
## Crowd User Management at your fingertips 🙌

Hello Crowd Admins!

An acronym for System for Cross-domain Identity Management, SCIM is an open standard that helps in automating the user identity lifecycle management process.

That’s the industry definition, sounds complicated! Let’s see if we can simplify it a bit with the help of this article. It’s all about ‘identity and access management (IAM),’ the concept has been around for quite some time. Think about if you are able to create a user account in one system and matching accounts automatically get created in other systems the user needs access to.

Sounds amazing but it’s not so simple as each system may have its own unique connection methods such as LDAP, SQL, ADSI, custom APIs, etc. That’s where SCIM comes into the picture, it is designed to make managing user identities in cloud-based services and applications easier, but before we go further let’s dive into…

### Why SCIM? {#why-scim}

Instead of the ‘what’ let’s begin with the ‘why.’ We use different cloud-based SaaS applications such as Salesforce, Zendesk, GitHub, Trello, etc. in our daily work routine depending on our role. These applications were assigned to us when we initially joined. This is done by the IT Admin of the company, now think for a minute if a company has less than 10 employees, manually adding them to the application might work but what if the size of the company runs into hundreds or thousands, the task becomes challenging. And, what about when an employee leaves or is terminated from the company they are removed from the company’s employee directory and all access revoked?

The crowd is the tool given by Atlassian which manages users and groups for all Atlassian apps. Crowd is a centralized directory and the access and authorization to Jira, confluence applications are very much dependent on Crowd.

We are pleased to present to you the app that aims to solve your most complex problem. Syncing & Managing users in a crowd is now a problem of the past! Introducing the miniOrange [Crowd SCIM Plugin](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1229918/mo-scim-provisioning-user-group-sync-for-crowd?hosting=datacenter&tab=overview) 🎉

The Crowd SCIM plugin connects Crowd with your Identity Provider. You can connect different Identity Providers such as Okta, Azure AD, Onelogin, Keycloak, G Suite and any SCIM Supported IDPs for provisioning. Unleash the true potential of Crowd giving you access to features like:-

**Provision & De-Provision users 🔁**

Easily provision and de-provision users in Crowd in sync with your Identity Provider.

**Update/Activate/Deactivate users ✅**

Automatically update the details of users, and activate and deactivate user accounts (If deleted or deactivated in IDP) to save extra license costs and improve the security of your organization.

**Real-Time Provision Users 🚀**

As soon as a user is created on your Identity Provider, it will automatically be created in Crowd, in REAL TIME!!!!

**IDP App-specific provisioning 🖥️**

You can choose provisioning features based on your configured IDPs. Isn’t that great?

**Transform username based on regex for matching user 🧑‍**

Do your users have different usernames in your IDP and different usernames in Crowd? We’ve got you covered. This feature will allow you to transform the username received from the IDP and create or update the desired username in Crowd.

![Crowd User Management Sync](https://miniorange.com/atlassian/wp-content/uploads/sites/14/2023/01/Crowd-SCIM.webp)

I hope you enjoy this plugin as much as we did while creating it. While this is what we’re offering now, here’s our roadmap for the next release:

-   Upcoming Features 🛣️

-   Scheduled Provisioning

-   Filter users by groups for assigning

-   Manual user sync button

-   Sync/update users upon successful authentication

Feel free to reach out to us at [atlassiansupport@xecurify.com](mailto:atlassiansupport@xecurify.com) for a free demo, setup, or any custom use case. We’re happy to help 😄

Try the miniOrange Crowd SCIM plugin today!


Use Crowd SCIM to sync your users, groups and directories with SCIM for Server/DC. Support for Azure AD, Okta, Onelogin, Oracle IDCS, ... IDPs

Crowd User Management at your fingertips


## How miniOrange SCIM Simplifies Centralized IDP User Management in Atlassian Apps

If your business relies on various Atlassian applications and services to conduct your day-to-day operations, you would certainly relate that managing user accounts and their access could be challenging and often time consuming. This is where **miniOrange’s User Sync/SCIM** App comes into play.

SCIM an acronym for ‘System for Cross-domain Identity Management’ is a protocol that allows for automated provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts between different systems. Our app allows seamless login into the **Jira, Confluence. Bitbucket, Crowd** and other Atlassian applications with Identity Provider (IdPs) like [Azure Active Directory, Keycloak, Okta, OneLogin, Oracle and more.](https://developers.miniorange.com/docs/atlassian/scim/overview)

To get a better understanding of its use cases, let’s take Okta as the identity provider and an application, say Jira:

### New Employee Onboarding (User Creation) {#user-creation}

When we talk about user creation, we refer to the process of adding a new user account to various systems that they may require. This usually happens when a new employee joins an organization and would need access to, say for instance, a team collaboration tool (Confluence) or a project management tool (Jira), if a developer then probably a tool to effectively store, manage and monitor codes (Bitbucket).

Let’s say when a new employee joins your company, the IT administrator with user information like username, email, and other relevant details would create a new user account in Okta (IDP), and then miniOrange User Sync/ SCIM ensures that accounts created in Okta is automatically replicated in Jira, profiles and attributes are in sync between both the systems.

### Change in User Information (User Updation) {#user-updation}

User information like email address, phone number, or role may change over time, and it’s essential to keep this information updated and ensure that it is consistent in all applications. Any such changes can also be automatically updated using miniOrange User Sync/ SCIM. Admins can easily update user information in Okta and those changes would reflect in Jira.

For example, if a user changes their phone number, you can update that information in Okta and the changes would be synced in Jira so that it’s consistent with both systems.

### Revoking User Access (Deactivation) {#user-deactivation}

When an employee leaves the company their access to company resources should be removed to maintain security and compliance. It also could be the case that a user’s access to certain systems needs to be revoked based on role change. This process of deactivation is automated just like the above with the app and once a user is deactivated in Okta, SCIM App will automatically deactivate the corresponding user in Jira.

For example: if an employee leaves the company, the HR department would disable their account in Okta and the miniOrange User Sync/SCIM would then automatically disable or remove the user’s account in Jira so that their access to the application is revoked.

### Assigning Groups to Users (Group Mapping) {#assigning-groups-to-users}

![SCIM flow diagram](/blog/assets/2023/miniorange-scim-for-atlassian-apps.webp)

Another essential use case is that it enables admins to manage user access to different resources and applications based on their group, in other words, it refers to the process of associating users with specific groups. With miniOrange User Sync/SCIM, you can map users to groups in Okta and Jira. This ensures that users have the necessary access to resources based on their roles and responsibilities. Group mapping can be done manually or [on the fly](https://developers.miniorange.com/docs/atlassian/scim/user-groups).

**Manual Group Mapping** involves manually assigning users to groups in Okta and Jira. It is useful when your IdP group names and local application group names are different here you would have to map each IdP group to the application group manually.

It allows you to manually map Jira groups with the groups from Okta or filter groups, and make changes to existing users. Manual Group Mapping is useful when you want to manage groups from Okta but the group name differs in Okta and Jira.

For example, if the name of the group in Okta is Dev users but the name of a similar group in Jira is Software_dev. In such scenarios, you would have to manually map each Okta group to the Jira group.

**On-the-fly** group mapping refers to the process of dynamically mapping users to groups. For instance, when group names in Okta and Jira are an exact match, the app would detect the groups and add users to those groups automatically and if a group doesn’t exist in Jira then it would be created.

Let’s say for better clarity, you use Okta for identity and access management and Jira for project management. There are several teams working on different projects, each team has its own group with a unique name, here let us consider “Marketing” group in Okta and a “Marketing” group in Jira. When a new user joins the company, they are added to Okta, and their profile contains information about which team they belong to.

As there is an integration between Okta and Jira using the miniOrange app that supports on-the-fly group mapping. The app detects the team information from Okta and checks if a group with the same name exists in Jira. If a group with the same name exists, the user is automatically added to that group, in this case, “marketing” if not, then a new group ‘marketing’ is created in Jira and the users are added.

The above are just a few of the most common use cases but it’s not just limited to that. **Identity Migration**-moving from one IdP to another, **SSO (Single Sign-On)** can be integrated with our SCIM app, **attribute transfer** to a relying party’s website and more. That brings us to…

### How Do IT Administrators Working with Atlassian Applications Benefit? {#benefits-for-it-admins}

Our SCIM integration offers various benefits to Atlassian application users, be it **Confluence, Jira, Bitbucket, or Crowd.** It is a popular solution among IT admins for user provisioning and de-provisioning. One of the main advantages of SCIM is that it **saves licensing costs** as it automates the user provisioning and de-provisioning process. Organizations with a large number of users can reduce the number of licenses needed for applications thus saving a significant amount of money.

The addon ensures that resources are allocated more efficiently as new users are automatically provisioned with the appropriate access rights. miniOrange User Sync/SCIM allows for **granular control** so that users only have access to the resources they need thus **mitigating the risk of unauthorized access.** All leads to **enhanced security** by ensuring that user access is granted or revoked in a timely manner.

Companies can expect an **increase in productivity** as our app eliminates the need for manual user provisioning and de-provisioning so that your IT staff can focus on more critical tasks. The automated process **reduces the risk of manual errors** as well. With these benefits, your business can look to **improve the overall user experience** eventually leading to higher user satisfaction.

### Summary {#summary}

If you are here, that means you took the time to go through the use cases and the overview of our app. No more time-consuming manual onboarding and offboarding users, employees get easy and quick access to the apps they need to work. You get automated access management that not just saves you time but also money.

You could also go through our other apps that compliment ‘lifecycle management’ such as SSO that would work in tandem to keep you secure. So, set up your employees fast with what they need, and unburden your IT team to focus on the bigger picture. Looking for something specific? Please contact us at **support-atlassian@miniorange.atlassian.net** or raise a support ticket [here](https://miniorange.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/2), and keep watching this space for more new and innovative solutions.


SCIM an acronym for ‘System for Cross-domain Identity Management’ is a protocol that allows for automated provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts between different systems. Our app allows seamless login into the Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket, Crowd and other Atlassian.