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Tutorial: Microsoft Entra single sign-on (SSO) integration with Contentful

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In this tutorial, you'll learn how to integrate Contentful with Microsoft Entra ID. When you integrate Contentful with Microsoft Entra ID, you can:

  • Control in Microsoft Entra ID who has access to Contentful.
  • Enable your users to be automatically signed-in to Contentful with their Microsoft Entra accounts.
  • Manage your accounts in one central location.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need the following items:

  • A Microsoft Entra subscription. If you don't have a subscription, you can get a free account.
  • Contentful single sign-on (SSO) enabled subscription.

Scenario description

In this tutorial, you configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO in a test environment.

  • Contentful supports SP and IDP initiated SSO.
  • Contentful supports Just In Time user provisioning.
  • Contentful supports Automated user provisioning.

Note

The identifier of this application is a fixed string value so only one instance can be configured in one tenant.

To configure the integration of Contentful into Microsoft Entra ID, you need to add Contentful from the gallery to your list of managed SaaS apps.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > New application.
  3. In the Add from the gallery section, type Contentful in the search box.
  4. Select Contentful in the results, and then add the app. Wait a few seconds while the app is added to your tenant.

Alternatively, you can also use the Enterprise App Configuration Wizard. In this wizard, you can add an application to your tenant, add users/groups to the app, assign roles, as well as walk through the SSO configuration as well. Learn more about Microsoft 365 wizards.

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO for Contentful

Configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with Contentful using a test user called B.Simon. For SSO to work, you need to establish a link relationship between a Microsoft Entra user and the related user in Contentful.

To configure and test Microsoft Entra SSO with Contentful, perform the following steps:

  1. Configure Microsoft Entra SSO - to enable your users to use this feature.
    1. Create a Microsoft Entra test user - to test Microsoft Entra single sign-on with B.Simon.
    2. Assign the Microsoft Entra test user - to enable B.Simon to use Microsoft Entra single sign-on.
  2. Configure Contentful SSO - to configure the single sign-on settings on application side.
    1. Create Contentful test user - to have a counterpart of B.Simon in Contentful that is linked to the Microsoft Entra representation of user.
  3. Test SSO - to verify whether the configuration works.

Configure Microsoft Entra SSO

Follow these steps to enable Microsoft Entra SSO.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.

  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Contentful > Single sign-on.

  3. On the Select a single sign-on method page, select SAML.

  4. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, click the pencil icon for Basic SAML Configuration to edit the settings.

    Edit Basic SAML Configuration

  5. In the Basic SAML Configuration section, if you want to configure the application in IDP initiated mode, perform the following step:

    a. In the Reply URL text box, copy the ACS (Assertion Consumer Service) URL from the SSO setup page in Contentful. It will look like this: https://be.contentful.com/sso/<organization_id>/consume.

  6. Click Set additional URLs and perform the following step if you want to configure the application in SP initiated mode:

    a. In the Sign-on URL text box, copy the same ACS (Assertion Consumer Service) URL. It will look like this: https://be.contentful.com/sso/<organization_id>/login.

    Note

    These values are not real. Update these values with the actual Reply URL and Sign-On URL by copying the ACS (Assertion Consumer Service) URL from the SSO setup page in Contentful.

  7. Contentful application expects the SAML assertions in a specific format, which requires you to add custom attribute mappings to your SAML token attributes configuration. The following screenshot shows the list of default attributes.

    image

  8. In addition to above, Contentful application expects few more attributes to be passed back in SAML response which are shown below. These attributes are also pre populated but you can review them as per your requirements.

    Name Source Attribute
    email user.userprincipalname

  9. On the Set up single sign-on with SAML page, in the SAML Signing Certificate section, find Certificate (Base64) and select Download to download the certificate and save it on your computer.

    The Certificate download link

  10. In the Set up Contentful section, copy the login URL to configure Contentful SSO.

Create a Microsoft Entra test user

In this section, you'll create a test user called B.Simon.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a User Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Users > All users.
  3. Select New user > Create new user, at the top of the screen.
  4. In the User properties, follow these steps:
    1. In the Display name field, enter B.Simon.
    2. In the User principal name field, enter the [email protected]. For example, [email protected].
    3. Select the Show password check box, and then write down the value that's displayed in the Password box.
    4. Select Review + create.
  5. Select Create.

Assign the Microsoft Entra test user

In this section, you'll enable B.Simon to use single sign-on by granting access to Contentful.

  1. Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center as at least a Cloud Application Administrator.
  2. Browse to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Contentful.
  3. In the app's overview page, select Users and groups.
  4. Select Add user/group, then select Users and groups in the Add Assignment dialog.
    1. In the Users and groups dialog, select B.Simon from the Users list, then click the Select button at the bottom of the screen.
    2. If you are expecting a role to be assigned to the users, you can select it from the Select a role dropdown. If no role has been set up for this app, you see "Default Access" role selected.
    3. In the Add Assignment dialog, click the Assign button.

Configure Contentful SSO

Follow these steps to configure single sign-on on the Contentful side.

  1. In Contentful, navigate to the SSO setup page in Organization Settings.
  2. Click on Set up SSO.
  3. Copy and paste the login URL from the Set up Contentful section in Microsoft Entra ID.
  4. Copy and paste the certificate from the Base64 certificate file you downloaded from Microsoft Entra ID.
  5. Set up an SSO name for SP-initiated login.
  6. Click on Enable SSO.

If that doesn't work, reach out to the Contentful support team.

Create Contentful test user

In this section, a user called B.Simon is created in Contentful. Contentful supports just-in-time user provisioning, which is enabled by default. There is no action item for you in this section. If a user doesn't already exist in Contentful, a new one is created after authentication.

Contentful also supports automatic user provisioning, you can find more details here on how to configure automatic user provisioning.

Test SSO

In this section, you test your Microsoft Entra single sign-on configuration with following options.

SP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application, this will redirect to Contentful Sign on URL where you can initiate the login flow.

  • Go to Contentful Sign-on URL directly and initiate the login flow from there.

IDP initiated:

  • Click on Test this application, and you should be automatically signed in to the Contentful for which you set up the SSO.

You can also use Microsoft My Apps to test the application in any mode. When you click the Contentful tile in the My Apps, if configured in SP mode you would be redirected to the application sign on page for initiating the login flow and if configured in IDP mode, you should be automatically signed in to the Contentful for which you set up the SSO. For more information about the My Apps, see Introduction to the My Apps.

Next steps

Once you configure Contentful you can enforce session control, which protects exfiltration and infiltration of your organization’s sensitive data in real time. Session control extends from Conditional Access. Learn how to enforce session control with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps.