Killer app that you can't find in the App Library?
 
If you are a school that wants to on-board a cloud app, the best thing you can do is speak to the service provider and ask them to integrate with RM Unify. If you are a paying customer of the cloud app, you have leverage and can ask them to enable SSO from the RM Unify platform.

RM Unify supports international standard SSO interfaces and the app onboarding process is completely self-service for the app vendor - RM will not slow it down! While RM is happy to provide technical support and a level of oversight to ensure the process is secure, the integration tasks are totally in the hands of the app vendor and not RM.

All you need to do is ask the app vendor to read the Getting Started guide on this website.

These are services that are free to use and fall into one of the three categories below:

• Simple web links to open resources on the web.
• Free services that use SSO or the saved password app technology.
• Connectors for apps that you already paid a licence for. This is where RM Unify provides SSO and/or user management services on your behalf, connecting to an existing set of users that you have.

These are a variety of apps that require an annual licence fee. Many of these apps have a free trial option, enabling you to try before you buy. Payment for these goes through the rm.com payment gateway, which can take credit card or send a paper invoice to your institution.

All these apps are properly integrated for user management and SSO, saving your IT team's time and your users from remembering yet another password.

These are apps that do not support single sign-on from RM Unify. Instead RM Unify stores the username and password on behalf of the user and submits them to the app's logon page when you click the tile. This works provided that the app has a simple logon page and we have told RM Unify how to submit the username and password into the text fields on the logon page.

We have configured these apps to use saved passwords because they have not worked with RM to support single sign-on. Unfortunately, this means there are a couple of disadvantages compared with true SSO:

• You still need to manage the users in the app yourself (create the accounts and delete them for leavers).
• You need to distribute the app username/password to users.
• If the app redesigns their logon page, we might need to reactively modify our template for the app.
• In some rare cases, the app changes their logon page so radically that we can no longer support them as a saved password app.

In summary, true SSO is always preferable to a saved password app, but this is a pragmatic solution that gives the effect of SSO for end users. For more information on saved password apps, refer to TEC3698357 in the Other Useful Articles section below.

The UK Access Management Federation (UKAMF) is operated by Jisc and provides access to online resources and services for education and research. Many of the services available on this framework are targeted at FE and HE, but there are some great services for schools as well.

Key points about UKAMF apps:

• Consider the UKAMF a gateway into a wealth of resources where RM Unify just facilitates that SSO.
• RM Unify have created an app tile for each service on the UKAMF, making it easy to direct your users to a UKAMF service by adding the tile to the Launch Pad.
• Some services may be private, where access is restricted to only specific institutions on the UKAMF.
• Some services may require you to organise separate licensing, for which there may be a cost.
• RM Unify does not proactively check the status of all UKAMF apps and makes no commitment about their availability.

You can find out more about the UKAMF here: https://www.ukfederation.org.uk/.