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Configure SSO for Apps with AWS Cognito as IDP

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AWS Cognito Single Sign-On (SSO) solution by miniOrange allows users to login into multiple applications using an existing username and password of Cognito. Here AWS Cognito will act as an Identity Provider (IDP) and your applications will act as a Service Provider (SP). miniOrange acts as a broker to communicate with IDP and SP and provide secure login access to users.
AWS Cognito handles the responsibility of authenticating users within the application, making it easier for admins to integrate SSO into their applications. Overall this eliminates the need to manage different identities as all information is stored in a unified location - AWS Cognito. Once Cognito SSO is configured, you will be able to :

• SSO login to your Cloud, On-Premise, and in-house apps using Cognito credentials
• Cross Protocol Authentication (Connect app supporting different protocols to IDP supporting different protocols)
• Attribute Mapping
• Multiple IDP Connection

Follow the Step-by-Step Guide given below for AWS Cognito Single Sign-On (SSO)

1. Configure AWS Cognito as OAuth 2.0 Provider in miniOrange.

• Go to miniOrange Admin Console.
• From the left navigation bar select Identity Provider. Select Oauth





• Enter the following values.

IdP Name	Custom Provider
IdP Display Name	Choose appropriate Name
OAuth Authorize Endpoint	https://{cognito-app-domain}/oauth2/authorize
OAuth Access Token Endpoint	https://{cognito-app-domain}/oauth2/token
OAuth Get User Info Endpoint (optional)	https://{cognito-app-domain}/oauth2/userInfo
Client ID	From step 2
Client secret	From step 2
Scope	openid

2. Configure AWS Cognito as Userstore OR IDP in miniOrange

• Configure AWS Cognito as IDP in miniOrange
• Configure AWS Cognito as Userstore in miniOrange

1.1 Configuring miniOrange as Service Provider (SP) in AWS Cognito

• Sign in to AWS Amazon.



• Search for Cognito in the AWS Services search bar as shown below.



• Click on Create a user pool to create a new user pool.



• Choose the attributes in your user pool to be used during the sign-in process



• Set up a strong password to configure your security requirements. Go ahead with the ‘No MFA’ option if you want users to only sign in with a single authentication factor. If you wish to enable MFA (Multi-factor authentication) it will require SMS messages which are charged separately by Amazon SNS. Learn more about that here. Click Next.





• Configure attributes that would be required during the user sign-up flow.



• Choose additional attributes if you wish to. Click Next.



• Configure how your user pool sends email messages to users.



• Enter a name for your user pool, Also Under Hosted authentication pages, check ‘Use the Cognito Hosted UI’.



• Now, Under the Domain section choose the domain type as ‘Use a Cognito domain’. Enter a domain name for your Cognito app.



• Under the Initial app client section, Enter a name for your app client and check on Generate a client secret.



• Now enter your Callback/Redirect URL which you will get from your miniOrange plugin present on your Client side and paste it under the Allowed callback URLs text-field. Also refer the following image for choosing the authentication flows for your app.



• Now, Under Advanced app client settings, select Identity provider as Cognito user pool & Select Authorization code grant under the OAuth 2.0 grant types and also select openid,email and profile checkboxes under the OpenID Connect scopes section (Please refer to the image below).
• Click on the Next button to save your configurations.



• Now, Review your selection of requirements. Click Create user pool to confirm the selection and create a user pool.





• After successfully creating your user pool, Select your pool name from the list of pools to start with user creation.



• Go to the Users tab, and click Create user.



• Enter details such as username, email address & password. Click on Create user to save the details.



• After the successful creation of the user, you will need a copy of the Cognito domain, Client ID, and Client Secret.
• Go to the App Integration section and copy the complete domain name {your domain name}.auth.{region name}.amazoncognito.com. This should be entered into the endpoints field under in the miniOrange dashboard.



• To get the Client ID and Client Secret, stay on the same 'App Integration' tab and scroll down to the App clients and analytics section. Click on your App client name to see the Client ID and Client Secret.





• You have Successfully complete AWS Cognito side configuration.

1.1 Configuring miniOrange as Service Provider (SP) in AWS Cognito

A] Steps to Configure User Pool

• Sign in to AWS Amazon.
• Now enter “Cognito” in search text box & select Cognito from dropdown.




• Go to “Manage your user pools”.



• Click on “Create a user pool”.




• Add pool name and select “Review Defaults”.




• Click on Edit icon as shown in the below image.




• Now, Enable the Email Address and Phone Number option and click on Next step button.






• Click on “Add app client” & then click on Add an app client.




• Enter App client name & Disable Generate Client Secret option. Enable the Username Password based authentication option,then Click on “Create app client”.






• Click on Return to Pool Details to come back to your configuration.




• Click on Create Pool button to save your settings and create a user pool.




• In the navigation bar present on the left side, click on the App Client Settings option under the App Integration menu.




• Go to the Cognito dashboard and select “Cognito User Pool”, add callback URL which you have copied from Pre-requisite.
• Add application home page URL has to Sign out URL.
• Also, select Authorization code grant as “Allowed OAuth Flows” & select email, OpenID, Profile as “Allowed OAuth Scopes”.
• After selecting all details click on Save changes button.




• Go to “App client” and click on “Show details” to get a client ID. (Keep client ID handy as you will need it later.)




• Go to domain name and enter a domain name for your app. After adding domain name you can check its availability by clicking on “Check availability” button. After entering valid domain name click "Save changes” button.




• Complete domain name: The complete domain name that you need to enter in miniOrange dashboard is {your domain name}.auth.{region name}.amazoncognito.com
• Add Users / Groups to Cognito App : Go to Users and groups and then click on Users. After this click on Create user.




