Today we’re announcing new functionality for Papyrs: integration with Active Directory and Sharepoint with Single Sign-On (SSO), based on LDAP. After a trial period with a small number of customers we’re now going to offer LDAP integration to all Large Plan subscriptions and above. Many organizations already have an internal network and from today on Papyrs can integrate seamlessly with the Windows network already in place.

Papyrs integration consists of four parts:

1. Easily add people from your existing network to join Papyrs.
2. Synchronize contact information from your existing windows network to Papyrs.
3. Active Directory Authentication — users can log in to Papyrs with their existing username and password.
4. Single Sign-On — automatically log on to Papyrs from computers in a Windows Domain, using their Windows username and password.

This has a number of great benefits:

• Adding a large number of people to Papyrs has never been easier. It just takes two clicks. All their contact information (including name, email address, phone number) will be synchronized automatically so you don’t have to fill out the contact information twice.
• Users can log in without a username or password, so there’s nothing to forget. For as long as their computers are trusted by the Domain Controller (which is entirely under your control) they can access Papyrs and otherwise they’ll be shut out.
• Single Sign-On greatly improves adoption and internet engagement rates. An intranet that isn’t in active use reaches only a fraction of its true potential.
• You can keep inviting guests and other external users. Papyrs can mix and match different login systems for different users.

How does it work?

Papyrs connects to the LDAP server every night to update the list of users in the Windows network. Administrators of a Papyrs account can add those users to Papyrs (or allow users to invite themselves to the Papyrs group) and contact information for these new users is pulled from the Active Directory. When users log in to Papyrs the Active Directory server is contacted to verify the user is permitted to log in, and if so access to Papyrs is granted. If needed, Papyrs can work with multiple active directory servers.

For more details (and more screenshots) take a look the Papyrs for Windows Networks documentation.

Papyrs and Google Apps

Papyrs already integrates with Google Apps and offers Google Apps Single Sign-On as well. This works in combination with the new LDAP integration. Read more about the benefits of combining Papyrs with Google Apps.

Questions?

No matter how easy we try to make it, integration between different networks is always pretty complex. There are many buzzwords involved that sometimes raise more questions than they answer. So if you have any questions or if you’re not sure if Active Directory integration makes sense in your situation just contact us Papyrs Contact Form or at team@stunf.com.

That’s it for today. More updates coming soon!

This is just a quick announcement for new users. If you’re already using Papyrs, nothing is changing.

Google has recently updated their Marketplace for Google Apps, and we’re happy to announce Papyrs is amongst the first apps to be available in the new store.

If your organization is using Google Apps and wants to give Papyrs a try, you can access the Marketplace in the Admin Console, and install Papyrs from there. You can also read more about all the integration between Google Apps and Papyrs. Not using Google Apps? Of course you can also sign up without.

Just like before, Google Apps users can access Papyrs directly from Google’s navigation bar:

We’ve been getting a lot of requests from people if we can help them move their data from Backpack to Papyrs. Last year the people behind Backpack decided to start phasing it out (also see Why Backpack is getting phased out), so naturally a lot of people are looking to move to other products that are still in active development.

Today we’re launching Import from Backpack. A one-click way to transfer all your Backpack Pages directly into Papyrs (well, technically three clicks).

Page comparison: A Backpack Page Imported to Papyrs

As you can see in the image Below – Pages are imported pretty accurately! Papyrs imports Notes, Headers, Itemized Lists, links, and so on.

A Backpack page   —   Now in Papyrs (right)

So how does it work?

It’s pretty simple! First you go to Settings > Import from Backpack. Then you’ll get a page that will look much like this:

1. Log in to Backpack. Click on “Settings” in the top right corner
2. Click on “Export”
3. Save the link “Export your data to XML format” to disk. You’ll get a file “export.xml”
4. Log on to your Papyrs account and go to Settings > Account > Import From Backpack
5. Click on “Browse” near the bottom of the page and select “export.xml”, the file containing your Backpack data.
6. Click “Preview Import”. Here you can check if you want to import these pages into Papyrs.
7. You’ll get a list of Pages that can be imported into Papyrs. Only you and other administrators will be able to access the newly imported pages. Click “Import!” and after a moment (or a few moments if you have a lot of data) all pages have been imported into your Papyrs account.
8. If the Pages didn’t get imported right or if you want to get rid of the pages for another reason, just click on “Undo Import” (see picture) to delete the imported pages.

Limitations

Unfortunately we can’t import everything from Backpack. This is because Backpack’s XML export function is somewhat limited. Backpack doesn’t export all comments, doesn’t export permission settings, doesn’t export user information, doesn’t export writeboards, nor Journal information. Even images and attached files are sadly not exported from Backpack. And we can’t import to Papyrs what Backpack doesn’t export.

That’s it. Happy importing!