Tutorial: Configure AWS Single Sign-On for automatic user provisioning
This tutorial describes the steps you need to perform in both AWS Single Sign-On and Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) to configure automatic user provisioning. When configured, Azure AD automatically provisions and de-provisions users and groups to AWS Single Sign-On using the Azure AD Provisioning service. For important details on what this service does, how it works, and frequently asked questions, see Automate user provisioning and deprovisioning to SaaS applications with Azure Active Directory.
Capabilities Supported
- Create users in AWS Single Sign-On
- Remove users in AWS Single Sign-On when they no longer require access
- Keep user attributes synchronized between Azure AD and AWS Single Sign-On
- Provision groups and group memberships in AWS Single Sign-On
- Single Sign-On to AWS Single Sign-On
Prerequisites
The scenario outlined in this tutorial assumes that you already have the following prerequisites:
- An Azure AD tenant
- A user account in Azure AD with permission to configure provisioning (for example, Application Administrator, Cloud Application administrator, Application Owner, or Global Administrator).
- A SAML connection from your Azure AD account to AWS SSO, as described in Tutorial
Step 1. Plan your provisioning deployment
- Learn about how the provisioning service works.
- Determine who will be in scope for provisioning.
- Determine what data to map between Azure AD and AWS Single Sign-On.
Step 2. Configure AWS Single Sign-On to support provisioning with Azure AD
Open the AWS SSO Console.
Choose Settings in the left navigation pane
Navigate to Settings -> Identity source -> Provisioning -> choose Enable automatic provisioning.
In the Inbound automatic provisioning dialog box, copy and save the SCIM endpoint and Access Token. These values will be entered in the Tenant URL and Secret Token field in the Provisioning tab of your AWS Single Sign-On application in the Azure portal.
Step 3. Add AWS Single Sign-On from the Azure AD application gallery
Add AWS Single Sign-On from the Azure AD application gallery to start managing provisioning to AWS Single Sign-On. If you have previously setup AWS Single Sign-On for SSO, you can use the same application. Learn more about adding an application from the gallery here.
Step 4. Define who will be in scope for provisioning
The Azure AD provisioning service allows you to scope who will be provisioned based on assignment to the application and or based on attributes of the user / group. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned to your app based on assignment, you can use the following steps to assign users and groups to the application. If you choose to scope who will be provisioned based solely on attributes of the user or group, you can use a scoping filter as described here.
When assigning users and groups to AWS Single Sign-On, you must select a role other than Default Access. Users with the Default Access role are excluded from provisioning and will be marked as not effectively entitled in the provisioning logs. If the only role available on the application is the default access role, you can update the application manifest to add additional roles.
Start small. Test with a small set of users and groups before rolling out to everyone. When scope for provisioning is set to assigned users and groups, you can control this by assigning one or two users or groups to the app. When scope is set to all users and groups, you can specify an attribute based scoping filter.
Step 5. Configure automatic user provisioning to AWS Single Sign-On
This section guides you through the steps to configure the Azure AD provisioning service to create, update, and disable users and/or groups in TestApp based on user and/or group assignments in Azure AD.
To configure automatic user provisioning for AWS Single Sign-On in Azure AD:
Sign in to the Azure portal. Select Enterprise Applications, then select All applications.

In the applications list, select AWS Single Sign-On.

Select the Provisioning tab.

Set the Provisioning Mode to Automatic.

Under the Admin Credentials section, input your AWS Single Sign-On Tenant URL and Secret Token retrieved earlier in Step 2. Click Test Connection to ensure Azure AD can connect to AWS Single Sign-On.

In the Notification Email field, enter the email address of a person or group who should receive the provisioning error notifications and select the Send an email notification when a failure occurs check box.

Select Save.
Under the Mappings section, select Synchronize Azure Active Directory Users to AWS Single Sign-On.
Review the user attributes that are synchronized from Azure AD to AWS Single Sign-On in the Attribute-Mapping section. The attributes selected as Matching properties are used to match the user accounts in AWS Single Sign-On for update operations. If you choose to change the matching target attribute, you will need to ensure that the AWS Single Sign-On API supports filtering users based on that attribute. Select the Save button to commit any changes.
Attribute Type Supported for Filtering userName String ✓ active Boolean displayName String title String emails[type eq "work"].value String preferredLanguage String name.givenName String name.familyName String name.formatted String addresses[type eq "work"].formatted String addresses[type eq "work"].streetAddress String addresses[type eq "work"].locality String addresses[type eq "work"].region String addresses[type eq "work"].postalCode String addresses[type eq "work"].country String phoneNumbers[type eq "work"].value String externalId String locale String timezone String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:employeeNumber String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:department String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:division String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:costCenter String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:organization String urn:ietf:params:scim:schemas:extension:enterprise:2.0:User:manager Reference Under the Mappings section, select Synchronize Azure Active Directory Groups to AWS Single Sign-On.
Review the group attributes that are synchronized from Azure AD to AWS Single Sign-On in the Attribute-Mapping section. The attributes selected as Matching properties are used to match the groups in AWS Single Sign-On for update operations. Select the Save button to commit any changes.
Attribute Type Supported for Filtering displayName String ✓ externalId String members Reference To configure scoping filters, refer to the following instructions provided in the Scoping filter tutorial.
To enable the Azure AD provisioning service for AWS Single Sign-On, change the Provisioning Status to On in the Settings section.

Define the users and/or groups that you would like to provision to AWS Single Sign-On by choosing the desired values in Scope in the Settings section.

When you are ready to provision, click Save.

This operation starts the initial synchronization cycle of all users and groups defined in Scope in the Settings section. The initial cycle takes longer to perform than subsequent cycles, which occur approximately every 40 minutes as long as the Azure AD provisioning service is running.
Step 6. Monitor your deployment
Once you've configured provisioning, use the following resources to monitor your deployment:
- Use the provisioning logs to determine which users have been provisioned successfully or unsuccessfully
- Check the progress bar to see the status of the provisioning cycle and how close it is to completion
- If the provisioning configuration seems to be in an unhealthy state, the application will go into quarantine. Learn more about quarantine states here.
Troubleshooting Tips
Missing attributes
When exporting a user to AWS, they are required to have the following attributes
- firstName
- lastName
- displayName
- userName
Users who don't have these attributes will fail with the following error

Multi-valued attributes
AWS does not support the following multi-valued attributes:
- phone numbers
Trying to flow the above as multi-valued attributes will result in the following error message

There are two ways to resolve this
- Ensure the user only has one value for phoneNumber/email
- Remove the duplicate attributes. For example, having two different attributes being mapped from Azure AD both mapped to "phoneNumber___" on the AWS side would result in the error if both attributes have values in Azure AD. Only having one attribute mapped to a "phoneNumber____ " attribute would resolve the error.
Invalid characters
Currently AWS SSO is not allowing some other characters that Azure AD supports like tab (\t), new line (\n), return carriage (\r), and characters such as " <|>|;|:% ".
You can also check the AWS SSO troubleshooting tips here for more troubleshooting tips
Additional resources
- Managing user account provisioning for Enterprise Apps
- What is application access and Single Sign-On with Azure Active Directory?