4.23.1. Supported Identity Providers#

In an exchange of authentication and authorization data, an identity provider securely asserts the identity and access rights of a set of users. Your Open edX site is the service provider that allows the users access on the basis of credentials sent by an identity provider.

For example, your Open edX site hosts the courses of three different organizations. When you configure the Open edX site to be a service provider, and configure each of the three organizations to be identity providers, you permit learners who have valid user credentials at any of those organizations to access the Open edX site.

You can enable third party authentication between your Open edX site and many types of identity providers. The Open edX platform provides support for three types of identity providers.

4.23.1.1. Supported Identity Providers#

The Open edX platform has integrated support for the following providers.

  • OAuth based providers (OAuth2 and the older OAuth v1). Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Azure Active Directory are available by default. Any other OAuth backends supported by python-social-auth v0.2.12 can be enabled by changing a configuration setting. People in the Open edX community sometimes use “third party auth” to refer to Google or Facebook integration. Single sign on, or “SSO”, and “third party auth” are largely interchangeable terms for the purposes of this document.

  • Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) version 2.0, or Shibboleth. SAML is an SSO standard mostly used by universities and corporations. Shibboleth is the name of a particular implementation of SAML, commonly used by higher education institutions. People in the Open edX community sometimes use “SSO” to refer to SAML or Shibboleth. “SSO” and “Third Party Auth” are largely interchangeable terms for the purposes of this doc. For more information, see Integrating with a SAML Identity Provider.

  • LTI. Users can use Learning Tools Interoperability® (LTI®) to authenticate.

4.23.1.2. Provisionally Supported Identity Providers#

The Open edX platform also includes limited support for the following SSO providers.

  • OpenID

  • Apache-hosted Shibboleth

  • SSL client certificates

  • Central Authentication Service (CAS)

These providers are part of the external_auth app, tend to be older and less robustly tested, and have a much more limited feature set. These providers are included in the source code but are not officially supported.

4.23.1.3. Integrating Identity Providers#

Regardless of the standard that the identity provider you want to integrate with uses, you begin by enabling the third party authentication feature for your site.

For example, your Open edX site hosts the courses of three different organizations. When you configure the Open edX site to be a service provider, and configure each of the three organizations to be identity providers, you permit learners who have valid user credentials at any of those organizations to access the Open edX site.

If you are using edX as an LTI tool provider to a external learning management system or application, you can set up an authentication workflow between your Open edX site and the system that is the LTI tool consumer. For more information, see Options for LTI Authentication and User Provisioning and Configuring Open edX User Authentication for LTI.