, because the restrictions that are imposed by test mode are intended only to prevent developers from accessing certain Passport features before having signed the necessary agreements or contracts.

Test Mode Limitations

Certain operations are not permitted in test mode:

• Cannot Read Full Core Profile Data or Profile Cookie Because a test mode site has not yet signed the necessary agreements that specify a site's requirements for privacy and use of users' Passport information, a test mode site is not given full access to a user's core profile. After a user has signed in with a Passport to a test mode site, several fields of a core profile give default placeholder values, as generated by the Login server.
  
  
• Cannot Save Core Profile Data to Passport Network Although a test mode site can change the values of a core profile locally in order to demonstrate the use of the Profile property and Commit method, such changes are not uploaded to the Update server. Only the local Profile cookie on a user's computer is modified. Therefore, if a user signs out, signs in again, and returns to your site or to any other site, the core profile is again drawn from the Passport network database and does not include the changes that are made locally from the test mode site.
  
  
• Cannot Use Cobranding Cobranding support is dependent on several URLs that you must provide when you register as a Passport participant site. Until you register and provide these URLs, the cobranding logo and text remain as placeholder defaults. Cobranding is handled as declared by Site ID=1, which is the cobranding that is used for demonstration purposes. For more information on how to implement cobranding after your site has registered as a Passport participant site, see the following Passport Web site:

  .NET Passport Cobranding Overview
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/passport25/NET_Passport_VBScript_Documentation/Single_Sign_In/Cobranding/cobrandtemplate.asp

• Cannot Sign Users Out From Sign-out Page Another URL that must be provided when you register as a Passport participant is the URL of a 0 by 0 pixel image or Active Server Pages (ASP) file that deletes any Passport cookies from the participant site domain. After the user clicks the Sign Out link from any Passport site, the Login server's sign-out routine ordinarily uses the Sites Visited cookie to go through the list of all sites that had been visited, and then calls the sign-out page for each site that the user had previously signed in to. Because a test mode site is not yet known to the Login server's table matching Site IDs to sign-out URLs, Passport cookies continue to exist on the user's browser until the user closes the browser entirely. If the member has chosen to save a password,thus making all session cookies into persistent cookies, the Passport cookies that are written in the test site's domain are not deleted even then. Therefore, when you test browser behavior with a test mode installation, you may occasionally need to quit the browser to reproduce a "clean" Passport sign-in to the test site.