In the hope of helping someone else who finds this post here is how I got XMPP clients authenticating but still unable to get it working for the administrator portal.
To get this working there are three parts.
A. Update the following properties at (Server > Server Manager > System Properties).
admin.authorizedGroups = <Name of Crowd Admin group for openfire>
provider.admin.className = org.jivesoftware.openfire.crowd.CrowdAdminProvider
provider.auth.className = org.jivesoftware.openfire.crowd.CrowdAuthProvider
provider.group.className = org.jivesoftware.openfire.crowd.CrowdGroupProvider
provider.user.className = org.jivesoftware.openfire.crowd.CrowdUserProvider
crowd.groups.cache.ttl.seconds = 3600
crowd.users.cache.ttl.seconds = 3600
#These fields are needed if Crowd server uses SSL Certificate
clearspace.certificate.verify = false
clearspace.certificate.verify.root = false
B. Update your crowd.properties manually in your openfire/conf directory. Add the following.
application.name=<Crowd Application Name>
application.password=<Crowd Application Password>
application.login.url=<Server URL:9091>
crowd.server.url=<Crowd Server URL>
session.isauthenticated=session.isauthenticated
session.tokenkey=session.tokenkey
session.validationinterval=0
session.lastvalidation=session.lastvalidation
#http.proxy.host=
#http.proxy.port=
#http.proxy.username=
#http.proxy.password=
http.max.connections=20
http.socket.timeout=20000
http.timeout=5000
#These fields are needed if Crowd server uses SSL Certificate
C. Add SSL Certificate if your Crowd Server uses SSL.
I found that adding the certificate to the standard keystore does not work as openfire will only check its own key stores.
openfire/resources/security/
From here I restarted the server and while the Administration console did not work logging into the XMPP server works for all my users.
Adding the "admin.authorizedGroups" to the system properties the admin console now works for appropriate users. Also moved the "Clearspace.certificate.verify" options to the system properties.