How does authentication work in Qlik Sense Mobile (QSM)?

How does authentication work in Qlik Sense Mobile (QSM)?

Environments:

• Qlik Sense Enterprise, all versions
• Qlik Sense Mobile, all versions

See Configure Qlik Sense mobile app on iPad/iPhone and our public documentation for general information on configuring Qlik Sense Mobile (QSM). 

Generally speaking, authentication happens in this series of steps:

1. The user opens QSM
2. The user clicks on the appropriate server from the list
3. QSM does a GET on the the Virtual Proxy URL. Based on this, QSM then performs the necessary login flow (HTTP Basic, HTTP Digest, NTLM, Forms, etc.)
4. User is logged in and can proceed to the Qlik Sense Mobile app

In the QSM logs, you can see authentication detected with a message such as:

2018-05-17 09:12:09,982-DEBUG method is 5 =>virtual void AccountImpl::onAuthenticationMethodDetected(AuthenticationMethod)(163) [0x1b3504b40]<=

The method numbers are as follows:
HTTP_AUTH_BASIC = 0,
HTTP_AUTH_DIGEST = 1
HTTP_AUTH_NTLM = 2 
WEB_FORM_FRIENDLY = 3
QLIK_CLOUD = 4 
FOREIGN =  5 (you will see this if using QSE forms based authentication) 

Note that the login flow occurs in the foreground, insofar that the QSM webview will interact with the browser to facilitate login (e.g., following an HTTP redirect to an SSO provider).

Also note that depending on your version, you may encounter unusual behaviors with login flows requiring backgrounding the QSM app (such as 2nd-factor authentication). This is a known issue, please see Qlik Sense Mobile (QSM) users are sent back to Servers list page from Login page if QSM is backgrounded.