SAML enables Single-Sign On (SSO), a term that means users can log in once, and those same credentials can be reused to log into other service providers.

SSO relies on an agreement between an Identity Provider (IdP) and a Service Provider (SP). Some examples of IdP’s are OneLogin, Okta, ADFS, Google, Azure, AWS, etc.. IdP’s can be thought of as a database of users that are maintained by some group or organisation. A Service Provider is any app that wishes to allow these users to be authenticated using their credentials stored in the database. Social Pinpoint is considered to be a Service Provider in this case.

IdP’s come in many different shapes and sizes - each with different terminology and slightly different configurations. You can see a list of how-to’s for some common Identity Providers.