SSO and Active Directory

Cards is compatible with many SSO systems, allowing your users to log in via their professional account very easily and securely.

We also offer an option to automatically synchronize users and groups from your Active Directory.

SSO and Active Directory configuration

Enterprise SSO

SSO is an option at Cards, and requires a little configuration: on our side, but also on yours, to authorize the application.

You must therefore contact us, in order to talk with a person from our technical team, who will be able to support you in the implementation (you or a person from your tech team).

The steps to configure SSO are as follows:

1. We share a configuration link with you, allowing you (or your technical team) to configure your provider to authorize SSO connection to your Cards space.

2. Once your configuration is complete, we activate the option on your space, which will allow you to choose the "SSO" connection mode for your users.

3. Before enabling SSO on all your users, you can run a test on one of your accounts to check that everything is working correctly.

Active Directory sync

Cards is compatible with the SCIM protocol, allowing you to automatically synchronize users and groups from your Active Directory.

Configuration steps

The configuration steps are as follows:

1. We share with you a configuration link, allowing you (or your technical team) to configure your provider to authorize synchronization with your Cards space.

2. Once your configuration is complete, we activate the option on your space, and complete the necessary configuration on our side.

3. You can then go to the “My space” > “SSO Enterprise” page, and see that the configuration is complete. You can then return to your provider (Azure for example) and add users or groups in synchronization.

4. Depending on your provider, synchronization is more or less rapid (for example on Azure, synchronization occurs approximately every 40 minutes). As soon as the first elements are received, you will be able to see them on your “SSO Entreprise” page.

How sync works

Synchronization is downward only, therefore only in the direction Provider -> Cards. Groups or users that you create directly in Cards will not be sent to your Active Directory.

Thanks to synchronization, you will be able to create users in your provider, and these will be automatically created in Cards.

Same thing for groups, once created in your provider, it is automatically created in Cards, and its members are added. If the members of your group do not yet have a Cards account, they are created on the fly, with the "SSO" connection mode.

Users sync

On your “Enterprise SSO” page, you will be able to see the user synchronization status:

Users sync table

For each user, you will be able to see if they have been created in Cards or not yet. If necessary, you can restart the creation of accounts via the "Create users" button, or do it individually per user.

When a cross is present next to the user's email, it means that their access to Cards has been disabled, or that the account has been deleted from your Active Directory. These accounts are not synchronized with Cards, and are deleted if an account previously existed.

Groups sync

On your “Enterprise SSO” page, you will be able to see the synchronization status of the groups:

Groups sync table

Here are the actions supported by synchronization:

• creation of the group

• editing the group (changing the name)

• group deletion

• adding a person to the group

• removing a person from the group.

As with users, you can see if a group has already been synchronized with your Cards space. If necessary, you can restart synchronization, which will cause:

• the creation of the group if it does not yet exist

• adding members to the group if they are not already there

  • and if the member of the group to be added does not yet have a Cards account, we create one on the fly

• users already in the group on Cards are not removed.

When a group is synchronized with your Active Directory, you will be able to see it on the group listing with the "AD" tag:

Groups list with "AD" tag

FAQ

What happens if I have already created a learner's account before synchronization?

If an account already exists with the email address, then the association between the account and your AD will be made. On future synchronizations, the user can be modified automatically (as well as added or removed from groups). The information synchronized is their first name, last name and email. You will therefore have to change its connection system to “SSO” manually if necessary.

What happens if I delete a user from Cards while it is synchronized with Active Directory?

If you delete a user from Cards, their account is deleted on Cards only. But if a synchronization takes place from your AD, the account will be automatically re-created in Cards (its progress statistics will be reset to zero when the account is created again).

What happens if I add external learners to my Active Directory?

User accounts that are not synchronized with your AD remain "independent" of your AD. You can add them to groups (even groups created via your AD), they will not be removed from the group when synchronizing with the AD. On the other hand, if the group is deleted from your AD, then the group on Cards is also deleted, and therefore even people outside your AD will no longer have access to the group.