Salesforce is a popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and cloud-based IT application provider which has solutions in various sectors like marketing, analytics, and customer service. Alongside its suite of applications, Salesforce also has its own Community Portal for its users. With its wide range of services and applications, Salesforce becomes a partaker in several use cases across several domains such as CRM, customer service & management, etc. - for direct consumers using simple CMSs like WordPress, to large enterprises as well. Consider the following use case with WordPress, for example where you want to sync Salesforce objects to your WordPress site.

Scenario

• You have a WordPress site and Salesforce community portal.
• A self-registration page is hosted on your WordPress site.

Requirements

You wanted to create a WordPress site that is accessible to Salesforce community users with their Salesforce credentials.

1. The WordPress administrator can add new community users from the WordPress dashboard itself.
2. People can register from the self-registration page on WordPress site and they will be added to Salesforce as community portal users and their onboarding email will be sent by Salesforce.
3. SSO into WordPress to access Salesforce Community: WordPress is set up as a portal from where users can register, and after authentication, can access the Salesforce Community Portal.
4. User should be able to login into the Salesforce community using the same password. Entered during the registration process.

Components Involved

1. WordPress SAML SSO SP plugin is used to allow WordPress to act as the Service Provider, which will allow the user using WordPress to access the Salesforce Community Login Page.



SAML Single Sign On – SAML SSO Login
By miniOrange
(209)
WordPress Single Sign On SSO login with Azure, Azure B2C, Okta, ADFS, Keycloak, Salesforce, Ping, Onelogin, Gsuite, Shibboleth & many SAML IdPs [24/7 SUPPORT]
 Tested with 6.2
Download Free Plugin  Full Featured Trial


2. Salesforce Object Data Sync plugin updates the user password and syncs it from WordPress into Salesforce to update the user information.



Object Data Sync for Salesforce
By miniOrange
WordPress Salesforce Object Sync | Sync Salesforce Objects bidirectionally with WordPress. Enable real-time sync, scheduled sync, Salesforce Sync with Workflows Automation, sync leads from WordPress to Salesforce, Salesforce ACF/CPT UI integrations, and more.
 Tested with 6.1.1
Download Free Plugin  Schedule a Demo

Solution

This use can be solved using the WP SAML SP and Salesforce Object Sync plugins.

In this setup, WordPress will act as the Service Provider (SP) and users will authenticate using their Salesforce credentials in case they aren’t already logged in the Salesforce community.

1. Existing portal users will be able to Single Sign-On (SSO login) into the WordPress site using their Salesforce credentials. The WordPress Salesforce SSO login is established using miniOrange SAML 2.0 SSO plugin where Salesforce will act as SAML identity provider (IDP) and WordPress will be the service provider (SP).
2. When new users sign-up for WordPress site, upon registering with their username, email, password, etc. will be synced to Salesforce to create users in Salesforce with the same details.
3. Initially when a new user registers on WordPress, upon successful submission of the registration form, the user is created in Salesforce with the isActive attribute set to ‘FALSE’.By this we are forcing users to change their passwords after first login and email verification is mandatory.
4. Once the user logs in and activates their account, the isActive attribute is reset to ‘TRUE’ and the user will be successfully synced into Salesforce from WordPress with the Salesforce Object Sync plugin without exposing the stored raw password, and the password sync will be complete.

End User Experience

1. Users will register on the WordPress site.
2. A welcome email will be sent to the user; users will need to login to the Salesforce community portal using the password with which they registered.
3. Salesforce will ask users to reset their password to access the Salesforce community and they will be able to seamlessly access the WordPress site without being prompted for credentials.

Conclusion

With WordPress Salesforce SSO setup between WordPress and Salesforce using the WP SAML SSO plugin, users will authenticate with Salesforce and securely SSO login into the WordPress site. Your self-registration page hosted on the WordPress site to take new registrations and existing users will be able to access your WordPress site without having to re-enter their credentials. This also ensures that all the user related information remains within Salesforce.

Additional Resources

• What is Single Sign-On (SSO)?
• What is SAML?
• WordPress Salesforce Sync
• What is SAML?
• Salesforce Integrations
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
• Setup WordPress – Salesforce Bi-directional Object Data Sync
• User Data Synchronization
• Salesforce Integrations
• WordPress Object Sync for Salesforce Leads
• Salesforce CPT UI integration
• WordPress Salesforce Communities
• Sync Salesforce Objects to WordPress