What do we need to do in order to get OKTA SSO working in Jira Data Center

[Kal]

We had some concerns we would like to address before enabling SSO in Data Center. We are currently using Crowd AD sync to pull in users from Active Directory. When we go to setup OKTA SSO what kinds of issues do we need to be aware of?

1. Will Application Access work the same as it does now? We can only grant new AD groups application access after the crows sync completes - Will this change once we setup OKTA SSO? How do we grant application access after moving to SSO?

2. Where can I confirm that the identity created within Jira by the AD/LDAP sync aligns with the identity provided by OKTA from OIDC or SAML? We need to know if these match and if so on what do they match on (i.e email)? 

Thanks again,

Kal

[Benjamin S]

Hi @Kal

Okta SSO works like a standard SAML provider, so the SAML SSO for Jira Data Center applications guide applies here.

To address your questions:

Will Application Access work the same as it does now? We can only grant new AD groups application access after the crows sync completes - Will this change once we setup OKTA SSO? How do we grant application access after moving to SSO?

From my understanding, your current directory flow is: Active Directory -> Atlassian Crowd -> Jira DC.

Assuming you retain this directory configuration, nothing will change. Jira will still rely on Crowd group membership, which originates in AD. Any user that has the jira-software-users or jira-servicedesk-users group (or another group defined in the application access admin page) membership can log in to the respective Jira application.

The bundled Jira SSO app allows for just-in-time (JIT) user provisioning. JIT user provisioning automatically adds users to (or updates attributes/membership in) Jira's internal directory during SAML login. A downside to JIT is that users aren't automatically removed from Jira's internal directory when removed the SAML IdP. If you decide to use JIT, you would want to remove your external user directory from Jira.

Where can I confirm that the identity created within Jira by the AD/LDAP sync aligns with the identity provided by OKTA from OIDC or SAML? We need to know if these match and if so on what do they match on (i.e email)?

The username mapping setting on the Jira SSO configuration page allows you to specify which IdP attribute maps to the account username. You should use the attribute that Okta links to your AD sAMAccountNames or UPN.

Please let me know if this answers your question!

Thanks,
Ben

[Kal]

Hello and thank you for your help. Very much appreciated. 

I have one follow up question/comment. Yes, its is true that our current directory flow is AD/Crowd/Jira DC. I just wanted to make sure that this configuration would be left in place after integrating with OKTA SSO...

Lastly, If we decided on OpenID rather than SAML would things change with how we setup OKTA SSO? 

Thank you again for your time,

Kal