Okta SSO

Enable your employees to securely and seamlessly sign in using Single Sign-On (SSO)

Chris Morris avatar
Written by Chris Morris
Updated this week

This article applies to:

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Estimated time: Less than 15 mins

About this article

Enable your employees to sign in to Vendr using Single Sign-On (SSO). This article covers creating a SAML integration and connecting your SSO provider to Vendr.

How it works

When you use the Okta SSO SAML integration employees will be prompted to log in to Vendr using single-sign-on through Okta instead of magic links. SAML provides a quick and secure method of passing user authentications and authorizations between your identity provider and Vendr.

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Benefits

  • Increase security by centralizing user access to Vendr through your SSO provider

  • Provide a quick and seamless way for employees to log into Vendr – no magic links required.

Requirements

  • Vendr Admin

  • Okta Super Admin

Note

Installing the Okta SSO integration does not sync users to Vendr for assigning steps in workflows. To sync users to Vendr you'll also need to configure an Identity Provider or HRIS integration.

Overview

To allow employees to log in to Vendr using your SSO provider, you will:

Create SAML Application

  1. To kick this off, we'll begin Okta's admin area. First, create a New Application in Okta. Choose the Web for Platform, and SAML 2.0 for the Sign on method. Click Create to continue.

  2. Next enter "Vendr" as the App name, and please feel free to include our logo pre-sized for Okta. Click Next to proceed to SAML Settings.

  3. Here, there are two main steps: adding key information provided by Vendr, and providing Vendr with Okta's metadata and cert file. In a new window, navigate to Vendr's SSO Settings page. Select "Okta" as your SSO provider, and you'll be provided with two key pieces of information: the Single sign on URL and an Audience URI. Copy and paste each of those two values into their respective fields back in your Okta tab. You can leave all the other inputs as is, and click Next to continue.

    1. Okta will ask you if you are publishing a new app.

    2. For now, select I'm an Okta customer adding an internal app, and check the checkbox for Contact app vendor to indicate that it's required to contact the vendor to enable SAML.

    3. Click Finish to proceed.

  4. The last step in Okta is to get the Metadata.xml content from your new application.

  5. Click View Setup Instructions and scroll to the bottom of the page.

    1. You should see an "Optional" section, that includes a text area that contains an XML document.

    2. Download the document

  6. Return to your browser tab with Vendr SSO Settings, open the XML document, and copy/paste the text from inside the document into the Identity Provider XML field in Vendr's SSO Setup page.

  7. Click Submit to complete the setup.

Enable SSO in Vendr

  1. Navigate to Vendr and select admin and then SSO

  2. Select Okta as the SSO Provider

  3. Upload the downloaded metadata file from the previous step to Metadata XML field

  4. Click Submit

πŸŽ‰ Congrats! Your integration is now connected.

TIP

Vendr doesn't automatically support IdP-initiated logins. Users will be prompted to log in through OneLogin when users log in directly from Vendr.

To enable users to login to Vendr directly from the OneLogin dashboard add the following URL as an application bookmark:

https://app.vendr.com/#/login?via=saml&domain=YOUR_DOMAIN

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