What are identity providers and how to use them?

Identity providers allow you to set up a rule where everyone joining Whiteboards from, for example, your email domain or Atlassian instance has access to your organization. 

Setting up an identity provider makes it easy to share access with your team and have everyone collaborate without sending individual invitations.

It’s enough if your teammates create an account in Whiteboards and then open the link to your organization— they can start working right away!

You can set up an identity provider with one of the five methods: 

1. Application link to Jira or Confluence (Server/Data Center) — Atlassian OAuth 1.0a (Whiteboards for Jira or Whiteboards for Confluence is required),

2. Jira Cloud or Confluence Cloud — Atlassian OAuth 2.0 (Whiteboards for Jira or Whiteboards for Confluence is required),

3. Google Workspace,

4. GitHub (Whiteboards.io for GitHub app is required),

5. Email domain. 

Choose any of them and enjoy working together! 

TIP: You can also add people to your organization by their email addresses or by sending invite links. 

A person coming from an identity provider will have their role in the organization set to “User.” If you want, you can change their role to Owner in the Administration panel>>Users.

NOTE: Assigning user roles is a part of the Pro plan. 

Connecting Jira/Confluence Data Center/Server instances (OAuth1)

Whiteboards for Jira or Whiteboards for Confluence are required to connect.

NOTE: You need to have administrator permissions in Jira/Confluence to perform these actions. Also, the Whiteboards.io backend must be able to reach out to your Atlassian application in order to perform authentication of users and requests. Your firewall should allow this IP address to connect: 35.232.138.12.

1. Go to your Dashboard.

2. Click on the vertical ellipsis in the top right corner.
   

3. Select Administration.

4. Under User Management click on Identity providers.
   

5. Press Add identity provider.
   

6. Choose Atlassian OAuth 1.0a (Application link to Jira or Confluence) and click Next.
   

7. Add your Confluence or Jira base URL.
   NOTE: Your Jira or Confluence base URL needs to be on HTTPS. not HTTP.
    

8. Select the application type you’re using—Jira or Confluence.

9. Provide a name for that identity provider and click Next. 

10. Click the link under Applink configuration page to open the website where you’ll be able to set up an application link in Atlassian. 
    

11. On the administration page that opens, click Create link.
    

12. In the window that opens, select Atlassian product as the Application type.
    

13. Add https://app.whiteboards.io/ as the Application URL and click Continue.

14. Confirm the URL by adding https://app.whiteboards.io/ again in the New URL field and click Continue.
    

15. Add Whiteboards as the application name.
    
    

16. Choose Generic Application as the Application type. 

17. Make sure that you select to create an incoming link and click Continue.

18. Switch the browser tab to the whiteboards.io configuration page and click Next.
    

19. Make sure it says Whiteboards in the Consumer key and Consumer name fields. 
    

20. Copy the public key and switch the browser tab to the application link configuration page. 

21. Type Whiteboards in the Consumer Key and Consumer Name fields.
    

22. Paste the public key to the last field and click Continue. You will see a confirmation that the application link was created successfully. 
    

23. Switch the tab back to the whiteboards.io configuration page and click Test connection.
    

24. Next, click the Authentication test. 

25. On the window that opens, press Allow to connect the software.
    

26. Go back to whiteboards.io. Once you see the success message that both connection and authentication tests were successful, click Next.
    

27. Make sure that both Allow Incoming and Allow anonymous users are selected.
    

28. Open the Allowlist configuration page from the link at the top. 
    

29. On the Allowlist page, make sure the two checkboxes under Allow incoming and Allow anonymous users are selected and click Update.
    

30. Go back to whiteboards.io and click Test allowlist.
    

31. Once you see that the test was successful, click Finish to complete connecting.
    

32. Switch back to Jira/Confluence and go to Administration >> Applications >> Application Navigator.
    
33. Add Whiteboards in the Name field.
    
    

34. Copy the URL of your organization and add it to the URL field.
    NOTE: Your organization URL looks like this: https://app.whiteboards.io/your-organization-name/. In this example, the URL will be: https://app.whiteboards.io/whiteboards-edu/.
    
