Persona dashboard: SAML-based single sign-on (SSO) with Okta

Overview

You can enable SAML-based Single Sign-On (including Just-In-Time (JIT) provisioning with SAML) for the Persona Dashboard via Okta by following this guide.

Warning: By enabling SAML, users in your organization will no longer be able to authenticate via email and password. Please contact support@withpersona.com or your customer success manager if you need to revert this configuration.

Availability

SSO is available on Growth and Enterprise plans. See our Pricing page for details.

Retrieving your organization ID

Log in to your Persona dashboard as a user with Admin permissions and go to the Organization page. Under Single Sign-On, click Set up. Here, you'll find your Organization ID. Make note of your Organization ID - you'll need it for the setup

Adding Persona to Okta

1. Log in to your Okta organization as a user with administrative privileges. Make sure to switch to the Admin Console with Classic UI. The new UI does not currently support SAML based integrations.
2. Click Applications in the menu bar. Then click Add Application and then Create New App.
3. In the Create a New Application Integration dialog box, leave Web as the platform and select SAML 2.0 as the protocol. Click Create.
4. On (1) General Settings, enter Persona as the name of the new Application. Click Next
5. On (2) Configure SAML, enter the following for the fields. Click Next and then leave any feedback.
   • Single sign on URL: https://withpersona.com/saml/<ORGANIZATION-ID>/acs
   • Audience URI: https://withpersona.com/saml/<ORGANIZATION-ID>/metadata
   • Attribute Statements
     • Name: email
     • Name format: Unspecified
     • Value: user.email
   • ORGANIZATION-ID comes from the first section (Retrieving your Organization ID)
6. Get your Identity Provider metadata XML URL for Persona to integrate back with Okta. This can be found under the Sign On tab in the SAML 2.0 callout by clicking the Identity Provider metadata link. Copy the URL and keep it handy for the next steps. The format of the URL should look like https://dev-12345.okta.com/app/abcdefg/sso/saml/metadata

Completing the Okta integration in Persona

1. Log in to your Persona dashboard as a user with Admin permissions and go to the Organization page. Under Single Sign-On, click Set up.
2. Enter in the Metadata URL you obtained from the last step in the Adding Persona to Okta section. Then click Get metadata. If done successfully, you should see a notification letting you know that your Okta integration has been set up.

Logging in to Persona through Okta

1. To log in to Persona through Okta, first make sure that the user has been assigned to the Application in Okta.
2. The user should then see Persona in their Okta dashboard. By clicking Persona, they should automatically log in to their Persona dashboard.

FAQs

Does Persona support JIT provisioning via SAML?

Yes, we support JIT provisioning for users.

Is there an API for creating and disabling users?

We currently don't have an API for creating/disabling users.

Is it possible to send over the user's role in Persona as an attribute in the SAML assertion?

At the moment, all new users will be set to an Organization's default role configured from within the dashboard. We do not currently support sending a user's role as an attribute, but if this is a high priority for your team please reach out to your Persona contact or Persona support to let us know about your need.