At Email Meter, we use Looker Studio to power our email statistics dashboards. Looker Studio is a modern BI & analytics platform used to tell stories with data.

To view your company’s email statistics dashboard in Looker Studio, users will need to be signed into a Google account.

With this guide, you will learn how to integrate Google with Microsoft Entra ID. After completing these steps, users will be able to sign-in to Email Meter with Google using their existing Microsoft SSO.

To follow this guide, you will need administrator permissions on both Microsoft and Google admin panels.

Requirements

To get started, you will need:

  • A Microsoft 365 subscription
  • A Google Workspace tenant

If you don’t have a Google Workspace tenant, you can contact us to help you set one up. Alternatively, we can offer a Google Workspace tenant managed by Email Meter to set up your SSO.

Instructions

Craate a SAML profile in Google Workspace

  • Open a new tab in your browser, and sign in to the Google Admin.
  • On the left sidebar, go to Security > Authentication > SSO with third party IdP.
  • On the Third-party SSO profiles section, click on Add SAML profile.
  • A modal will open. There, you will need to input some information.
  • SSO profile name: type Microsoft SSO - SAML, or any naming of your choice.
  • IDP entity ID: leave blank.
  • Sign-in page URL: leave blank.
  • Sign-out page URL: leave blank.
  • Change password URL: leave blank.
  • Don’t update a verification certificate yet.
  • Once everything is filled, click Save.
  • The SAML SSO profile page that appears contains two URLs (Entity ID and ACS URL). Save these URLs, as you will need them in the next section when you configure Microsoft Entra ID.

Install the Google Cloud connector in Microsoft Entra ID

  • In the search bar, type “Google Cloud”.
  • Select Google Cloud / G Suite Connector by Microsoft from the results. A drawer menu will appear on the left. Now, click on the Create button to add the application.
  • Wait a few seconds, and the application will be added to your tenant.

Set up Microsoft Entra SSO

Now, you need to establish a relationship between your users in Microsoft Entra and the related user in Google Cloud.

  • Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.
  • Go to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Google Cloud / G Suite Connector by Microsoft. There, go to the Single-sign-on section.
  • Select the SAML option.
  • On the Basic SAML Configuration section, click on the pencil icon to edit the settings.
  • In the Identifier textbox, paste the Entity URL that you saved previously from the Google admin, and set Default to enabled. Remove all other entries.

  • In the Reply URL textbox, paste the ACS URL that you saved previously from the Google admin.

  • In the Sign on URL textbox, paste the custom URL that the Email Meter team has provided to you. If you don’t have it, please get in touch with your point of contact.

  • Then, click Save to save your changes.

  • On the SAML Signing Certificate section, find Certificate (Base 64) and click Download to download the certificate. You will need it shortly.

  • On the Set up Google Cloud / G Suite Connector by Microsoft section, copy the three URLs and save them, as we will need them to set everything up in Google Cloud. Alternatively, leave this tab open so you can go back to it quickly.

Complete the SAML profile

  • Return to the Google Admin console, and go to Security > Authentication > SSO with third party IdP.
  • Open the Microsoft SSO - SAML profile that you created earlier.
  • Click the IDP details section to edit the settings.
    • In the IDP entity ID field, paste the value of Microsoft Entra Identifier from the previous section.
    • In the Sign-in page URL field, paste the value of Login URL from the previous section.
    • In the Sign-out page URL field, enter the following URL:
    Change password URL
    https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/wsfederation?wa=wsignout1.0
    
    • In the Change password URL, enter the following URL:
    Change password URL
    https://account.activedirectory.windowsazure.com/changepassword.aspx
    
    • In the Verification certificate section, update the certificate that you downloaded previously.
    • Once everything is filled, click Save.

Assign the SAML profile

  • On the Manage SSO profile assignements section, click on Get started.
  • On the SSO profile assignement, click Another SSO profile and select the one you’ve created in the past step. If you’ve followed our recommended naming conventions, it will be called Microsoft SSO - SAML .
  • Click Save.

Assign users

On Microsoft’s side

To enable users to use single sign-on in Google with their Microsoft SSO, you need to grant them access to the Google Cloud / G Suite Connector by Microsoft.

  • Sign in to the Microsoft Entra admin center.
  • Go to Identity > Applications > Enterprise applications > Google Cloud / G Suite Connector by Microsoft. There, go to the Users and groups section.
  • Click on Add user/group, and then select the users and/or groups that you need.
  • Once you’re done, click on the Assign button.

On Google’s side

In order for this to work, the user needs to exist in both Google and Microsoft.

If you don’t want to manually create users in Google when needed, you can also configure automatic user provisioning following Microsoft’s or Google’s documentation.

Test SSO

If you’ve followed this steps correctly, your users will now be able to login to Google services using their existing Microsoft SSO.

To test this, click this link. It will redirect you to the Google login flow. After inputting your email address, it will redirect you to Microsoft to complete the login process.

Frequently asked questions