SAML Metadata Refresh - Certificate Chain Validation Failure

I apologize if this is a basic question, but we’re having trouble with the automatic SAML metadata refresh in our genesyscloud.config.govcloud.com environment - version 9.0.0.GA. It seems the system isn’t correctly validating the certificate chain when it pulls updated metadata from our IdP.

Specifically, the error we see in the Genesys Cloud monitoring dashboard is a “SAML Metadata Refresh Failed - Certificate Validation Error”. The logs, accessed via the Data Security section in Admin, show a message resembling this: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: Unable to find valid certification path to trusted anchor. It’s referencing the root CA certificate - which is definitely present in our trust store, or at least, we think it is.

We’ve configured the metadata URL in the Single Sign-On settings, and it’s working initially - users can authenticate. The issue happens when the IdP rotates the certificate, and the metadata is automatically refreshed, usually after approximately twelve hours.

Our IdP is Azure AD, and we’re using version 1.16.3 of the Genesys Cloud SDK for the SAML configuration. The metadata document includes the intermediate certificate, but perhaps the system isn’t building the complete chain. Is there a setting to force the inclusion of the intermediate certificate, or maybe a way to manually upload the full chain?

We’re attempting to meet PCI-DSS compliance requirements around access control, and a failed SSO flow introduces risk. The SOC2 audit is also concerned about automated process failures. It’s unclear if this is a bug, or if we are missing a step in the configuration process. The documentation mentions certificate requirements, but it’s a bit vague on the chain order. Can anyone confirm if the metadata document must be ordered root-intermediate-leaf? Or is that handled automatically by the system?

The logs aren’t showing which specific certificate is failing validation, just the generic error message. Perhaps there’s a more verbose logging option?

Hi all,

This sounds really familiar - we hit something similar moving over from Zendesk’s SSO setup, although ours was with Okta instead of whatever IdP you’re using. The certificate validation piece is surprisingly picky in Genesys Cloud. It’s not like Zendesk where you just upload the cert and go.

Cause: The error “SAML Metadata Refresh Failed - Certificate Validation Error” usually points to an incomplete certificate chain being provided in the metadata document. Genesys Cloud needs the full chain - root, intermediate, and your IdP’s certificate - even if your IdP thinks it’s sending everything. It’s a common problem, actually. The documentation glosses over this. Someone else had a similar issue last month with ADFS - I’ll link that post at the end.

Solution: You’ll want to ensure your IdP metadata includes the complete chain. Here’s what we did. First, download the metadata file from your IdP. Open it in a text editor and look for the <X509Certificate> tags. You’ll likely see one or two certs there. If you don’t see the full chain, you’ll need to configure your IdP to export it.

If you do see multiple certs, make sure they’re in the correct order. Generally, it’s IdP cert first, then intermediate(s), then root. If that doesn’t work, try manually combining the certificates into a single PEM file and uploading that to Genesys Cloud directly - a bit of a workaround, but it can force a successful validation.

Here’s the community post I mentioned. Hopefully, this helps.