Configuring SSO and IdP in Flex

Twilio Flex integrates with your existing Identity Provider to authenticate users (agents, supervisors or administrators) and enable single sign-on (SSO). Flex allows for integration with any Identity Provider that supports SAML 2.0 (Such as Google, Active Directory, Okta, etc), enabling you to use your primary corporate account as the identity provider for Flex.

Definitions

• Identity Provider (IdP) is a trusted entity that lets you enable single sign-on to access other websites or services such as Twilio Flex with a single login. Your users can keep using their corporate user identities without having to remember many passwords or having to retype passwords each time they access a different service connected to the same Identity Provider. An example Identity Provider is Okta.
• Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) - is an open standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an Identity Provider and a Service Provider. SAML is an XML-based markup language for security assertions (statements that service providers use to make access-control decisions). Twilio Flex uses SAML version 2.0.
• Service Provider (SP) - Twilio Flex in this context is the service provider configured as an Application on an Identity Provider to enable single sign-on.

Configure your Identity Provider to support Twilio Flex

The steps to configure Flex as an application (Service Provider) within your Identity Provider will be different depending on which Identity Provider your organization uses. Below, you can find documentation required to set up Flex as a Service Provider in a few popular Identity Providers:

• Okta
• Microsoft Azure
• Google
• Salesforce
• Microsoft ADFS
• Auth0

Identity Attributes and Flex Roles

Your Identity Provider can provide any number of claims (key-value pairs) to Flex. Four of these are mandatory: Unique ID/User ID, list of User's Roles, Full Name and Email. The Unique ID should be provided in the request header, so it's likely you won't need to explicitly set it.

Flex includes the following roles:

The user data sent to Flex from the Identity Provider is stored in the TaskRouter Worker attributes. This allows you as the contact center developer to adapt the Flex UI using data about the logged in user from your Identity Provider. The Worker attributes created for the logged-in user are updated on every successful SSO login, so any changes to user data made in your Identity Provider will also be represented as worker attributes.

The Attributes can be divided into 3-categories.

• Mandatory: The list of mandatory parameters required for Authentication and Authorization
• Flex - Agent: These are parameters used by the Agent Desktop of Flex
• Flex Insights: These parameters are highly recommended if you are using the Flex Insights capabilities of Flex

Attribute conversion and data types

By default, all attributes will be transformed as strings to TaskRouter attributes except for roles attribute which defaults to stringarray (comma as separator).

It is possible to state the attribute type in the attribute name as follows:

name[.type]

where type is one of {string | int | boolean | array | stringarray | intarray | booleanarray}

Examples

Incorrectly defining the attribute type and value (example skill.int defined as "a" or skill.int defined as "1.23") will result in Flex throwing a - 400 Error invalid attribute format. No TaskRouter changes will be made if the attribute definition(s) are incorrect.

Note that roles is a special attribute that accepts a comma-separated list of roles and does not require casting to stringarray.

contact_uri Attribute

contact_uri is used by TaskRouter and Twilio Voice SDK to dequeue a call (additional information). By default, the call is dequeued to the worker's contact_uri attribute using Twilio's JavaScript Voice Client (example: client:userId). The contact_uri is automatically configured by Flex and does not need to be set within your Identity Provider. The specific identity value will be escaped to only include alphanumeric and underscore characters.

The incoming call can also be dequeued to a SIP interface (sip:someone@somedomain.com) or a phone number by setting contact_uri as a phone number (+14151112222 - E.164 format). To dequeue to these identities, the contact_uri should be set within your Identity Provider.

When dequeuing the call to an international number please ensure the destination country is enabled in Twilio Console > Programmable Voice > Calls and Geo Permissions.

Mandatory Attributes

Flex - Agent

Flex Insights

User Capacity

You can also define the TaskRouter capacity per channel via these attributes. For example, a new user added to Flex may be available for voice tasks and have a default chat capacity of 1. These can be modified using custom attributes:

These special attributes can be formed for any of the TaskChannels that you have defined within your Flex TaskRouter Workspace.

