One of the key factors of efficient organization is ensuring the right people can access the resources they need. This is as true today as it has been for hundreds of years. However, adding, updating, and removing accounts can become tedious on an enterprise-level platform like Salesforce. This article will explore how to configure Salesforce for automatic user provisioning.
Manual provisioning is a simple approach to account creation and management. It involves creating, updating, and deleting accounts entirely by hand. Manual provisioning works well for small organizations but becomes cumbersome when dealing with a large and complex organizational structure – which is why you need automated provisioning.
Automated user provisioning solutions are far more efficient and scalable. In addition to saving you time – and money – these approaches offer you better data security and integrity. Once an employee leaves your organization, the program will rescind permissions. In addition, these approaches ensure that no essential information is left out.
The first approach is an inbuilt Salesforce feature – User Access Policies. This feature follows a strict set of rules that you can configure all at once based on the role of individuals in your organization. For example, you can ensure that sales reports are accessible to sales reps but not to IT staff.
This feature will help you save time, but there are some things you need to look out for. You have to be careful when you plan your set of rules. None of them should contradict each other. Also, keep in mind that your rules should be flexible. Adaptable rules will help when you have to make changes in your organization.
Another option is to use the SCIM (System for Cross-domain Identity Management) API. This allows you to connect your Salesforce system with any other enterprise software you may use and enables you to exchange user identity information. It authorizes you to update user attributes in real-time and automatically provisions users based on this data.
By integrating SCIM API with your Salesforce system, you can ensure the consistency and integrity of your data throughout your organization. It also gives you the ability to provision users across multiple apps automatically. This means changing an employee’s access privileges in one area will reflect throughout the enterprise.
This approach is practical if several of your Salesforce users are not part of your organization. These could be, for example, customers or companies that you are partnering with. Just-in-Time (JIT) provisioning is a feature of Salesforce that automatically creates an account when a user logs in for the first time using Single Sign On (SSO).
This will save your IT team a lot of trouble since they do not have to manually create accounts for each customer or outside stakeholder who needs access to your platform. While this approach is excellent for immediately granting users access to the data they need, there is no functionality to automatically de-provision users.
Yet another way to configure Salesforce for automatic user provisioning is to integrate your platform with various third-party tools. One excellent option for this is Microsoft Entra (which was previously Azure AD). To make the automatic provisioning process smoother, you can first set up Microsoft Entra for SSOs. This is not mandatory, but will make your job easier.
Choose the directory that lists your organization. Then, when you click on “enterprise applications,” you should see a list of applications that you have already integrated. If Salesforce is not on this list, click the “New Application” button and add it. You can contact your Salesforce customization partner if you have trouble with this.
Now click on Salesforce and navigate to “Users and groups” to add new users. You need to select a role for every new user you add. This feature imports profiles from Salesforce that appear as roles in Microsoft Entra. Once you have done this for all your new users, you can move on to provisioning them.
After you click “Provisioning,” go to start provisioning or editing.Select “Automatic” as the provisioning mode. Then, within “Admin Credentials”, type out a Salesforce account name with the role you want to assign to your new users. You will also have to enter the admin password and secret token of this user.
Now click “Test Connection” to ensure you have successfully connected to Salesforce. Once you do this, navigate to “Mappings”. There, you will have the option to synchronize your directory to Salesforce. Choose the attributes that you want to reflect across both applications. Save your changes, make sure the provisioning status is “on” and you’re good to go!
When choosing which user provisioning strategy to use, there are several factors to consider. For example, if your organization is small, you may not require automatic provisioning. The next thing you need to consider is the characteristics of your user base. How many Salesforce users do you have, and how often do they change?
If your organization has strict compliance requirements, User Access Policies are best. However, tech companies using diverse cloud-based applications would fare better with SCIM API. JIT provisioning works best if you have a large number of external users. Finally, a multinational corporation with a complex ecosystem would benefit most from provisioning with third-party tools.
Minuscule Technologies is the only Salesforce partner you need. Automatic user provisioning can be demanding, but we can help you through this maze. Our experts will work with you to choose the optimal approach for your business and implement it to your satisfaction. Please write to us today to start with automatic provisioning!
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