SAML Assertion Attribute Mapping - Unexpected 'null' Values

We’re encountering an issue with SAML assertion attribute mapping following a recent Okta certificate rotation. Users provisioned via JIT are intermittently receiving ‘null’ values for the ‘user.email’ attribute in Genesys Cloud, despite the attribute being correctly populated in the Okta assertion.

The assertion itself looks valid - I’ve validated against the schema documented in the community post regarding SAML attribute requirements.

The IdP metadata remains current within the Genesys Cloud admin UI, and the SAML connector is active. We’ve confirmed the Okta application is configured to release the ‘user.email’ attribute.

We are using the GET /api/v2/identityproviders/okta endpoint to verify the connector configuration. It does not appear to be the root cause. I’m not 100% sure but suspect a caching issue or propagation delay following the certificate update.

sorry if this is kinda dumb, but have you checked the attribute mapping order? We ran into a similar thing - user.email was getting overwritten by something else higher up in the list.

It’s kinda weird how GC handles that. You can check it under Admin - Single Sign-On - SAML - Attribute Mapping. Just double-check the order, and make sure nothing else is grabbing that attribute first.

Also, this might be a silly question, but are you sure the Okta assertion is actually sending user.email as a string? Sometimes it’ll send it as an object or something, and GC doesn’t like that. You could try temporarily logging the assertion in Okta to confirm the data type.

Here’s a little Java snippet we used to grab the SAML assertion from a webhook (we’re pulling data into Kafka, similar to that other thread lol) - maybe it’ll help you debug in Okta?

import org.json.JSONObject;

public class SamlAssertionChecker {
 public static void main(String[] args) {
 String samlAssertion = // your SAML assertion string
 JSONObject samlJson = new JSONObject(samlAssertion);
 String userEmail = samlJson.getString("user.email");
 System.out.println("User Email: " + userEmail);
 }
}

It’s a basic check, but it’ll tell you exactly what GC is seeing. I just kinda stumbled into this after digging around for a while, so it might not be the problem, but thought I’d share!

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At my last shop, we had something very similar happen with SAML mappings after an attribute source change - it wasn’t Okta in our case, it was Azure AD, but the symptom was the same - intermittent null values for seemingly-correct attributes. What we found was the attribute mapping in Genesys Cloud was getting confused because of case sensitivity. It sounds silly, honestly, but the attribute name in the SAML assertion had a slightly erent case than what was defined in the Genesys Cloud mapping. For example, user.Email versus user.email. It’s not always obvious, especially if you’re copying and pasting from the IdP metadata.

The reply above about checking the order is also very important, though. I remember at my last shop we spent almost a day debugging something similar, and it turned out an earlier mapping was unintentionally capturing the email address. To be sure, you could try temporarily disabling all other mappings except the user.email mapping and see if the issue resolves - it will confirm if another attribute is interfering.

If the case sensitivity isn’t the issue and the order isn’t the problem, then you might need to examine the actual SAML assertion being sent to Genesys Cloud. You can use your browser’s developer tools to inspect the SAML response - it’s a little complicated, but you can see the exact attribute names and values being sent. If that doesn’t help, then the problem might be with how Okta is constructing the assertion itself, though that seems less likely if you’ve already validated the schema.

I also recall that we had to clear the browser cache after changing the attribute mapping. It’s a strange thing, but the browser seemed to cache the old mapping in some cases, and it caused a lot of confusion. Just to be sure.