Edit

Share via

Tutorial: Microsoft Entra SSO integration with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

  • Article

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social with Microsoft Entra ID. When you integrate Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social with Microsoft Entra ID, you can:

  • Control in Microsoft Entra ID who has access to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social with their Microsoft Entra accounts.
  • Manage your accounts in one central location.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need the following items:

  • A Microsoft Entra subscription. If you don't have a subscription, you can get a free account.
  • Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.

Scenario description

In this tutorial, you configure and test Microsoft Entra single sign-on in a test environment.

  • Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social supports SP and IDP initiated SSO.
  • Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social supports Just In Time user provisioning.

To configure the integration of Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social into Microsoft Entra ID, you need to add Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social from the gallery to your list of managed SaaS apps.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > New application.
  3. In the Add from the gallery section, type Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social in the search box.
  4. Select Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social from results panel and then add the app. Wait a few seconds while the app is added to your tenant.

Alternatively, you can also use the Enterprise App Configuration Wizard. In this wizard, you can add an application to your tenant, add users/groups to the app, assign roles, as well as walk through the SSO configuration as well. Learn more about Microsoft 365 wizards.

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO for Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social using a test user called B.Simon. For SSO to work, you need to establish a link relationship between a Microsoft Entra user and the related user in Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

To configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Microsoft Entra SSO - to enable your users to use this feature.
    1. Create a Microsoft Entra test user - to test Microsoft Entra single sign-on with B.Simon.
    2. Assign the Microsoft Entra test user - to enable B.Simon to use Microsoft Entra single sign-on.
  2. Configure Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
    1. Create Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social that is linked to the Microsoft Entra representation of user.
  3. Test SSO - to verify whether the configuration works.

Configure Microsoft Entra SSO

Follow these steps to enable Microsoft Entra SSO.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.

  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social > Single sign-on.

  3. On the Select a single sign-on method page, select SAML.

  4. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, click the pencil icon for Basic SAML Configuration to edit the settings.

    Edit Basic SAML Configuration

  5. On the Basic SAML Configuration section, the user does not have to perform any step as the app is already pre-integrated with Azure.

  6. Click Set additional URLs and perform the following step if you wish to configure the application in SP initiated mode:

    In the Sign-on URL text box, type a URL using one of the following patterns:

    Sign-on URL
    https://advocacy.sproutsocial.com
    https://<SUBDOMAIN>.advocacy.sproutsocial.com

    Note

    This value is not the real. Update this value with the actual Sign-on URL. Contact Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social Client support team to get the value. You can also refer to the patterns shown in the Basic SAML Configuration section.

  7. Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social application expects the SAML assertions in a specific format, which requires you to add custom attribute mappings to your SAML token attributes configuration. The following screenshot shows the list of default attributes.

    image

  8. In addition to above, Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social application expects few more attributes to be passed back in SAML response, which are shown below. These attributes are also pre populated but you can review them as per your requirements.

    Name Source Attribute
    firstName user.givenname
    lastName user.surname
    email user.mail

  9. On the Set up Single Sign-On with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, click Download to download the Federation Metadata XML from the given options as per your requirement and save it on your computer.

    The Certificate download link

  10. On the Set up Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social section, copy the appropriate URL(s) as per your requirement.

    Copy configuration URLs

Create a Microsoft Entra test user

In this section, you'll create a test user called B.Simon.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a User Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Users > All users.
  3. Select New user > Create new user, at the top of the screen.
  4. In the User properties, follow these steps:
    1. In the Display name field, enter B.Simon.
    2. In the User principal name field, enter the username@companydomain.extension. For example, B.Simon@contoso.com.
    3. Select the Show password check box, and then write down the value that's displayed in the Password box.
    4. Select Review + create.
  5. Select Create.

Assign the Microsoft Entra test user

In this section, you'll enable B.Simon to use single sign-on by granting access to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social.
  3. In the app's overview page, select Users and groups.
  4. Select Add user/group, then select Users and groups in the Add Assignment dialog.
    1. In the Users and groups dialog, select B.Simon from the Users list, then click the Select button at the bottom of the screen.
    2. If you are expecting a role to be assigned to the users, you can select it from the Select a role dropdown. If no role has been set up for this app, you see "Default Access" role selected.
    3. In the Add Assignment dialog, click the Assign button.

Configure Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social SSO

To configure single sign-on on Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social side, you need to send the downloaded Federation Metadata XML and appropriate copied URLs from the application configuration to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social support team. They set this setting to have the SAML SSO connection set properly on both sides.

Create Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social test user

In this section, a user called Britta Simon is created in Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social. Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social supports just-in-time user provisioning, which is enabled by default. There is no action item for you in this section. If a user doesn't already exist in Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social, a new one is created after authentication.

Test SSO

In this section, you test your Microsoft Entra single sign-on configuration with following options.

SP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application, this will redirect to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social Sign-on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

  • Go to Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social Sign-on URL directly and initiate the login flow from there.

IDP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application, and you should be automatically signed in to the Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social for which you set up the SSO.

You can also use Microsoft My Apps to test the application in any mode. When you click the Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social tile in the My Apps, if configured in SP mode you would be redirected to the application sign-on page for initiating the login flow and if configured in IDP mode, you should be automatically signed in to the Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social for which you set up the SSO. For more information, see Microsoft Entra My Apps.

Next steps

Once you configure Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social you can enforce session control, which protects exfiltration and infiltration of your organization’s sensitive data in real time. Session control extends from Conditional Access. Learn how to enforce session control with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.