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Google Apps for Education

Submitted by kmbaur on Fri, 2007-05-04 16:37

We, Harding University, have just decided to move to Google Apps for Education for our email and calendar solutions. We are about to start blazing the trail unless there are some of you who have pursued writing SAML SSO connectors via Google's API services. They are pretty comprehensive (especially the account provisioning API) and I'm looking forward to the relationship we have already begun with our Google representatives.

So has anyone done anything with Google Apps and Luminis?

Thanks,

--Mike Baur
Manager Application Development
Harding University
(501) 279-4007

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RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Wed, 2007-05-09 10:46.

Hi!

We made this same decision back in January. We went live about a month ago using SAML SSO. Let me know if you have any questions.

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by gpacker on Wed, 2007-05-09 15:22.

Hi Brian,

I would be interested in how you have your Google Apps setup. Few questions that come to mind:

1. How do you handle password sync?
2. How do you import users?
3. Did you set this up as an email channel or a link the user needs to click on?

Thanks.

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by kp on Wed, 2007-05-09 16:02.

Hi Glenn,

I work with Brian at Hofstra. To answer your questions:

1. We do not sync passwords with Google (at least not at the moment and probably not in the any near future). Basically we didn't want Google having end user passwords, not to mention that since we use Novell, all passwords are encrypted and we don't have a way to pull them out to sync with Google. By default we make their password a unique string known only to the student so if they want to enable pop (which is off by default) they can do so and they can then change their google password separately. We provide documentation to the end user on how to do so

2. We have imported uses via 2 methods - the first was via the bulk import from the Google admin (BLEH!). This was the first route we went with the beginning and had some horrible problems like the import stopping for unknown reasons and needing to be restarted. Since then we have gone with using the api to import users. One thing to note, the api we are using is 1.0 and google has sent notices stating that while they are still supporting the 1.0 api however all users must upgrade to 2.0 and any new customers must use the 2.0 api. Basically the program we wrote reads in a text file, parses it and feeds it to the google api which then runs. Often times we have errors from google like:

Java Error: com.google.gdata.util.ServiceException: Bad Gateway

So we built in a routine just to loop the account again and it works fine the second time around. The api is faster than the bulk import.

3. We set this up as a link the user needs to click. If you end up getting this working as an e-mail channel we would definitely be interested.

-Kevin

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Wed, 2007-05-09 17:13.

Yep, with the exception of POP (which Kevin mentions above) once you turn on SSO for Google, password synchronization isn't necessary because you're not authenticating with passwords(the way you would with say, CPIP). You're not providing credentials, you're saying to Google, yes, this person is logged in AND they should have access to this user account. Passwords don't apply.

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by gpacker on Fri, 2007-05-11 10:03.

Thanks for the good information. As of right now we don't plan on fully moving students over until next year or so. We are still testing and at some point I would like to prove that we can do SSO from our portal. A channel would be nice, even if it only displayed unread emails. The fact that we don't have to worry about passwords is a major plus. That was the first thought running through my head.

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by jkstilwell on Thu, 2007-05-31 00:44.

It looks like you used a servlet to perform the SAML authentication. Is that correct? If so, do you think it would be a more direct approach to serve it up from a separate app server (i.e. tomcat) or use the same one that luminis is running on?

RE: Google Apps for Education

Submitted by jkstilwell on Thu, 2007-05-31 00:43.

what mechanisms are you using to ensure that a user is authenticated through luminis when handling the SAML request from google? Thanks.

Greetings

Submitted by hmalla on Sat, 2008-06-14 15:28.

Dear Kevin,
I read ur interrogation which stimulate me to dig into GOOGLE Apps for education.
I'm functional consultant who learned luminis from the functional angle.
I'm interested to know more about this application in order to implement it into unversities where I have projects...
I'll be very thanklful if u provide me by some guidelines and references... to implement it...
Regards,
Malli

thanks

Submitted by MikeSmith on Sat, 2009-01-17 09:14.

thanks

Google Apps integration

Submitted by sabromow on Thu, 2008-05-29 11:08.

Hi,
We are looking to start a pilot. If you can share any information with how you integrated Luminis with Google Apps it would be very helpful. We are currently running 3.3.3.

Thanks
Sam Abromowitz
Northeastern University

Google SAML SSO

Submitted by sealriver on Fri, 2008-12-05 16:50.

Hi Brian,

We don't have Luminis, but are having some difficulties implementing SAML SSO to integrate Google apps for ed. with our online course learning management system.

Anyway I could have our developer guy contact you for a little advice?

Thanks,

Jason Ragsdale
Walsh College
Office of Online
JRagsdale@walshcollege.edu

Google SAML SSO

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Sat, 2008-12-06 17:31.

Absolutely. Just drop me a line and let me know if there's anything we can do to help. Brian.Ferris@Hofstra.edu.

GMail Source

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Fri, 2009-10-02 18:01.

We've sent this out to a couple of dozen schools over the past couple of years, and we finally got around to putting it up on LumDev. So if anyone comes across this thread, you can get our source code from:

http://www.lumdev.net/node/3218

This is not as thorough or as integrated as the excellent version by Sungard's Makarand Kulkarni, but if you have GMail and you're looking for a simple SSO solution from Luminis, this ought to do the trick.

