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Tutorial: Azure Active Directory single sign-on (SSO) integration with FAX.PLUS

  • Article
  • 6 minutes to read

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

  • Control in Azure AD who has access to FAX.PLUS.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to FAX.PLUS 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.
  • FAX.PLUS single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.

Scenario description

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

  • FAX.PLUS supports SP and IDP initiated SSO.
  • FAX.PLUS supports Just In Time user provisioning.

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 FAX.PLUS into Azure AD, you need to add FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS in the search box.
  6. Select FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS

Configure and test Azure AD SSO with FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS.

To configure and test Azure AD SSO with FAX.PLUS, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Azure AD SSO - to enable your users to use this feature.
    1. Create an Azure AD test user - to test Azure AD single sign-on with B.Simon.
    2. Assign the Azure AD test user - to enable B.Simon to use Azure AD single sign-on.
  2. Configure FAX.PLUS SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
    1. Create FAX.PLUS test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS 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 pencil icon for Basic SAML Configuration to edit the settings.

    Edit Basic SAML Configuration

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

  5. 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 the URL: https://www.fax.plus/login

  6. Click Save.

  7. FAX.PLUS 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, FAX.PLUS 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

  9. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, find Certificate (Base64) and select Download to download the certificate and save it on your computer.

    The Certificate download link

  10. On the Set up FAX.PLUS section, copy the appropriate URL(s) based on 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 FAX.PLUS.

  1. In the Azure portal, select Enterprise Applications, and then select All applications.
  2. In the applications list, select FAX.PLUS.
  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 FAX.PLUS SSO

  1. To automate the configuration within FAX.PLUS, you need to install My Apps Secure Sign-in browser extension by clicking Install the extension.

    My apps extension

  2. After adding extension to the browser, click on Set up FAX.PLUS will direct you to the FAX.PLUS application. From there, provide the admin credentials to sign into FAX.PLUS. The browser extension will automatically configure the application for you and automate steps 3-5.

    Setup configuration

  3. If you want to setup FAX.PLUS manually, in a different web browser window, sign in to your FAX.PLUS company site as an administrator.

  4. Go to the Security section in your Admin Profile and scroll down to Advanced.

  5. On the Configuration panel, click on the Activate Single Sign-On button and perform the following steps.

    Account

    a. In the Entity ID textbox, paste the Azure AD Identifier value which you have copied from the Azure portal.

    b. In the Single Sign-On URL textbox, paste the Login URL value which you have copied from the Azure portal.

    c. Open the downloaded Certificate (Base64) from the Azure portal into Notepad and paste the content into the X.509 Certificate textbox.

    d. If you want to login through SSO, enable Only Allow SSO Login for Admin User checkbox.

    e. Click Confirm.

Create FAX.PLUS test user

In this section, a user called Britta Simon is created in FAX.PLUS. FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS, a new one is created after authentication.

Test SSO

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

SP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application in Azure portal. This will redirect to FAX.PLUS Sign on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

  • Go to FAX.PLUS Sign-on URL directly and initiate the login flow from there.

IDP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application in Azure portal and you should be automatically signed in to the FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS 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 FAX.PLUS for which you set up the SSO. For more information about the My Apps, see Introduction to the My Apps.

Next steps

Once you configure FAX.PLUS 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.