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MuralUser

Hello! I recently got a Mural license, and I am hoping to leverage it to bring some of the benefits of in-person collaboration into my team's remote work environment.

We have already run into an issue related to Single Sign On. We can invite those with free Mural accounts outside of our organization to a room, but we cannot do this with those inside of our organization, as they are not able to set up a free account with the current SSO configuration. So, we are currently stuck with the not-so-ideal solution of individually inviting collaborators within our organization to Mural boards as visitors.

Has anyone been able to figure out how to make SSO work so that those without licenses within a SSO organization can use their work emails to create free accounts and be invited to a room, and not need to save visitor-enabled links to their bookmarks bar for future access to each Mural they are collaborating in? Does the Mural admin for the SSO organization need to add them as guests to the overall workspace (is that even possible?)?

Thanks so much!

Seb_from_MURAL

Hi @MuralUser! I'm Seb from the support team just chiming in here to see if I can help you get some clarity on your doubts ☺️

I believe Meghan and I were able to find your company's account and I believe you're on our Business plan. This plan supports SSO only for your company members' authentication, as Meghan explained above. This means that:

• Anyone sharing your company's domains will use SSO to sign in and their credentials will be managed through your identity provider. However, the workspace administration (i.e. invitations and access to the workspace, its rooms and murals) will only happen within the Mural app.
• For Business plans, your company's members will always require an invitation to the workspace. If they create their user account (which will be automatic after they sign in through SSO and accept our Terms of Service) without being invited first will be prompted to create their own free workspace, which they will be an admin to. But this can be skipped if the invitation to the workspace is sent first. Here's an article on inviting new members to your workspace, just in case.
• Every member you invite will take up a license - as far as we could find, it looks like your workspace is set on a sales-assisted motion so in the case of adding more members/licenses than what you're paying for, I believe your Account Manager might at some point would reach out to you to see if you're interested in upgrading the amount of licenses.
  • You always have the option to send visitor links to company members to your murals to skip the invitation step, and they won't take up a license. I'm under the impression you already know about this feature but just in case here's another article that might come in handy.

To be honest, in that regard, the Business plan is a little restrictive. We do offer a few solutions for Enterprise customers that might make it less of a hassle for your admins, for example, you can disable users from creating free workspaces and joining a default workspace instead, or set company workspaces as discoverable so your company members can join directly or request to join without necessarily requiring a previous invitation. Our pricing page has a little more info on other features we offer too. It might be a good option considering the 1,500 potential Mural users you mentioned. If you're interested in discussing upgrading to this plan, feel free to let me and Meghan know and we can put you in contact with a Sales or Account rep who can guide you through it.

If on the other hand you'd prefer to continue with the Business plan and have more doubts, I'd be happy to have someone from our team reach out to you to further discuss via email and they will be able to discuss account specifics as well. Feel free to DM me your email and I can get that going for you - you can also email us to [email protected], our team is prepared to answer any questions too.

I'm here if you need further assistance! 🙌

Meghan

Hi @MuralUser! Good question. I'll reach out to a few Muralistas who can help and see that we get a response for you. Thanks for visiting the forum!

MuralUser

Thanks Meghan! Keeping my fingers crossed there is a way to give my teammates without licenses the same ease of access to our team's room as guests outside the organization. Many thanks!

Meghan

Hi @MuralUser- I have an update! Buckle in 😊 we've got a few things to consider!

It sounds like you're inviting guests into the workspace, which should be member only. SSO is only used for authentication but it has no relation with the workspace invitations and administration.

Therefore, external users will need to be invited, which will prompt the user to create their own account. Once they’re in, they’ll be able to access the content they were invited to.

If they haven’t been invited, they will probably take them to create a free workspace if they haven’t been invited first.

For internal members, it will depend on what their SSO and company configuration is and what plan they’re under. In these cases, you'll need to invite the users to the workspace first and once the user has attempted to sign in, they’ll authenticate through SSO. From there, they should be able to see the content they were invited to.

Let me know if this helps? Additionally, feel free to reach out to [email protected]- they'll be able to clarify your doubts regarding SSO, and do link back to this discussion for added context.

MuralUser

Hi Meghan! Thanks so so much for the info on internal members! That helps fill in some of the gaps on my end. So, am I understanding it correctly that the SSO administrator can invite an employee to be a "member" of the workspace without automatically having our organization pay for a Mural license?

This is what I had heard from our SSO administrator, which is what brought me here.

If so, do you have and recommended solutions to help make it easier for internal members to join the organization's workgroup without requiring a lot of time from our Mural administrator? The administrator is quite busy, and they aren't a Mural user themselves. And, we have over 1,500 employees/potential Mural collaborators within our organization, the majority of which do not have licenses.

Meghan

Hi @MuralUser! Just wanted to check in again- let me know if this issue is still persisting for you. @Seb_from_MURAL's answer covers a lot of what I'm thinking as well, but let us know if it's ballpark to what you're looking for. 😉

MuralUser

Hi Meghan! Thanks for the follow up. Seb and I connected via DM and I hope to have a video call with a member of the tech support team later this week. Our team wants to make sure that we are doing everything we can to optimize our engagements with non-licensed users in our organization with our current Mural business plan. Thanks!

Meghan

Glad to hear, @MuralUser! Feel free to come back here if you have any follow up needs. 😊