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Tutorial: Azure Active Directory integration with BambooHR

  • Article
  • 5 minutes to read

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate BambooHR with Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). When you integrate BambooHR with Azure AD, you can:

  • Control in Azure AD who has access to BambooHR.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to BambooHR with their Azure AD accounts.
  • Manage your accounts in one central location - the Azure portal.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need the following items:

  • An Azure AD subscription. If you don't have a subscription, you can get a free account.
  • BambooHR single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.

Scenario description

In this tutorial, you configure and test Azure AD SSO in a test environment.

  • BambooHR supports SP initiated SSO

Note

Identifier of this application is a fixed string value so only one instance can be configured in one tenant.

To configure the integration of BambooHR into Azure AD, you need to add BambooHR from the gallery to your list of managed SaaS apps.

  1. Sign in to the Azure portal using either a work or school account, or a personal Microsoft account.
  2. On the left navigation pane, select the Azure Active Directory service.
  3. Navigate to Enterprise Applications and then select All Applications.
  4. To add new application, select New application.
  5. In the Add from the gallery section, type BambooHR in the search box.
  6. Select BambooHR 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 Azure AD SSO for BambooHR

Configure and test Azure AD SSO with BambooHR using a test user called B.Simon. For SSO to work, you need to establish a link relationship between an Azure AD user and the related user in BambooHR.

To configure and test Azure AD SSO with BambooHR, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Azure AD SSO - to enable your users to use this feature.
  2. Configure BambooHR SSO - to configure the Single Sign-On settings on application side.
    • Create BambooHR test user - to have a counterpart of Britta Simon in BambooHR that is linked to the Azure AD representation of user.
  3. Test SSO - to verify whether the configuration works.

Configure Azure AD SSO

Follow these steps to enable Azure AD SSO in the Azure portal.

  1. In the Azure portal, on the BambooHR application integration page, find the Manage section and select single sign-on.

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

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

    Edit Basic SAML Configuration

  4. On the Basic SAML Configuration section, perform the following steps:

    a. In the Sign on URL text box, type a URL using the following pattern: https://<company>.bamboohr.com

    b. In the Reply URL text box, type a URL using the following pattern:

    Reply URL
    https://<company>.bamboohr.com/saml/consume.php
    https://<company>.bamboohr.co.uk/saml/consume.php

    Note

    These values are not real. Update these values with actual sign-on URL and Reply URL. Contact BambooHR Client support team to get the values. You can also refer to the patterns shown in the Basic SAML Configuration section in the Azure portal.

  5. On the Set up Single Sign-On with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, click Download to download the Certificate (Base64) from the given options as per your requirement and save it on your computer.

    The Certificate download link

  6. On the Set up BambooHR section, copy the appropriate URL(s) as per your requirement.

    Copy configuration URLs

Create an Azure AD test user

In this section, you'll create a test user in the Azure portal called B.Simon.

  1. From the left pane in the Azure portal, select Azure Active Directory, select Users, and then select All users.
  2. Select New user at the top of the screen.
  3. In the User properties, follow these steps:
    1. In the Name field, enter B.Simon.
    2. In the User 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. Click Create.

Assign the Azure AD test user

In this section, you'll enable B.Simon to use Azure single sign-on by granting access to BambooHR.

  1. In the Azure portal, select Enterprise Applications, and then select All applications.
  2. In the applications list, select BambooHR.
  3. In the app's overview page, find the Manage section and select Users and groups.
  4. Select Add user, then select Users and groups in the Add Assignment dialog.
  5. In the Users and groups dialog, select B.Simon from the Users list, then click the Select button at the bottom of the screen.
  6. 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.
  7. In the Add Assignment dialog, click the Assign button.

Configure BambooHR SSO

  1. In a new window, sign in to your BambooHR company site as an administrator.

  2. On the home page, do the following:

    The BambooHR Single Sign-On page

    a. Select Apps.

    b. In the Apps pane, select Single Sign-On.

    c. Select SAML Single Sign-On.

  3. In the SAML Single Sign-On pane, do the following:

    The SAML Single Sign-On pane

    a. Into the SSO Login Url box, paste the Login URL that you copied from the Azure portal in step 6.

    b. In Notepad, open the base-64 encoded certificate that you downloaded from the Azure portal, copy its content, and then paste it into the X.509 Certificate box.

    c. Select Save.

Create BambooHR test user

To enable Azure AD users to sign in to BambooHR, set them up manually in BambooHR by doing the following:

  1. Sign in to your BambooHR site as an administrator.

  2. In the toolbar at the top, select Settings.

    The Settings button

  3. Select Overview.

  4. In the left pane, select Security > Users.

  5. Type the username, password, and email address of the valid Azure AD account that you want to set up.

  6. Select Save.

Note

To set up Azure AD user accounts, you can also use BambooHR user account-creation tools or APIs.

Test SSO

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

  1. Click on Test this application in Azure portal. This will redirect to BambooHR Sign-on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

  2. Go to BambooHR Sign-on URL directly and initiate the login flow from there.

  3. You can use Microsoft Access Panel. When you click the BambooHR tile in the Access Panel, this will redirect to BambooHR Sign-on URL. For more information about the Access Panel, see Introduction to the Access Panel.

Next steps

Once you configure BambooHR 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.