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Enable single sign-on for an enterprise application

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In this article, you use the Azure portal to enable single sign-on (SSO) for an enterprise application that you added to your Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) tenant. After you configure SSO, your users can sign in by using their Azure AD credentials.

Azure AD has a gallery that contains thousands of pre-integrated applications that use SSO. This article uses an enterprise application named Azure AD SAML Toolkit 1 as an example, but the concepts apply for most pre-configured enterprise applications in the gallery.

It is recommended that you use a non-production environment to test the steps in this article.

Prerequisites

To configure SSO, you need:

Enable single sign-on

To enable SSO for an application:

  1. Go to the Azure portal and sign in using one of the roles listed in the prerequisites.

  2. Browse to Azure Active Directory > Enterprise applications. The All applications pane opens and displays a list of the applications in your Azure AD tenant. Search for and select the application that you want to use. For example, Azure AD SAML Toolkit 1.

  3. In the Manage section of the left menu, select Single sign-on to open the Single sign-on pane for editing.

  4. Select SAML to open the SSO configuration page. After the application is configured, users can sign in to it by using their credentials from the Azure AD tenant.

  5. The process of configuring an application to use Azure AD for SAML-based SSO varies depending on the application. For any of the enterprise applications in the gallery, use the configuration guide link to find information about the steps needed to configure the application. The steps for the Azure AD SAML Toolkit 1 are listed in this article.

    Configure single sign-on for an enterprise application.

  6. In the Set up Azure AD SAML Toolkit 1 section, record the values of the Login URL, Azure AD Identifier, and Logout URL properties to be used later.

Configure single sign-on in the tenant

You add sign-in and reply URL values, and you download a certificate to begin the configuration of SSO in Azure AD.

To configure SSO in Azure AD:

  1. In the Azure portal, select Edit in the Basic SAML Configuration section on the Set up single sign-on pane.
  2. For Reply URL (Assertion Consumer Service URL), enter https://samltoolkit.azurewebsites.net/SAML/Consume.
  3. For Sign on URL, enter https://samltoolkit.azurewebsites.net/.
  4. Select Save.
  5. In the SAML Certificates section, select Download for Certificate (Raw) to download the SAML signing certificate and save it to be used later.

Configure single sign-on in the application

Using single sign-on in the application requires you to register the user account with the application and to add the SAML configuration values that you previously recorded.

Register the user account

To register a user account with the application:

  1. Open a new browser window and browse to the sign-in URL for the application. For the Azure AD SAML Toolkit application, the address is https://samltoolkit.azurewebsites.net.

  2. Select Register in the upper right corner of the page.

    Register a user account in the Azure AD SAML Toolkit application.

  3. For Email, enter the email address of the user that will access the application. Ensure that the user account is already assigned to the application.

  4. Enter a Password and confirm it.

  5. Select Register.

Configure SAML settings

To configure SAML settings for the application:

  1. Signed in with the credentials of the user account that you already assigned to the application, select SAML Configuration at the upper-left corner of the page.
  2. Select Create in the middle of the page.
  3. For Login URL, Azure AD Identifier, and Logout URL, enter the values that you recorded earlier.
  4. Select Choose file to upload the certificate that you previously downloaded.
  5. Select Create.
  6. Copy the values of the SP Initiated Login URL and the Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL to be used later.

Update single sign-on values

Use the values that you recorded for SP Initiated Login URL and Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL to update the single sign-on values in your tenant.

To update the single sign-on values:

  1. In the Azure portal, select Edit in the Basic SAML Configuration section on the Set up single sign-on pane.
  2. For Reply URL (Assertion Consumer Service URL), enter the Assertion Consumer Service (ACS) URL value that you previously recorded.
  3. For Sign on URL, enter the SP Initiated Login URL value that you previously recorded.
  4. Select Save.

Test single sign-on

You can test the single sign-on configuration from the Set up single sign-on pane.

To test SSO:

  1. In the Test single sign-on with Azure AD SAML Toolkit 1 section, on the Set up single sign-on with SAML pane, select Test.
  2. Sign in to the application using the Azure AD credentials of the user account that you assigned to the application.

Next steps