IRM for SAML Claims Users in SharePoint 2010 is Here

For those of you who have been waiting for integrated IRM support in SharePoint 2010 with SAML claims users, your wait is over.  The recently released June CU contains the fix you've been waiting for.  Actually, it's the re-released June CU (if you got the original bits the first week they were up, please return them for a full refund   🙂   and download the latest ones again).  If you were not previously aware, integrated IRM in SharePoint 2010 did not work at all (in most cases) and/or not reliably (in other cases) for SAML users.  I've just finished testing in my lab environment with a variety of users and authorization claims and in each case users are able to download and open IRM protected documents.  There is one potential logical disconnect you should be aware of though - even though you can log into the site as a SAML user, when you try and open an IRM protected document you must provide a set of Windows credentials.  You will get prompted with a standard web authentication dialog from within the Microsoft Office applications when opening one of these documents and then must enter your Active Directory credentials.  It was this basic authentication process that was not working previously for SAML authenticated users.  With this patch your SAML users now have a working end-to-end solution for IRM.