Can Crowd use Google Apps for authentication / user bootstrapping?
Asked by Morgan Fletcher:

We have Jira \& Greenhopper licensed, with 87 users currently of a 100-user license. We're evaluating Fisheye / Crucible, with a crowd user synchronization between them, currently. We also use Google Apps. Is it possible for crowd to rely on Google Apps user accounts for its authentication, or for creation of crowd users? IOW we would like for Google Apps to the the root authentication / access control, with perhaps Crowd being used to decide whether a user consumes an Atlassian license, or licenses.

I've read the Crowd document "[Configuring the Google Apps Connector](http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CROWD/Configuring+the+Google+Apps+Connector)", but it looks like this would just let me link accounts such that Crowd users can seamlessly access Google Apps functionality. We're thinking about it from the other direction.

Thanks,

Morgan


Answers:
author: Morgan Fletcher
body: For what it's worth, we are no longer looking to use Google Apps to manage user authentication / account creation for Atlassian products.

Morgan


author: Piotr Bojko
body: Hey,

Please look at the <https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/pl.craftware.crowd.ga-directory-connector>

This is what I was writing about :)

Cheers!


author: Piotr Bojko
body: Hey folks,

Craftware has just created such integration in form of a Crowd Remote Directory (extension to Crowd). Now you can be able to rely on Google Apps in context of:

1. Authentication (login using credentials/account from Google Apps)
2. Authorisation (fetching groups and roles of user from Google Apps in same manner as from LDAP or Crowd internal repository)

There will be absolutly no need to manage users on any atlassian product anymore :) - simply manageYour users in Google Apps and map permissions in Atlassian products to groups from Google Apps (or even organisational units from GA).

We are currently under tests of our extension, have some known bugs (most are already addressed).

For more info You can email [info@craftware.pl](mailto:info@craftware.pl) (and we will notify You about official release, You can also help us to test the extension!), or follow our twitter account <https://twitter.com/craftwarebiz>


author: Colin Goudie
body: Morgan, talk to us @ AppFusions. We have a Confluence Google Apps authenticator and about to release a JIRA one. Although not using Crowd, we could potentially continue to enhance it to do that.

comments: author: Len Xu
body: hi Colin, what is the product name you mentioned? I don't find it in appfusions website.


author: Colin Goudie
body: It isn't on our website yet but send an info through to info at [appfusions.com](http://appfusions.com) and we can discuss. As I mentioned, we don't have a crowd integration currently but we have talked about doing that. We'd be happy to discuss with you


author: Ellen Feaheny [AppFusions]
body: Colin - we have a new client that just ordered it -

So Len, if you want to be #2, email us. The prices are similar to the Confluence one. Will be avail mid-Dec. [info@appfusions.com](mailto:info@appfusions.com)


author: Adam Laskowski
body: Crowd can back Google Apps for auth, but it sadly doesn't work the other way around. Crowd cannot consume the Google Apps userbase and allow the other Atlassian apps to use the Google Apps user credentials to log in.