Right place to initialize application level items

Question

I initilized application items on page 1 (home page for application). The normal flow for this application is the way when user gets their authentication at startup and then is normally redirected to the home page where application items are initialized.
This logic doesn't work when user gets (for example from a colleague) direct link to a particular page inside application. In that case after successfull authentication APEX redirects user to this page and my application items remain undefined.
What's the right place to initialize application items? I need initialize them first whenever user starts my application and regadless how they enter.

Answer 1

The Authentication Schemes used in both apps is SSO.
All pages require authorization. The schemes call a PL/SQL function accpeting a parameter of APP_USER and return a Boolean of whether this type of access is granted to that user.
Since all pages require authorization, navigating to any page causes SSO to be called and on authentication the authorization schemes are called to determine whether the user is authorized to see the page. If so, it will load ...
The code I have in the Post-Authentication Process is as follows (I'm pretty sure it doesn't fire because the row is not inserted => see note below ..):
declare
v_app_user VARCHAR2(7);
begin
v_app_user := SUBSTR(:APP_USER,1,7);
INSERT INTO profitauto.portf_front_end_login_log
(stdrd_id
, login_time
VALUES (v_app_user
, SYSTIMESTAMP
COMMIT;
end;
It seems to me to make sense that it doesn't fire if the user is authenticated in another app. Or is the authentication still happening in this app (just not prompting SSO to pop-up again to the user)...? Please note. If I have not authenticated myself already, and login to this app, the record IS written to the table ...