KB486848: No projects available for this mobile server" error shows when configuring new projects in mobile admin page when using SAML SSO

SYMPTOM:

User might observe error "No projects available for this Mobile Server." when configuring new projects in mobile admin page even after making sure user has sufficient privilege for viewing the projects in mobile and projects are available under intelligence server and checking the mobile server name defined.
User is still not able to connect to mobile admin project, even though web SSO is working as seen below:

This behavior happens under a MSTR Mobile deployment which is protected via SAML SSO, but access to the Mobile Server admin GUI is configured to use Tomcat authentication.
 

CAUSE:

When a Mobile configuration needs to be edited and when navigating under the connectivity settings tab, this will create a call to StrategyMobile/servlet/taskProc?taskId=getProjects. However, the taskProc servlet is SAML SSO protected and the GUI can't handle the SSO workflow as part of XHR calls.
 

ACTION:

There are 2 ways to address this behavior:
 

1. The MobileServer admin GUI can be protected by SAML as well instead of using Tomcat authentication. One option is to have the Admin page protected by SAML authentication. Within the WEB-INF/xml/sys_defaults.properties, there is a property named springAdminAuthMethod. Setting this property to 2 will protect the Admin page with SAML authentication rather than 1 which is protected by basic authentication. This may require additional configuration as in order to access the Admin pages, the authenticating user will need to be part of the adminGroups configured on the Strategy application side. More guidance can be found in the following link:

https://www2.microstrategy.com/producthelp/Current/SystemAdmin/WebHelp/Lang_1033/Content/enabling_single_sign_on_with_saml_authentication_jsp.htm#Change
 

1. Before going to edit a mobile configuration, the user should open a separate tab and go to StrategyMobile/servlet/taskProc then complete the SSO workflow under that tab. Once there is a SAML session for your browser window, you can go back under the original tab and edit your mobile configs as desired without issues anymore. Example URL :  https://webserver/ StrategyMobile/servlet/taskProc

Similar KB articles:
https://community.strategy.com/article/KB41967-No-projects-available-for-this-Mobile-Server-when?language=en_US
https://community.strategy.com/article/No-projects-available-for-this-mobile-server-error-shows-when-configure-new-projects-in-mobile-configuration-in-MicroStrategy-10-x-and-2019?language=en_US