    

35. Press Add.
    
    

Connecting Jira/Confluence Cloud instances (OAuth2)

Whiteboards for Jira or Whiteboards for Confluence are required to connect.

1. Go to your Dashboard.

2. Click on the vertical ellipsis in the top right corner.
   

3. Select Administration.

4. Under User Management click on Identity providers.
   

5. Press Add identity provider.
   

6. Choose Atlassian OAuth 2.0 (Jira Cloud or Confluence Cloud) and click Next.
   

7. Paste or type just your Atlassian Cloud domain (it’s the word or phrase in your Atlassian URL right after https://).
   

8. Provide a name for that identity provider and click Next. 

9. Click Authorise to connect your Atlassian account with Whiteboards.
   

10. Click Accept to connect. 
    

11. Once you see the success screen, click Next.
    
    

12. The system will now check your license status for both Whiteboards for Confluence and Whiteboards for Jira. You need to have the Jira or Confluence Whiteboards app installed in your Atlassian instance to allow access for other users from the team. Click Finish to finalize setting up your identity provider.
    NOTE: In case you have a license for one of the Whiteboards apps (Whiteboards for Jira or Whiteboards for Confluence), only users coming from the licensed software will be able to join. For example, if you only have Whiteboards for Jira licensed, users who are added to Confluence, but not to Jira, won’t be able to join.
    
     

Connecting Google Workspace

1. Go to your Dashboard.
   

2. Click on the vertical ellipsis in the top right corner.

3. Select Administration.

4. Under User Management click on Identity providers.
   

5. Press Add identity provider.
   

6. Choose Google Workspace and click Next.
   

7. Type in the Google Workspace domain (for example whiteboards.io) and press Enter or Tab on your keyboard. Every person setting up an account with Whiteboards from that domain based on a Google Workspace will gain access to this organization. You can add as many Google Workspace domains as you want. 
   

8. Click Next.

9. The page will show you a list of domains that are authorized to get access to this organization. Click Finish to complete the process. 
   

Connecting GitHub

NOTE: You need to add the Whiteboards.io app to the GitHub organization to complete the setup. 

1. Go to your Dashboard.

2. Click on the vertical ellipsis in the top right corner.
   

3. Select Administration.

4. Under User Management click on Identity providers.
   

5. Press Add identity provider.
   

6. Choose GitHub and click Next.
   

7. Type in the organization name from GitHub (for example whiteboards) and press Enter or Tab on your keyboard. Every person setting up an account with Whiteboards from a GitHub account connected to this GitHub organization will gain access to this organization in Whiteboards. You can add as many GitHub organizations as you want. 
   

8. Click Next.

9. To continue, you need to authorize access to GitHub. Click Authorise.
   

10. A new page will be opened to allow the connection. Click Authorize Whiteboards.io.
    

11. Once authorized, you will see the status of the whiteboards.io app in the provided GitHub organizations. Click Finish to complete the process.
    

Connecting an email domain

1. Go to your Dashboard.

2. Click on the vertical ellipsis in the top right corner.
   

3. Select Administration.

4. Under User Management click on Identity providers.
   

5. Press Add identity provider.
   

6. Choose Email domain and click Next.
   

7. Type in the email domain (for example whiteboards.io) and press Enter or Tab on your keyboard. Every person setting up an account with Whiteboards from that email domain will gain access to this organization. You can add as many email domains as you want. 
   

8. Click Next.

9. The page will show you a list of email domains that are authorized to get access to this organization. Click Finish to complete the process. 
   

Identity provider added

You will be able to see your identity provider on the list as well as its status. From this view, you can manage your Whiteboards license in Atlassian (for Atlassian OAuth 1 and OAuth 2 identity providers), change the configuration of the identity provider, or remove it.