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Tutorial: Microsoft Entra SSO integration with SciQuest Spend Director

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In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate SciQuest Spend Director with Microsoft Entra ID. When you integrate SciQuest Spend Director with Microsoft Entra ID, you can:

  • Control in Microsoft Entra ID who has access to SciQuest Spend Director.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to SciQuest Spend Director 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.
  • SciQuest Spend Director single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.

Scenario description

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

  • SciQuest Spend Director supports SP initiated SSO.
  • SciQuest Spend Director supports Just In Time user provisioning.

To configure the integration of SciQuest Spend Director into Microsoft Entra ID, you need to add SciQuest Spend Director 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 SciQuest Spend Director in the search box.
  4. Select SciQuest Spend Director 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 SciQuest Spend Director

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with SciQuest Spend Director 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 SciQuest Spend Director.

To configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with SciQuest Spend Director, 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 SciQuest Spend Director SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
    1. Create SciQuest Spend Director test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in SciQuest Spend Director 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 > SciQuest Spend Director > 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, perform the following steps:

    a. In the Identifier box, type a URL using the following pattern: https://<companyname>.sciquest.com

    b. In the Reply URL text box, type a URL using the following pattern: https://<companyname>.sciquest.com/apps/Router/ExternalAuth/Login/<instancename>

    c. In the Sign-on URL text box, type a URL using the following pattern: https://<companyname>.sciquest.com/apps/Router/SAMLAuth/<instancename>

    Note

    These values are not real. Update these values with the actual Identifier, Reply URL and Sign on URL. Contact SciQuest Spend Director Client support team to get these values. You can also refer to the patterns shown in the Basic SAML Configuration section.

  6. 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

  7. On the Set up SciQuest Spend Director 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 SciQuest Spend Director.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > SciQuest Spend Director.
  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 SciQuest Spend Director SSO

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

Create SciQuest Spend Director test user

The objective of this section is to create a user called Britta Simon in SciQuest Spend Director.

You need to contact your SciQuest Spend Director support team and provide them with the details about your test account to get it created.

Alternatively, you can also leverage just-in-time provisioning, a single sign-on feature that is supported by SciQuest Spend Director.
If just-in-time provisioning is enabled, users are automatically created by SciQuest Spend Director during a single sign-on attempt if they don't exist. This feature eliminates the need to manually create single sign-on counterpart users.

To get just-in-time provisioning enabled, you need to contact your SciQuest Spend Director support team.

Test SSO

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

  • Click on Test this application, this will redirect to SciQuest Spend Director Sign-on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

  • Go to SciQuest Spend Director Sign-on URL directly and initiate the login flow from there.

  • You can use Microsoft My Apps. When you click the SciQuest Spend Director tile in the My Apps, this will redirect to SciQuest Spend Director Sign-on URL. For more information, see Microsoft Entra My Apps.

Next steps

Once you configure SciQuest Spend Director 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 Cloud App Security.