Brian

usernames

Submitted by julied on Mon, 2008-04-28 16:50.

Our student government has requested that their email be first.mi.lastname@cameron.edu (e.g. john.a.smith@cameron.edu). Then if someone already has that, they add a number. Do you create your own usernames with google and how do you deal with duplicates? Is that written into the script you create the csv file with or does google handle this? How do you deal with alumni so that after awhile your usernames can look like john.a.smith452@cameron.edu? Is that an issue or do students just accept that they're number 452? Also, how do you get the information to the student that they are number 452 instead of just john.a.smith?

Sorry for all the questions. Just looking for some info on if google apps would be a good way to go with this request from student government. Thanks!

There are a couple of ways

Submitted by jkstilwell on Thu, 2008-09-04 15:50.

There are a couple of ways to create/provision accounts using GoogleApps. There is an admin console where you can create and manage individual accounts. There is also a bulk upload feature that allows you to create/update multiple accounts at a time. There is also a provisioning API which proves useful when managing accounts programmatically.

We currently create google apps user accounts dynamically based on events from the Luminis Message Broker. We reuse the Luminis username in our emails for consistency. We are a small enough school where collisions aren't as big of an issue. Usually a student is provided their Luminis account information (and hence their email account info as well) by mail as part of the acceptance process.

We have been using GoogleApps as our email/calendar solution for almost a year now and have had mostly positive feedback. Personally, I can say that using GoogleApps has been an exciting transition for us and a joy to use over the past year. Hope this helps.

Jared Stilwell

Harding University
Application Development and Enhancement

Luminis Message Broker events

Submitted by thai on Thu, 2008-09-04 19:34.

Hi Jared,

Thanks for sharing your success story.
Could you shed some lights on how you capture the events from LMB and create account dynamically?

We are currently creating Google Apps accounts manually by getting a list of new users from Banner and create using the Google Apps Provisioning Tookit (http://code.google.com/p/google-apps-provisioning-toolkit/)

I had thought about create account on the fly but have no idea how to capture the events from LMB. If you can share some of your steps or documents on this matter, that would be greate

--
Thai Nguyen

Google Apps & Luminis

Submitted by liebharts on Tue, 2009-02-17 18:47.

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has integrated gmail into luminis. We would like to move our students to gmail (with an option for staff and faculty). With the budget crunch we're unable to purchase the sungard application. Any info would be helpful.

Steve Liebhart
Western New Mexico University

Google & Luminis: So Happy Together

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Thu, 2009-02-19 18:06.

We went with GMail integration towards the beginning of 2007. I can't say that this was anything other than a widespread success. We developed our solution previous to the existence of a solution from Sungard (and from what I understand of Sungard's solution, ours is probably not as comprehensive as theirs is). With that being said, if anyone is looking for source code or has questions on how to get this setup or what is involved, feel free to drop me a line (Brian.Ferris@hofstra.edu) - we'll be glad to help in any way that we can.

Brian

Google integration with Luminis group, course tools, etc.

Submitted by dpelinka on Wed, 2009-02-18 14:36.

I see that a number of schools have tackled google account provisioning and SSO. What are you doing about integration with the Luminis group and course tools? What about targeted announcements, and Luminis' other email/calendar links?

David Pelinka
Portland Community College

Gmail fullly integrated into Luminis?

Submitted by achu on Thu, 2009-02-19 19:06.

David, your questions are also the major hold back for our moving to gmail. It will be kind of useless if the SunGard Google Adapter cannot deal with the goups, course, TA, e-mail and calendar links.

We want to make sure that the gmail can be fully integrated into Luminis before we move on.

Anyone has the answers or can confirm it?

Thanks,
Arion

Gmail fully integrated

Submitted by Brian Ferris on Fri, 2009-02-20 21:17.

David and Arion; I'm sure I'm not following. (I seem to be slow on the uptake lately, so I apologize in advance). What kind of integration are you looking for? Things work with targeted announcements the same as they always did, since they go to the student's email address (which is now at GMail instead of being store locally).

We haven't tied Google Calendar in anyway into Luminis calendar (anyone out there do this?); but as far as email goes, we haven't seen any integration issues (there are sections of our portal that are not heavily used though, so its entirely possible one exists that I'm not aware of).

Let me know if I've completely misunderstood.

Brian

google apps integration

Submitted by Jason on Mon, 2009-02-23 14:52.

So TA's work, the in course/group email link works.

I assume then that the one thing not working would be calendar? Or is a google calendar created and a link generated for each course/group?

edit: nevermind, my Monday brain just woke up and read a bit more carefully heh.

We have issues with Group Studio/TA

Submitted by dsloat on Tue, 2009-02-24 19:54.

See the following post -

http://www.lumdev.net/node/2568#comment-6478

Calendar integration or export to GCal?

Submitted by chasek on Fri, 2009-07-31 17:03.

Has anyone tried integrating Luminis 4 calendar with GCal?  Specifically the course calendars that are created.

I'd also be interested to know if anyone has done a bulk export/import from Luminis 4 to GCal of users personal calendars in Luminis 4.