• Fill all required information's and click on Create user.




• Click on Groups and then click on Create group.



• Fill all required information's and click on Create group.





B] Steps to Configure Identity Pool

• Go to Federated Identities and click on Create new Identity pool button.




• Enter Identity pool name and enable Unauthenticated identities and Authentication flow settings, then click on Create pool button.




• Click on Allow button and you will get the Identity Pool Id.






1.2 Configure AWS as Userstore in miniOrange.

• Go to miniOrange Admin Console.
• From the left navigation bar select External Directories and Click on Add Directory button.
• Select AWS Cognito.
• Enter the following values.

AWS Cognito Identifier	Provider Name
AWS Cognito Region	Get Cognito region from user pool(eg.us-east-2)
Identity Pool ID	From step 1.2
User Pool ID	From step 1.1
Client ID	From step 1.1

• Now you can click on Save.

3. Configure your application in miniOrange

• Login to miniOrange Admin Console.
• Go to Apps >> Add Application.

• SAML Application
• OAuth Application
• JWT Application

• Click on Create App under SAML.



• Search for your Application. In case you do not find your app, search for Custom SAML App.





• Get the ACS URL and SP Entity ID from your application.
• Enter the following values OR click on Import SP Metadata:

Service Provider Name	Choose appropriate name according to your choice
SP Entity ID or Issuer	Your Application Entity ID
ACS URL X.509 Certificate (optional)	Your Application Assertion Consumer Service URL
NameID format	Select urn:oasis:names:tc:SAML:1.1:nameid-format:emailAddress
Response Signed	Unchecked
Assertion Signed	Checked
Encrypted Assertion	Unchecked
Group policy	Default
Login Method	Password

• Click on Save to configure your application.
• Now to get the IDP metadata of the app configured, Go to apps >> your_app >> select >> metadata tab.



• Click on the Show Metadata details in the Information required to Authenticate via External IDPs section. Download the metadata XML file by clicking on Download Metadata button or copy the Metadata URL link.



• You need to Upload this metadata in your application.

• Click on Create App under OAuth/OIDC. Click on Open ID Connect App .



• You can add any OAuth Client app here to enable miniOrange as OAuth Server. Few popular OAuth client apps for single sign-on are Salesforce, WordPress, Joomla, Atlassian, etc.





• Enter following Values:

Client Name	Add appropriate Name
Redirect URL	Get the Redirect-URL from your OAuth Client
Description	Add if required
Group Name	Default
Policy Name	As per your Choice
Login Method	Password

• Click on Save
• Now to provide the required data to OAuth client go to the app configured i.e apps >> your_app >> select >> edit.






Note: Choose the Authorization Endpoint according to the identity source you configure.

• When you want to use you want to use miniOrange as OAuth identity server use this endpoint: https://{mycompany.domainname.com}/moas/idp/openidsso
• If you are configuring any Identity Provider in Identity Providers Menu and not using miniOrange as IDP use this endpoint: https://{mycompany.domainname.com}/broker/login/oauth{customerid}

• Click on Create App under JWT.



• Select JWT App.



• Configure the name for your application and configure Redirect-URL which tells where to send JWT response. Redirect-URL should be an endpoint on your application where you want to achieve SSO.




In case you are setting up SSO with Mobile Applications where you can't create an endpoint for Redirect or Callback URL, use below URL.

https://login.xecurify.com/moas/jwt/mobile


• Click Save
• To get the SSO link for your application, Go to Apps >> your_app >> select >> Edit.



• Then, copy the Single Sign On Url and verify SSO setup by browsing that url.



• On successful authentication, you will be redirected to configured Redirect or Callback URL with JWT token
• You will need to download a certificate from App > Manage Apps, and click Certificate link against your configured application. This certificate will be used for signature validation of JWT response.

4. Login using IDP selection page (Optional)

• You can configure multiple IDPs (Identity Providers) and give users the option to select the IDP of their choice to authenticate with.
  For Example - It could be multiple AD domains belonging to different departments or multiple okta organizations.

Few usecases where customers configure multiple IDPs -


• Suppose you have a product which many of your clients use and each client has their own unique IDP so you want them to SSO into your product as well using their existing IDP only. miniOrange provides a centralized way to connect with all IDPs in a very easy manner and integrate SSO into your application.
• Suppose you are providing a course to many universities, each having a unique SAML, OAuth protocol supported IDP's like Shibboleth, ADFS, CAS, etc. You can provide Single Sign-On (SSO) into your course application to all these universities by integrating with all of them using a single platform provided by miniOrange.
• This is the endpoint to call from your SAML application -

For Cloud IDP -	https://login.xecurify.com/moas/discovery?customerId=<customer_id>
For On-Premise IDP -	https://yourdomain.com/discovery?customerId=<customer_id>



• You should copy the Customer Key from admin console-> Settings -> and replace it with <customer_id> here. Once configured in SP, when you initiate the login from Service Provider, a user will be redirected to IDP Selection Page listing all IDPs configured for that account.

You can see the screenshot below of the IDP Selection Page with a list of IDPs.




Note: To view the IDP in drop-down list, go to Identity Providers tab > against your configured IDP > Select >Edit , here Enable the Show IdP to Users option.




• You can also change the look and feel of this page. Login to miniOrange Admin console. Navigate to Customization -> Branding Configuration. See the below screenshot for reference-




• You can customize the title of this page.
• Change the logo and favicon for this page.
• Change the background and button color for this page from admin UI.

External References

• Learn more about how miniOrange functions as an Identity Broker
• SSO login using Azure IDP
• SSO login using ADFS Identity Provider
• AWS SAML SSO Solution by miniOrange
• Know more about AWS Workspace MFA Solution