Admin Portal
A first-class, out-of-the-box Single Sign-On and Directory Sync onboarding and management experience for enterprise IT admins.
Introduction
The Admin Portal provides an out-of-the-box UI for IT admins to configure SSO and Directory Sync Connections. Designed to remove friction, custom walk-through documentation for each Identity Provider means that enterprise admins can onboard their orgs without high-touch support from your team. Easy to integrate and fully maintained and hosted by WorkOS, the Admin Portal makes the SSO and Directory Sync setup process simple, fast, and secure.

What you’ll build
In this guide, we'll walk you through the full end-to-end integration of the Admin Portal into your application.
Sign in to your Developer Dashboard account to see code examples pre-filled with your API keys and resource IDs.
This guide will show you how to:
Before getting started
To get the most out of this guide, you’ll need:
- A Developer Dashboard account.
API Object Definitions
1
Before integrating, you must first configure your app’s default redirect link in your Production Project. The default redirect link is where your Admin Portal users will be redirected once their session is complete, unless otherwise specified when generating an Admin Portal link. You can configure your redirect link in the Admin Portal Dashboard.
The redirect link must use HTTPS.

2
WorkOS offers native SDKs in several popular programming languages. Choose a language below to see instructions in your application’s language.
Node.js
Ruby
Go
Python
PHP
Laravel
.NET
Don't see an SDK you need? Contact us to request an SDK!
1. Install the WorkOS SDK of your choice
Command Line
npm install @workos-inc/node
2. Set environment variables
As a best practice, your WorkOS API key should be kept secret and set as an environment variable on process start. The Client ID should also be set dynamically based on the release environment.
Environment Variables
WORKOS_API_KEY='{secretKey}'
WORKOS_CLIENT_ID='{clientID}'
3. Create a new Organization
Each Admin Portal session is scoped to a specific Organization resource, meaning a session is only capable of managing a Connection that belongs to its associated Organization. Organizations may only have one Connection.
For every Enterprise in your application that would like access to the Admin Portal, you must create an Organization and maintain a reference to its ID.
Create an Organization when onboarding a new Enterprise.
Create an Organization
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const express = require('express'); const WorkOS = require('@workos-inc/node'); const app = express(); const workos = new WorkOS(process.env.WORKOS_API_KEY); app.post('/provision-enterprise', (_req, res) => { const organizationName = // ... The name of the Enterprise to provision const organizationDomains = // ... The list of domains the Enterprise uses const organization = await workos.portal.createOrganization({ name: organizationName, domains: organizationDomains, }); // You should persist `organization.id` since it will be needed // to generate a Portal Link. // Provision additional Enterprise-tier resources. });
4. Redirect an IT admin to the Admin Portal
A Portal Link is your enterprise user’s gateway to accessing their Admin Portal. Each Portal Link is generated using an Organization resource ID. Only resources belonging to the specified Organization can be managed during a Portal Session.
In the API call to generate an Admin Portal Link, you will pass an intent
with possible values of sso
for an Admin Portal session to create an SSO connection, and dsync
for an Admin Portal session to create a Directory Sync connection.
For security reasons, Portal Links expire 5 minutes after they’re created, so we recommend redirecting users immediately (i.e. don’t email the user Portal Links.)
The endpoint that redirects a user to the Admin Portal should be guarded by auth in your application and only available to IT admins.
If you’re interested in custom-labeling the Admin Portal, please reach out to WorkOS support.
Redirect to Admin Portal
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const express = require('express'); const WorkOS = require('@workos-inc/node'); const app = express(); const workos = new WorkOS(process.env.WORKOS_API_KEY); app.get('/admin-portal', (_req, res) => { const organizationID = // ... The ID of the organization to start an Admin Portal session for const { link } = await workos.portal.generateLink({ organization: organizationID, intent: "sso", returnUrl: "https://www.example.com" //optional }); res.redirect(link); });
An optional return_url parameter can be used to describe exactly where a user should be sent when they are finished in the Admin Portal. If one is not provided, the default redirect link configured in the Admin Portal Dashboard is used.
3
Subscribe your app to changes in Connections by registering incoming webhooks to receive Connection events.
There is currently no rate limiting on event deliveries.
Event Types
1. Build a webhook URL
Webhooks should use HTTPS and expect to receive POST requests with the following headers:
KEY | VALUE |
---|---|
Content-Type | application/json |
WorkOS-Signature | t=${issued_timestamp} , v1=${signature_hash} |
Below, we’ve provided a few different approaches for implementing a webhook endpoint, each with different use cases based on where you are in the development lifecyle and your application’s needs.
Add a new endpoint to your application server to handle webhook events.
Webhook endpoint
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const express = require('express') const app = express(); app.use(express.json()); app.post('/webhook', (req, res) => { const sig = req.headers['workos-signature']; const { data, event } = req.body; // Verify the signature and process the event res.json(req.body); });
2. Register the webhook
Set and save the webhook URL in the Developer Dashboard so WorkOS knows where to deliver events.

The Webhook Secret is used to verify webhook requests from WorkOS. Be sure to keep the value secure.
Process B: Process the request
Before processing the request payload, verify the request was sent by WorkOS and not an unknown party.
First, extract the timestamp and signature from the header. There are two values to parse from the WorkOS-Signature
, delimited by a ,
character.
issued_timestamp
: The epoch time at which the event was issued, prefixed byt=
.signature_hash
: The HMAC SHA256 hashed signature for the request, prefixed byv1=
.
Extract timestamp and signature
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const signature = req.headers['workos-signature']; const [t, v1]= signature.split(','); const { 1: issuedTimestamp } = t.split('='); const { 1: signatureHash } = v1.split('=');
To avoid replay attacks, we suggest validating that the issued_timestamp
does not differ too much from the current time.
Validate timestamp
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const MAX_SECONDS_SINCE_ISSUED = 3 * 60; // Replace this value with your own limit const currentTime = Date.now(); const secondsSinceIssued = (currentTime - issuedTimestamp) / 1000; if (secondsSinceIssued > MAX_SECONDS_SINCE_ISSUED) { // Reject event }
Construct the expected signature. The expected signature is computed from the concatenation of:
issued_timestamp
- The
.
character - The request’s body as a utf-8 decoded string
Hash the string using HMAC SHA256, using the Webhook Secret as the key. The expected signature will be the hex digest of the hash.
Construct expected signature
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import crypto from 'crypto'; const signedPayload = `${timestamp}.${JSON.stringify(req.body)}`; const expectedSignature = crypto .createHmac('sha256', process.env.WEBHOOK_SECRET) .update(signedPayload) .digest() .toString('hex');
Compare signatures to make sure the webhook request is valid.
Compare signatures
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if (signatureHash !== expectedSignature) { // Reject event }
Once you’ve determined the event request is validly signed, it’s safe to use the event, i.e. the request body, in your application’s business logic.
Make sure you're ready to go live to production by going through this checklist.
You may occasionally receive duplicate webhook events. To prevent duplicate processing of events, we suggest caching received events and implementing logic to skip processing seen events.
Since webhook events may be delivered out of order, i.e. not in the order in which they were generated, be sure to handle accordingly. The issued_timestamp
extracted from the WorkOS-Signature
header can be used to determine order.
Depending on your network architecture, you may need to allowlist incoming traffic from api.workos.com
.
WorkOS currently cannot promise that redirect and webhook traffic will originate from a static set of IP addresses.