What is SSO? What is Loginhub?

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Is Maintenance Connection LoginHub an SSO solution?

Created: prior to 2018 | Last updated: 2020.02.09

No! But of course SSO is included as one of the features

While obviously LoginHub works very well with SSO providers as an SSO solution, it is possible to use the majority of features of LoginHub without ever using the SSO features. However, almost all our users do use the SSO portion of LoginHub. This is why it is called ‘LoginHub’ and not ‘MC SSO’.

Preamble

If you already know what you want, jump to page 3 to see the comparison of your options. If you want to understand the options … read the first few pages first. SSO, Single sign on is a feature that the Maintenance Connection LoginHub has been providing Maintenance Connection users since around 2005. Initially we only supported at an advanced level 3 of the major providers, and of those three, almost everyone used Microsoft’s Active Directory. In the second half of 2018 we started a major project to drastically increase the number of providers and in the process created a premium set of options. The first shipped to beta customer in Nov 2018. More providers followed throughout 2019 and more providers are scheduled in 2020 and beyond as appropriate. SSO at it’s very simplest means that, once you have logged into your provider (such as Active Directory or Facebook or Azure AD[1]) you don’t have to login again on that device for some period of time (or until some event such as the user logging out of the operating system,) if everything is set up for the easiest use. This means you may be able to work all day on a wide range of software just logging in at the beginning of the day. Hence the ‘Single’ part of the sign on name. There are other levels, see below. That’s the basic feature and it is a necessary part of SSOs and it is the reason that it is called SSO, but there is so much more a well designed SSO can provide you, both you the user and you the administrator. The Maintenance Connection LoginHub has been bringing advanced features since 2005. This document tries to help you understand the differences between different products that you may think are the same because they all say ‘SSO’. In the same way that you would never think that ‘all cars are the same’, not all SSO’s are the same. Some are bare bones ‘Lada’ basics, others have major advantages that save you time and money and avoid errors.

[1] Active Directory and Azure AD/Active Directory are very different products despite the similar naming and despite both being Microsoft products)

There are at least 5 parties associated with SSO:

  1. Your SSO provider: One (occasionally more) services like the Sign On services provided by Facebook, Azure Active Directory, Active Directory, Ping, Auth0 and so on.

  2. The software the users want to access. So in our case, Maintenance Connection MRO, Maintenance Connection Everywhere (MCe/MCxLE – the so called ‘offline’ mobile) and others.

  3. Maintenance Connection LoginHub or Accruent’s SSO software.

    1. With LoginHub, this consists of the setup software UI and the actual login code.

    2. With Accruent’s SSO this consists of the setup software UI, the login code and the management of rights for individual and groups of users.

  4. The end user that wants to use the MRO/MCe/MCxLE or other software

  5. The administrators that administrate rights.

    1. With LoginHub these people typically do an initial setup with LoginHub then do everything all their routine daily management with their SSO provider

    2. With Accruent SSO, these people typically do an initial setup with Accruent, do creation and global access rights using their SSO provider, do all the other daily management using Accruent’s MRO product.

    3. And for comparison: With no SSO, everything is done using Accruent’s MRO product.