Seamless Single Sign-On

Owned by Meera S Nair, created
Last updated: Sept 22, 2023 by A.J. Newman
3 min read

In April 2022, ITS enabled an authentication feature called Seamless Single Sign-on (SSO). Once users sign into their workstations with their NetID credentials, Seamless SSO automatically signs in them into their Microsoft 365 applications, including Teams, Edge, and OneDrive.

Existing profiles will not notice this change since these clients have already been configured with a username and password during the initial configuration. If you are signing into a new workstation, including a classroom computer, you will set up a new profile. With Seamless SSO, your new profile will automatically sign into Teams and OneDrive. You will still need to open Outlook, but the email address and password will auto-populate.

When you are setting up a new profile, it may take a few minutes for Seamless SSO to sign you into Office 365 applications. You can use the workstation during this setup.

Logging In With and Without Seamless SSO

During a first-time profile login, below are some of the service experiences.

OneDrive

Without SSO, the OneDrive client currently opens in the background, prompting for an initial sign-in. The user can input their email address and password after which syncing files will begin.

sign in to onedrive screen

With Seamless SSO, the Onedrive client opens in the background and begins syncing files in the following order:

  1. The update begins.

    updating onedrive screen

     

  2. The sign-in screen briefly appears.

  3. OneDrive begins to automatically update files.

 

Outlook

Without SSO, Outlook profile configuration prompts for an email address and then continues to populate the Modern authentication page prompting for the password after which the profile will be configured. However, with SSO, Outlook auto-populates the email address.

Once you click Connect, Seamless SSO is detected on the account and configures Outlook without prompting for the password.

Edge

Without SSO, if you navigate to http://myapps.microsoft.com from an Edge browser, the page will take you to the login screen for Office 365. With Seamless SSO, this page will immediately take you to the available applications on your Office 365 account without prompting for an email address or password.

Please note that you can always sign out and sign in as another account if you are not looking to use the Seamless SSO feature.

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