Tutorial: Microsoft Entra SSO integration with NICE CXone

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate NICE CXone with Microsoft Entra ID. When you integrate NICE CXone with Microsoft Entra ID, you can:

• Control in Microsoft Entra ID who has access to NICE CXone.
• Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to NICE CXone 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.
• NICE CXone single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.
• Along with Cloud Application Administrator, Application Administrator can also add or manage applications in Microsoft Entra ID. For more information, see Azure built-in roles.

Scenario description

In this tutorial, you configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO in a test environment.

• NICE CXone supports SP initiated SSO.

Add NICE CXone from the gallery

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

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with NICE CXone 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 at NICE CXone.

To configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with NICE CXone, 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 NICE CXone SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
   1. Create NICE CXone test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in NICE CXone 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 > NICE CXone > 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.

   

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

   a. In the Identifier textbox, type a URL using one of the following patterns:

   Identifier
   https://cxone.niceincontact.com/<guid>
   https://cxone-gov.niceincontact.com/<guid>

   b. In the Reply URL textbox, type a URL using one of the following patterns:

   Reply URL
   https://cxone.niceincontact.com/auth/authorize?tenantId=<guid>
   https://cxone-gov.niceincontact.com/auth/authorize?tenantId=<guid>

   c. In the Sign-on URL text box, type one of the following URLs:

   Sign-on URL
   https://cxone.niceincontact.com
   https://cxone-gov.niceincontact.com

   Note

   These values are not real. Update these values with the actual Identifier and Reply URL. Contact NICE CXone 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, find Certificate (Base64) and select Download to download the certificate and save it on your computer.

   

7. On the Set up NICE CXone section, copy the appropriate URL(s) based on your requirement.

   

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 NICE CXone.

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

To configure single sign-on on NICE CXone side, you need to send the downloaded Certificate (Base64) and appropriate copied URLs from the application configuration to NICE CXone support team. They set this setting to have the SAML SSO connection set properly on both sides.

Create NICE CXone test user

In this section, you create a user called Britta Simon at NICE CXone. Work with NICE CXone support team to add the users in the NICE CXone platform. Users must be created and activated before you use single sign-on.

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 NICE CXone Sign-on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

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

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

Next steps

Once you configure NICE CXone 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.