Definition
Delegated Authentication Error History is a Setup page that logs errors from delegated authentication attempts, where Salesforce delegates the authentication process to an external web service. It helps administrators troubleshoot login failures by showing error messages, timestamps, and the usernames that experienced issues.
Real-World Example
Users at Apex Dynamics report intermittent login failures. The admin opens Delegated Authentication Error History and finds multiple entries showing "Connection timeout" errors from the company's external authentication service. She shares the log details with the IT infrastructure team, who discover that their authentication server's SSL certificate expired, causing the failures.
Why Delegated Authentication Error History Matters
Delegated Authentication Error History is a Setup page that logs failed authentication attempts when Salesforce's delegated authentication feature encounters errors communicating with the external authentication web service. Each log entry records the timestamp, the username that attempted to log in, the error message returned by the external service (or the connection error if the service was unreachable), and the source IP of the login attempt. This diagnostic information is essential for troubleshooting login failures that are caused by issues with the external authentication infrastructure rather than incorrect credentials.
For organizations relying on delegated authentication, this error history is the first place administrators should check when users report login problems. Common issues revealed in the logs include SSL certificate expirations causing handshake failures, authentication service outages producing connection timeouts, configuration changes on the external service returning unexpected error responses, and network routing issues preventing Salesforce from reaching the endpoint. Without this error history, administrators would have no visibility into whether login failures are caused by user error, Salesforce issues, or external service problems. Organizations should monitor this page proactively and set up alerting mechanisms so that authentication infrastructure issues are detected before a flood of user complaints arrives.
How Organizations Use Delegated Authentication Error History
- Apex Dynamics — Users at Apex Dynamics reported intermittent login failures on a Tuesday morning. The admin opened Delegated Authentication Error History and found multiple 'Connection timeout' entries timestamped between 7:30 and 8:15 AM. She shared the logs with the infrastructure team, who discovered that their authentication server's SSL certificate had expired at midnight, causing the failures.
- Coastal Financial — Coastal Financial's security team uses Delegated Authentication Error History as part of their weekly security audit. They review failed authentication patterns looking for brute-force attempts, unusual source IPs, or spikes in failures that might indicate an attack on their external authentication service.
- Summit Technologies — Summit Technologies noticed a gradual increase in authentication errors over two weeks in the error history logs. The entries showed 'Invalid response format' errors, which they traced to a recent update on their authentication service that changed the SOAP response structure. The error history timestamps helped them correlate the failures with the exact deployment date.