Updating your saved OpenAthens links
What you need to know
On 20th December 2024 we will be rolling out a new feature for OpenAthens customers on MedicinesComplete, enabling the use of their redirector link service. This means you will be able to generate unique deep links (sometimes called WAYFless links) for your organisation for any products you take from us through MedicinesComplete.
To ensure your access to MedicinesComplete is not interrupted please upgrade your saved links to the new pattern by 20th January 2025.
For example, in the past your organisation may have saved a hardcoded access link on an intranet or library resources page, and this should be changed as soon as possible.
The new basic link into MedicinesComplete will now be in the pattern of:
https://php-medicinescomplete-sp.sams-sigma.com/Shibboleth.sso/Login?entityID={{{YOUR_ENTITY_ID}}}&target=https://php-medicinescomplete-sp.sams-sigma.com/shib&dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com/shibboleth&dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com
Nb. YOUR ENTITY ID should be replaced with your organisation’s entity Id.
How to find your entity Id value
You can find your entity Id value via https://login.openathens.net/org-list if you do not know it already. This value will not have been changed unless you have specifically asked OpenAthens to amend it.
You might wrap it in friendly text on your website page like:
<a href=”https://php-medicinescomplete-sp.sams-sigma.com/Shibboleth.sso/Login?entityID={{{YOUR_ENTITY_ID}}}&target=https://php-medicinescomplete-sp.sams-sigma.com/shib&dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com/shibboleth&dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com” target=”_blank”>Click here to visit MedicinesComplete</a>
We will endeavour to keep old access links working for as long as possible but please do not delay in changing your saved links and ensure you give yourself adequate time to speak with your subscriptions administrator or IT team.
What are the benefits of OpenAthens redirector?
The OpenAthens redirector is particularly valuable for discovery services or other proxy services you may use for catalogue management. It is not mandatory to use this feature, but you must still update any hardcoded access links to the new pattern above before they begin to fail.
Please refer to https://docs.openathens.net/libraries/redirector-link-generator for more information on how the redirector may be used for your needs.
What is a WAYFless link?
WAYFless links (‘Where Are You From’ links) enable users to bypass our login page and instead use their own SSO or OpenAthens credentials, allowing a smoother process. However, such links do hardcode at least two pieces of information – your entity Id and our SP – and it the SP part that we have needed to change to unlock this functionality for all our customers.
What is an SP and why will this part of the URL change?
To enable this function, OpenAthens needed to register a new unique service provider (SP) Id on our behalf. We previously used https://sp.sams-sigma.com but this is too generic to reference entity and scope instructions needed for the OpenAthens redirector. We will now be using our own SP Id, https://php-medicinescomplete-sp.sams-sigma.com which we will also reference in the callbacks via the encrypted packet URL – https://www.medicinescomplete.com/shibboleth
Our identity service uses this new SP value twice, so in the example above you will see in the WAYFless link the string uses it in the parameters for both the SSO receiver and the /shib value.
We recommend using the example and updating your entity ID rather than trying to re-encode it yourself. But if you do wish to, we recommend you percent encode common symbols parameters such as forward slashes, equals signs, and ampersands.
What is the pattern for deep links on MedicinesComplete?
Our platform’s base URL is https://www.medicinescomplete.com/ and any specific product on it appears after a hash, e.g. for British National Formulary you would append /#/browse/bnf to the base URL to form https://www.medicinescomplete.com/#/browse/bnf
Some tools are a little different, such as Stockley’s Drug Interactions (https://www.medicinescomplete.com/#/interactions/stockley) but the basic approach is the same.
These deep links are the last part to be added to a WAYFless link. In our example above, you would change &dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com to &dest=https://www.medicinescomplete.com/#/browse/bnf
What if I have any further questions?
Please get in touch at pharmpress-support@rpharms.com for help and further information.