SSO? What's that?
Know how when you go to a website you can either sign in with an email and password OR sign in with Google or another account? That "sign in with Google" option is Single Sign On: the ability to sign into a third-party platform, usually one used by your employer to serve a certain purpose, using your account from another platform.
OK, cool… So why is that important?
SSO is convenient for users (and for IT teams) because it lets every user log into the sites they need to use with just one username and password.
Yeah, that makes sense. So what does that have to do with Schoolzilla?
We support SSO for our customers, meaning that our teachers, school leaders, and administrators can log into a third-party platform (usually called the Identity Provider or IdP in SSO-speak) and be automatically logged into Schoolzilla (called the Service Provider or SP). Specifically, we support these SSO providers: Okta, OneLogin, and ADFS (which all use SAML) and Google (which uses OAuth).
Exciting! How can my users get logged in?
If you have a Google-based email system, we can quickly set up SSO for you and users can simply click the Sign in with Google button on app.schoolzilla.com.
If you use one of our other supported Identity Providers, we recommend having users bookmark your organization's Schoolzilla link. That link will look like this: https://app.schoolzilla.com/auth/(your Schoolzilla customer ID) (we'll provide you with this ID). This link will take them to a login page for your SSO provider and then, after they log in, to your Schoolzilla dashboard.
Nice! That's pretty neat. So you said that’s what Schoolzilla’s SSO setup does well. Is there anything it doesn't do well right now?
If you do not use a Google-based email system, if a user just goes to a non-SSO Schoolzilla link, like https://app.schoolzilla.com/, they won't be able to log in using SSO, even though their organization might be set up with SSO. That's definitely not ideal for most users because they won't have set an independent password on app.schoolzilla.com. For this reason, it's important to set the expectation with your users that they should bookmark your organizations authorization URL to access Schoolzilla.
OK, I think I've got the basics now. Where can I go to learn more?
Okta with Schoolzilla (FAQ | Setup)
OneLogin with Schoolzilla (FAQ | Setup)
ADFS with Schoolzilla (FAQ | Setup)
Google with Schoolzilla (FAQ)