Reading for the people who have to make it work
Written for registrars, IT leads, editorial managers and research administrators. Every guide comes out of a real rollout, which is why they include the parts that went badly.
The audit that precedes single sign-on: counting the systems nobody owns
A multi-campus institution believed it ran nine platforms. The inventory found twenty-three, including four that held student data and two that had no named administrator. This is how the count was done and what the finding changed about the rollout order.
- The three questions that surface shadow systems faster than a software audit.
- Why the platform with the fewest users was connected second, not last.
- A one-page inventory template you can take into your first meeting.
Six pieces worth an afternoon
SAML or OIDC: choosing the protocol your directory will still support in five years
Both work. The decision usually comes down to who administers your directory and whether external reviewers need access. A plain comparison, with the failure modes of each.
Seven roles cover most institutions. The eighth is where the argument happens
Researcher, educator, student, reviewer, bursar, registrar, administrator. Then somebody asks about visiting fellows, and the model has to hold. How to decide without ending up with forty roles.
Keeping double-blind review blind when identity is centralized
Shared identity and anonymous review are not in conflict, but the implementation matters. What the reviewer sees, what the editor sees, and where the boundary is enforced.
Building the business case: what 38% off tool spend actually consists of
Retired licences are the smallest line. The bigger savings sit in reconciliation hours, password reset tickets and the integration work you stop commissioning every year.
Nobody thanks you for one login. Here is what they notice instead
Users rarely praise centralized access directly. They report that fees clear faster and that they stopped emailing the office. Which adoption signals are worth tracking in the first term.
Two student records, one person: reconciling duplicates before you connect anything
Most institutions carry duplicate identities across systems. Merging them after single sign-on is painful. A sequence for finding and resolving them first.
Documentation, in the order you will need it
Written for the team doing the work. Each guide assumes you have institutional systems already and no appetite for replacing them.
Platform inventory template
A worksheet for recording every platform, owner, data class and licence renewal date. Start here; everything else depends on it.
Identity provider connection
Step-by-step setup for SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect, including attribute mapping and the claims Akonnect requires.
Role model workbook
Define roles, scopes and delegated administrators, then export the configuration as the access matrix your committee can sign off.
Duplicate identity resolution
Detect and merge people who exist twice across systems, with rules for which source of truth wins on each field.
Pilot and cutover plan
Running one department on multi-platform access while the rest continue as before, and the criteria for widening it.
Audit and reporting reference
What is logged, how long it is retained, and how to produce access evidence for an internal or external audit.
Want the whole set as one document?
We will send the six guides together, with the inventory template as an editable worksheet. Tell us which systems you run and we will mark up the sections that apply to you.
No newsletter subscription, no follow-up sequence.
Frequently asked
Are the guides specific to Akonnect, or usable with any platform?
The inventory template, role model workbook and duplicate resolution guide are platform-neutral and several institutions use them without buying anything from us. The identity provider connection guide and audit reference are Akonnect-specific because they document our own configuration.
Can we cite or reuse this material internally?
Yes. Reuse anything here in internal papers, committee submissions and training material, with attribution to Akonnect. If you need a version with your institution’s branding for a board pack, ask and we will supply the source file.
Where do the figures in the procurement piece come from?
They are averages across four institutions that completed a full rollout, measured twelve months after go-live. Each figure is defined in the appendix, including what was counted as tool spend and what was excluded. We do not publish figures we cannot source.
How often is the library updated?
New material is published when a rollout teaches us something worth writing down, which works out at roughly one piece a month. Existing guides are revised whenever the product changes underneath them, and each carries its last revision date.
Do you offer training alongside the documentation?
Yes. Administrator training runs as two half-day sessions covering provisioning, role based access and the audit trail. End-user sessions are shorter and usually run per department. Both are included from the institutional support tier upwards.
Reading it is the cheap part
If the inventory template turns up more systems than you expected, that is the conversation to have with us next.