Azure AD SSO - 1 domain for several organizations

[Simon Goffaux]

Hello community,

I plan to implement a SSO (via Azure AD through Access) in my different instances but I have some constraints I would need to clarify first. Here is my situation:

- 2 organisations belonging to the same group
   * 1 organisation with 1 instance
   * 1 organisation with 3 instances (my organisation)
- 1 common domain for both organisations (group domain)
- 2 Admin teams (1 for each organisation and each can't get access to the other organization)
- 1 organisation would like to do provisioning the other organisation doesn't want it

Is it possible to implement the SSO in that situation ?

Moreover, in my organization I also have external domains I would need to add to my Azure AD but might be already in their own company SSO model. Does it create a blocker for the SSO implementation ?

Many thanks in advance for your support !

[Dave Meyer · Accepted solution]

Hi @Simon Goffaux ,

A domain can only be claimed by one organization at the time, so normally we would recommend sharing a single organization with an SSO configuration and simply managing the instances underneath with different admins.

But if it's a strict requirement that the admin teams cannot have access to each other's organizations, then if you set up SSO for under one organization, SSO will be enforced on all users on that organization's claimed domains, even if they are only using another organization's instances. So you could effectively have your organization claim the domain manage the SSO experience and the other organization could simply trust that it will be enforced for their (internal) users.

I would recommend setting up SSO in the organization that also wants user provisioning.

We don't currently have a way to enforce SSO for external users, but I don't think it would be a blocker for setting up SSO for your internal users in anyway. We do support provisioning for external users assuming you have them in the same Azure AD groups that you're syncing to Atlassian.

[Simon Goffaux]

Hi @Dave Meyer 

Many thanks for the explanation, that's really helpful.
Therefore, I will manage with my group to claim the domain and I will trust their configuration.

In that case, do I need to configure something in my instance or I will be just forced to connect via the SSO once the domain is claimed by the group ?

Many thanks in advance for your return.

[Dave Meyer]

There's nothing to configure at the instance/tenant level. The SSO flow happens when a user is logging in to their Atlassian account, irrespective of their "destination." So whether a user was going to their specific Jira instance at example.atlassian.net, or to trello.com, or even to community.atlassian.com...it doesn't matter. If they are not logged in, they'll be prompted to log in to their Atlassian account and go through SSO at that time. And once they've logged in, their session is shared across Atlassian cloud properties.

[Ed Letifov _TechTime - New Zealand_]

Well, I have to disagree slightly... Yes, nothing has to be done on the instance/tenant/site level... but just claiming the domain is not enough.

Whichever org claims the domain has to start Atlassian Access trial, configure it for SSO, and enforce it on the users from the other org either though default policy that applies to all or a specific policy that applies to these users.

[Dave Meyer]

Fair points @Ed Letifov _TechTime - New Zealand_ 🙂