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SCIM provisioning

SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) is an standard protocol used by Single Sign-On (SSO) services and identity providers to provision/deprovision user accounts and groups. Zulip's SCIM integration is currently beta and has a few limitations:

  • Provisioning Groups is not yet implemented.
  • It has only been fully tested and documented with Okta.

The instructions below explain how to configure SCIM in Okta for Zulip Cloud customers. Like SAML, feature is currently only available in Zulip Cloud with the Zulip Cloud Plus plan.

These instructions can also be used by self-hosters to set up the Okta side of SCIM for their deployment.

Configure SCIM with Okta

  1. Before you begin, contact email support to receive the bearer token that Okta will use to authenticate to make its SCIM requests.

  2. In your Okta Dashboard, go to Applications and choose Browse App Catalog.

  3. Search for SCIM and select SCIM 2.0 Test App (Header Auth).

  4. Click Add and choose your Application label. For example, you can name it Zulip SCIM.

  5. Continue to Sign-On Options. Leave the SAML options, as this type of Okta application doesn't actually support SAML authentication, and you'll need to set up a separate Okta app to activate SAML for your Zulip organization.

  6. In Credentials Details, set Application username format to Email and Update application username on to Create and update.

  7. The Okta app has been added. Navigate to the Provisioning tab.

  8. Click Configure API Integration and check the Enable API integration box. Okta will ask you for the Base URL and API token. The Base URL should be yourorganization.zulipchat.com/scim/v2 and for API token you'll set the value given to you by support. When you proceed to the next step, Okta will verify that these details are correct by making a SCIM request to the Zulip server.

  9. In the To App section of the Provisioning tab (which should be opened by default when you continue from the previous step), edit the Provisioning to App settings to enable Create Users, Update User Attributes and Deactivate Users.

  10. In Attribute Mappings, remove all attributes except userName, givenName and familyName.

  11. Now the integration should be ready and you can Assign users to the app to configure their Zulip accounts to be managed by SCIM. When you assign a user, Okta will check if the account exists in your Zulip organization and if it doesn't, the account will be created. Changes to the user's email or name in Okta will automatically cause the Zulip account to be updated accordingly. Unassigning a user from the app will deactivate their Zulip account.

If you want to also set up SAML authentication, head to our SAML configuration instructions. It will require adding a separate Okta application.