Self-created Test Affiliations

Self-created test affiliations allow users with a valid edu-ID test account to create, view, update, and delete organisational identities directly in the edu-ID Test account management. This feature is intended for testing and integration scenarios and is available only in non-production environments.

Note: This feature will be availalable only in May 2026!

What this feature is for

In test environments, many users need realistic organisational identity data to validate login flows, attribute release, role-based behavior, and service integrations. Test affiliations provide a simple way to manage this data without requiring organisation administrators for every test case.

Typical use cases

  • Testing service behavior with student, staff, or mixed affiliation types
  • Validating attribute mapping in connected applications
  • Reproducing integration issues with controlled test data
  • Preparing demonstration or QA scenarios without organisation-side provisioning changes

Limitations

The feature is only enabled for the following test organisations:

If testing services which require a an affiliation from a certain real organisation, you might need to change configuration in the test environment to support one of the above organisations. If this limits you too much, please contact us at eduid-support@switch.ch.

How it works

The feature is implemented in the edu-ID Test account management. The entrypoint for all operations is the account organisations page.

Creating an affiliation

Next to the usual button to add an affiliation via the normal linking process, there is another button to create an affiliation yourself.

You are then redirected to a web form where you can select the organisation to add the affiliation for, have to provide some mandatory affiliation data and can add arbitrary optional attributes. Please consult the attribute specifications for the correct syntaxes of the attributes, otherwise the submission can fail.

Once submitted, the backend validates and then creates the affiliation for the currently logged in user via the Affiliation API. Some attributes are automatically derived and added, including a value 'https://eduid.ch/spec/self-created-affiliation' for the eduPersonEntitlement attribute which acts as indicator that this affiliation is self-created. This value can't be removed.

You are redirected back to the account organisations page where you see your newly created affiliation with a blue 'self-created' batch.

Viewing a self-created affiliation

On the account organisations page, self-created affiliations are marked with a blue 'self-creted' batch. Like all affiliations, you can see its details by clicking on it. At the very bottom of this detail view, you see buttons to edit and remove that affilaition.

Editing a self-created affiliation

If you inspect a self-created affiliation on the account organisations page, you can click the 'Edit' button to access the web form again. The form has the affiliation data pre-filled already in the input fields. Note that some fields contain a value even though you haven't explicitly set them when creating the affiliation. These are attributes which are automatically set of derived from other attributes.

You can now adjust the affiliation data and add or remove fields. Submission of the form updates the affiliation via the Affiliation API.

Deleting a self-created affiliation

You can make a self-created affiliation a former affiliation in two ways:

  • Inspect the affiliation on the account organisations page and click the 'Remove' button.
  • On the web form where you can edit the affiliation, you can also remove it.

Note that these actions only make it a former affiliation as you will see in the list of your affiliations. As for normal formal affiliations, you can completely remove it when you inspect the affiliation.