External and internal staff on one private statuspage?
Asked by Peter Merkel _mgm-tp_:

Hi there,

i am currently evaluating statuspage and i have the following issue, that is not covered by your documentation:

Usecase: i want to run a private page for company internal use, that both my employees and externals (maybe key-employees on contractor sides) are able to sign up and see specific information.

Q1: Is it possible to use both SSO via i.e AD for my internal staff, and still have externals sign up manually? Or would i have to manage externals in my directory?

Q2: Regarding view restrictions for externals, i have read your entire doc and found the "access control" feature to be the key to fulfilling my needs. I wonder why this has so little documentation.. Hence, will this work on a private page with SSO enabled?

Regards


Answers:
author: M@ICE
body: Hi Peter.

A1: Yes you would have to manage your externals within your directory to allow them to authenticate and view your page

A2: Access Control is a separate type of page and would not be an add-on to your private page. It has built-in user and group management which allows you to setup authentication specific to this page. This can be done using either a username/password option or a SAML 2.0 IdP. Only authorized and authenticated users will be able to logon and review the statuses within that page. It will also allow you to customize what specific components are shown to specific user groups. This allows you to display different Components and Incidents/Maintenance to different audiences, all from a single URL/page.

comments: author: Peter Merkel _mgm-tp_
body: Hi Matthijs,

thanks for your promt Response.

**My first follow up question is:**

Q1: is this a strict "either", as "would we not be able to mix saml and username password authentication for internals and externals even with the Access Control feature?"

**My second question:**

so in the following scenario: 12000 internal users (employees) and roughly 2500 externals, if we use the access control feature we would have to get the following setup

* Access Control with
  * 240 Groups for employees
  * 50 Groups for externals

?

Q2: so would this clustering be necessary? we basically only need two "classes" of visible components, class 1 for internals and class 2 externals. As i understand your documentation i would have to create the 24 groups for my employees to all have the same associated components. This looks like administrative overhead. Is that so?

**\*Third Question\*:**

Q3: Are the Access Control Team Members also the same Team Memebers of the private page? do they have the same "global" permissions when it comes to administering page content?


author: Peter Merkel _mgm-tp_
body: Hi Matthijs,

thanks for your promt Response.

**\*My first follow up question is\*:**

Q1: is this a strict "either", as "would we not be able to mix saml and username password authentication for internals and externals even with the Access Control feature?"

**\*My second question\*:**

so in the following scenario: 12000 internal users (employees) and roughly 2500 externals, if we use the access control feature we would have to get the following setup

* Access Control with
  * 240 Groups for employees
  * 50 Groups for externals

?

Q2: so would this clustering be necessary? we basically only need two "classes" of visible components, class 1 for internals and class 2 externals. As i understand your documentation i would have to create the 24 groups for my employees to all have the same associated components. This looks like administrative overhead. Is that so?

**\*Third Question\*:**

Q3: Are the Access Control Team Members also the same Team Memebers of the private page? do they have the same "global" permissions when it comes to administering page content?


author: M@ICE
body: Hi Peter.

Those are some great follow up questions.

A1: yes, it is a strict "either". Users authentication cannot be mixed (SAML and username/password), even with the Access Control offering.

A2: The Access Control Groups come with a standard allocation of users, but how you divide those users into the groups is fully at your description. You could have 2 groups to simply divide external and internal users. The only factor is that your allocation needs to cover the users that you register.

A3: Yes team members live at the Organization level so if you have multiple pages within your account, any team member will be able to administer all pages within the account.