BigCommerce Single Sign-on (SSO) System Integration for a Well-Renowned Office Supplies Brand Based in the United States

Virtina collaborated with a well-renowned office supply company based in Massachusetts, United States. Through this project, Virtina also got a chance to work with a multimedia messaging company and a very popular social media platform called Snapchat.

The company wanted to allow its users (employees) to use their Snapchat company account and get direct access to a BigCommerce website. In other words, the client wished to integrate a Single Sign-on (SSO) system. The SSO system would provide a secure, and auto-login access to the BigCommerce website. 

Users can sign-in once and gain access to the BigCommerce site directly. In essence, it makes it possible to access the BigCommerce site and continue shopping, without the need to log in again. Despite the auto-login, you could still identify the role, name, and other user credentials.

The client further wanted to roll out the SSO solution to allow secure access to the BigCommerce website for their users within seconds. The users are nothing but the client's employees. Once the users are on the BigCommerce store, they can shop as they please. Due to the severity and complexity of the task, they decided to approach the eCommerce professionals, Virtina.

Virtina enabled the company’s users to initiate an SSO login from their Snapchat account. The said user will then land and auto-login on the company’s Snapchat Global landing-site. The user then selects a country on the landing site. If the user selects a country within the Middle East region, then they can proceed forward.

In which case, the website will HTTPs post an SSO XML to the BigCommerce site at the SSO endpoint. The SSO XML file contains all of the user's credentials. The BigCommerce site will send back a functional XML response (live token) with a URL for redirecting the user. The Snapchat Global landing website for the company will capture the URL and redirect the user. The user will auto-login to the BigCommerce site to continue shopping.

The XML file contains various shopper attributes. One of the attributes is "NameID." The  "NameID" acts as the unique identifier for a shopper. Besides this, the client wished to forward other attributes like email, first name, last name, and title. Aside from this, the process passed another attribute called "department" through to transactions for reporting or invoicing purposes. It also contained the country code and role attribute for product security in the XML file.

The astute developers at Virtina handled the entire project with complete care, precision, and planning. They decided to proceed with the SSO integration using Laravel. When done, the client's users could initiate and gain access to multiple websites with just a single login.

The eCommerce experts were able to find a way to allow the authentication of the incoming HTTP requests based on the user's various attributes. Post this; the BigCommerce website automatically logs in the user. Thus the user bypassed the need to provide a username and password on the BigCommerce site.