Using Google Workspace for onboarding users (SSO)

If you've signed up to ThingLink using a Google account and acquired a ThingLink subscription for your organization, you can now have all users from your Google Workspace domain automatically join your ThingLink organizational account.

• How to set up the Google Workspace integration
• I'm a school admin but I do not see the Google Workspace option
• "Access blocked" error

How to set up the Google Workspace integration

First, please ensure that you are an administrator of your organizational ThingLink account and that you have linked your ThingLink user account account to your Google Workspace account.

To link your ThingLink user account to your Google account, simply sign in to ThingLink through Google.

1. Go to the 'Organization' page and select the 'Integrations' tab.
2. You'll see the 'Google Workspace login' option under Third-party SSO options. Click 'Enable' to enable the integration.

Once the setting has been enabled, all users signing up with email addresses from your domain will automatically join your organizational account. 

ThingLink will automatically determine the account type for any new users based on their Google account data. Please see the table below to learn how we determine account types.

You can learn how to verify Google Classroom teacher accounts here.

If someone is assigned the wrong account type, you can change it from the Users page using organization administrator tools.

Does this work with mobile apps?

This integration works when signing up via the ThingLink iOS app as long as the user logs in using their Google Account:

I'm an organizational admin but do not see the Google Workspace option

If you do not see this option under your organization's settings, please log out and log in again using the 'Sign In with Google' button:

If you have not signed in using your Google account since the feature was released, we cannot properly establish a connection between your Google Workspace tenant and your ThingLink account. If you still cannot see the Google Workspace login option in School settings, please submit a tech support request. 

"Access blocked" error

Your users may encounter the following error when trying to sign in: "Access blocked: Your institution's admin needs to review Thinglink": 

If this happens, you will need to set the ThingLink app as 'Trusted' via the Google Admin console. To do this, follow the steps below.

1. Go to Google Admin console and navigate to Security -> Access and data control -> API controls
2. Under 'App access control', click 'MANAGE THIRD-PARTY APP ACCESS'
3. Under 'Configured apps', click 'Configure new app'
4. Search for 'ThingLink', select 'Web' and click on the first result:
   
   
5. Under Scope, select either your whole domain or specific organization units. We recommend selecting the whole domain by default:
   
   Click 'Continue'.
6. On 'Access to Google data' step, select 'Trusted':
   
   
7. Review your selections and confirm by clicking 'Finish'. Once this is done, your users should be able to sign in to ThingLink. You can also follow these steps to set up both iOS and Android devices.

See this blog post from Google on why this is required: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com/2023/08/third-party-app-access-enhancements-for-google-workspace-edu.html