FAQ

How does Twilio Manage Identities?

Each user that logs in to Twilio Flex via SAML Identity Provider will automatically become a Flex User. To learn more, see Manage Flex UI users.

Flex will also auto-provision a TaskRouter Worker for this identity - TaskRouter is at the core of Flex and is required to enable intelligent skills-based routing of tasks to Agents or Supervisors.

Whenever a user logs in to Flex, all claims passed are checked and updated if necessary, using the Identity Provider as the source of truth. If you would like to update a specific Worker attribute directly then please do not configure it in the Identity Provider claims/attributes.

Can I log into Flex using an identity provider-initiated login, like an Okta tile?

Yes, with the exception of Google Workspace single sign-on. The SSO Configuration in Twilio Console has an optional Default Redirect URL field. When provided, this allows IdP-initiated login to route into Flex. If your agents use Flex from flex.twilio.com, then provide the login link listed in your SSO Configuration. For example:

https://flex.twilio.com/dancing-owl-1234

Otherwise, you would use your own self-hosted Flex URL.

How do I log in to a self-hosted domain?

For your security, all self-hosted domains must be registered with Twilio to enable SSO login. These Trusted Domains can be provided alongside your SSO Configuration within the Twilio Console. The following patterns can be used when providing a Trusted Domain:

The * can only be used to wildcard subdomains. For example, example.*.com or example*.com are not supported.

Can I log into Flex Agent Desktop without an Identity Provider?

Yes, Twilio Console users (except those that are only Billing or Support roles within Console) have access to Flex. They can launch Flex from within the Twilio Console, and they will login with the Flex admin role. We recommend this approach for your admins and developers when your application is under development.

Note that Flex creates different users depending on the login method. For example, a user with the same email address will create two Flex personas if they log in using two alternate methods, for instance, if they log in with SSO and then again directly via the Console using Twilio credentials.

You can trigger the 'Login with Twilio' option in two ways:

1. By selecting 'Launch Flex' from within the Twilio Console. This is available on the Flex Overview page.
2. By selecting 'Login with Twilio' on the default Flex login view.

Option 1 will always log into Flex at flex.twilio.com. If you are self-hosting the Flex UI, this will not load your private destination.

Option 2 is available for self-hosted locations and for local development, such as logging into localhost when developing plugins.

Loading the Flex login view

The login view only loads if you have not provided the sso attribute within your application configuration. If the sso attribute is provided (or you are using your flex.twilio.com Login Link), then you will bypass the login view and immediately trigger SSO login.

After logging out, users will always be sent to the Flex login view. You cannot use the afterLogout action to redirect to another page.

Can I use the SessionNotOnOrAfter attribute from my Identity Provider?

The SessionNotOnOrAfter attribute can be configured within your Identity Provider to ensure a maximum TTL (time-to-live) for an authenticated session. After the configured time, a user will be forced to authenticate within their Identity Provider in order to extend their session with connected applications.

We do not recommend using this attribute alongside Twilio Flex. When a user is logged into the Flex UI application, Flex will regularly refresh the user's Flex Token (the authenticated token which grants access to the UI). If the Identity Provider session expiration comes before the Flex Token's expected refresh period, Flex will be unable to refresh the user's session. Any active communications may be prematurely closed once the user's authentication expires, and the user will need to refresh the Flex application and re-authenticate through their Identity Provider.

If you choose to use SessionNotOnOrAfter, you must use a value greater than 1 hour (the default TTL of the user's authenticated Flex Token). We recommend setting this value above the shift time for an agent (e.g. 8-10 hours), otherwise the agent may be logged out of Flex unexpectedly. Even if you use a long TTL, the user may be impacted if they first login to Flex mid-way through their active authenticated session.

Helpful Articles

• Introduction to SAML Securty Assertion Markup Language
• Security Assurance and Security Operations by Mozilla