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Wolfram Education Site Licenses Now Include Single Sign-On

Wolfram Education Site Licenses Now Include Single Sign-On

In late 2020, Wolfram first made single sign-on (SSO) available to campuses with unlimited site licenses, providing a convenient way for all faculty, staff and students to use their campus credentials to log in to Mathematica Online and other browser-based Wolfram products. Even during the middle of an academic year, dozens of campuses successfully tested and rolled out this first phase of SSO. Several campuses implemented SSO right away to reduce admin time as students graduated and were no longer under the umbrella of the school’s site-licensed products.

This summer, our development team is finishing the implementation of SSO for Mathematica and Wolfram products under unlimited site licenses that are locally installed. This means SSO will be available for all major Wolfram products, including Mathematica, Mathematica Online, Wolfram|Alpha Pro and Wolfram|Alpha Notebook Edition, which are commonly licensed through the Wolfram Technology System starter site license.

Advantages of SSO Integration with Wolfram Products

While the initial rollout has been popular with campuses so far, many others have been waiting to implement SSO. This will allow all their site-licensed products to take advantage of this technology, either to minimize testing or for the sake of minimizing changes for their campus communities.

SSO support across all major products has many advantages:

  • Information technology (IT) staff can reduce or eliminate manual work to ensure only appropriate individuals are using a site license.
  • IT staff can reduce the quantity of “self-serve” instructions required for faculty/staff/students to learn how to use site-licensed products.
  • Instructors can post web-based course materials that require very little additional explanation on how to set up Mathematica and other Wolfram products.
  • Existing users can more easily ask colleagues on campus to review research materials with very little additional explanation on how to set up Mathematica and other Wolfram products.
  • New users of products, including individually based Wolfram|Alpha licenses, who are unaware of a campus site license will automatically be given access to the site-licensed version of the products instead of a lesser, free tier.
  • New users attending events like Wolfram U courses who are unaware of a campus site license for Mathematica Online will automatically be given access to the site-licensed version of the product instead of the minimal resources included with online courses.

How to Get Started

There are several ways to start the process of testing SSO this summer to ensure a smooth rollout for the fall semester:

  • IT staff should fill out this form to check eligibility and start the conversation about testing. We’ll ask for some information, such as your server metadata and how to reference the various required attributes to help you start testing.
  • Instructors and researchers should fill out this form to ask about SSO for their campuses, and someone at Wolfram will provide specific details for your campus.

Other Questions

If you have other questions that might not fit within the scope of the request forms, please feel free to email me directly, and I’ll make sure you get the best answers to your questions. We’re interested in helping all faculty, staff and students use Wolfram products for any new ideas related to projects or courses, and SSO is a nice facilitator toward that goal.

Want to make sure you have all major Wolfram products available at your campus? Take a look at the Wolfram Technology System.

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