How to Move from G Suite Sync to Atlassian Access

Rich Kirkpatrick

What are the steps & impacts of moving from G Suite Sync to Atlasssian Access (AA)?  G Suite Sync only allows users to be synchronized & access to be granted against.  We want to move to Atlassian Access to gain the ability to do this with Groups, however we currently have G Suite Sync setup.  On the User Provisioning page of AA, we are simply greeted with a "You must disconnect G Suite" message.  Has anyone gone down this road before?  Does this mean a complete teardown and rebuilding of our existing Confluence and Jira sites?

Avni Barman

Rich,

Thank you so much for reaching out to the Atlassian team about your question. Unfortunately, we don't currently support groups in the G Suite sync, and simply switching to SCIM user provisioning with Google Cloud Identity isn't possible because Google Cloud Identity doesn't support the SCIM groups object. You have two options:

1. If you are willing to wait a few months, we are currently working on a new G Suite integration that provides additional support to allow you to sync your groups for user provisioning via G Suite. You would be able to continue to sync your users through G Suite, use Google groups to grant product access, and continue to require your end-users to log in using Google.

2. You can move from the G Suite Integration to use SAML SSO and SCIM user provisioning with groups with another identity provider. To see a list of identity providers Atlassian supports alongside a detailed step by step of how to do this visit https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/user-provisioning-959305316.html) With this configuration you would be able to apply permissions and product access to synced groups. This would not be a complete teardown of your existing Confluence and Jira sites but rather a reconfiguration of SSO and user syncing. Your end-users accounts would not be affected, but they would log in differently. This would require a subscription to Atlassian Access. A couple of caveats: First, you must disconnect your existing G Suite connection. Additionally, upon disconnecting your existing G Suite integration, your end-users will no longer be required to log in using Google and your G Suite users will no longer be synced into your Jira/Confluence sites until you re-enable SSO with another identity provider. Okta (a 3rd-party identity provider) is offering a free account for Atlassian customers. Check it out here: https://www.atlassian.com/software/access/okta

Please reach out to the support team if you are interested in this! Hope this was helpful and let us know if you have any other questions.

Best,

Avni