Foldr: How to configure teacher logins

Foldr is a third party single sign-on (SSO) method. We collaborated with Foldr's developers to provide the guide you see below.

How does the Teacher Login Work?

On their login page, instead of seeing a username/password box, teachers will see a Login and continue button instead. When they click the button, one of two things will happen:

  • If there is an existing login session on Foldr for the user, and their email matches an existing teacher account, the teacher will be instantly logged in.
  • If there's no existing login session on Foldr for the user, they will be sent to the Foldr login page where they can log in. When they log in and there is an existing Teacher account with a matching email address, they'll be logged into the system with that account.

Prerequisites

In order for authentication on teacher accounts to work, teachers must have an email address in your SchoolCloud system. You can check this via Data > Teachers.

This email addresses must be the same as that set on that teacher's user account in Foldr.

Foldr Setup

In order to set up Foldr to handle requests, follow the steps below:

  1. In your Foldr Admin panel, go to Single Sign-On.

  2. Go to the Identity Provider tab if you're not there already.
  3. Make sure that the Enable Foldr Identity Provider? option is turned on.

  4. Click Add New Service Provider then select Parents Evening System from the list.

  5. You'll then be taken to the Add New Service dialog. Most of the data will already be filled in but a few changes are required on the SSO tab. Go to the SSO tab and change any instances of YOURNAME to be your system name, which is the part of your SchoolCloud system URL that appears just before ".parentseveningsystem.co.uk". For example, the system name for the link https://greenabbey.parentseveningsystem.co.uk would be greenabbey

  6. Under the Permissions tab, you can choose who can use the service via the Add user or group button. You can use this to allow/deny users access to SchoolCloud. Only teachers would need access, so if you have a group for your teachers, this would be perfect. Alternatively, you can use the contextual search on the pop-up to select the users you need. As you type, suggestions will appear. While testing, you may wish to enable the app for everyone.

  7. Click Save Changes at the top to return to the main Single Sign On page.
  8. Double click the Parents Evening System app to open it's settings again.
  9. On the Info tab for the service, copy the Metadata URL as you will need this later.

SchoolCloud Setup

Now that you've setup Foldr, you need to set SchoolCloud to work with this authentication method:

Log into SchoolCloud as an admin and go to Settings > Teacher Authentication. Select SAML and you will see two text boxes, one for the Metadata URL, the other for the Entity ID.

  1. Enter the Metadata URL you copied in step 9 of the last section.
  2. The entity ID is the Issuer/Sign-in URL (e.g. https://greenabbey.minnow.it/sso/A1AA1/ ).

Testing

Once the setup is complete, you can test it by logging into a Foldr account with an email address matching one of the teacher accounts on SchoolCloud. If this doesn't work, please get in touch with our support team by either giving us a call on +44 (0)333 344 3403 from 09:00-17:00 Mon-Thurs and 09:00-16:00 Fri (UK time), or sending an email to schoolcloud@tes.com