Okta Basics
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Currently only Labs Managers have admin access to Okta administration. If you have Okta issues, please reach out to your Engineering Manager.
is an identity management service that's used in Labs to provide centralized authentication for Labs applications.
We use a centralized identity management service because it is typically the way applications are authenticated in the industry. This gives our students practice using centralized identity management technologies like and .
We use Okta specifically because it is an and has high-quality support and documentation.
Here is a quick walk thru of okta and how it is used in our Labs projects.
Okta provides centralized identity management. This means that you can have a single set of identities that can be used across many different applications. If you use Google services, you can see this in action as you log in to Google once but can move between Google apps (Mail, Calendar, Sheets, etc.) without having to log in each time.
We use Okta the same way. There is a single Labs Okta account that has a set of identities that can access all Labs applications. These identities are test users that can be used by teams for testing their applications without having to constantly create new identities.
Since Labs applications are always under development, it's very handy to have a set of test identities readily available to test various aspects of your application.
As an APL, you'll have access to log in to the Labs Okta account to perform various tasks. Before Labs, you'll receive your login credentials and can use the following link to log in:
If you can't login, please contact your engineering manager.
A set of test users has been created that teams can use for authentication. These users follow a simple naming convention to make it easy for projects to authenticated.
There are 8 test users, each one using a 3-digit sequence for username and password:
llama001@maildrop.cc
Test001Test
llama002@maildrop.cc
Test002Test
llama003@maildrop.cc
Test003Test
llama004@maildrop.cc
Test004Test
llama005@maildrop.cc
Test005Test
llama006@maildrop.cc
Test006Test
llama007@maildrop.cc
Test007Test
llama008@maildrop.cc
Test008Test
Please take care never to modify these users in any way! These users are shared across Labs projects, so editing a user can affect other projects.
The following are administrative tasks that you'll need to perform in Okta to support Labs teams.
There is a single Client ID for each product that must be supplied to Labs project teams in order for them to enable authentication. Each product will be set up as an Okta Application. The Client ID can be found using the Admin interface, by clicking on the Applications Tab.
Products have one client id that is shared among all active projects working on that product. Client IDs should not be shared across products.
Labs applications should always authenticate using the alias (), though, for reference, the Labs Organization URL is:
Since the test users are using for email, you can easily check their inbox if they are meant to receive email notifications from applications.
The Issuer URI is also required for Labs projects to correctly configure authentication. For Labs projects, this value will always be: