Follow these steps to connect Google Workspace with Productive and enable user provisioning on login.
📌 Recommendation: Open Google Workspace and Productive in two browser tabs. You’ll be copying values between them.
📌 Note: You’ll need to be an admin in both Google Workspace and Productive to complete this setup.
1) Create a custom SAML app in Google Workspace
1) In your Google Admin console, go to:
Apps > Web and mobile apps > Add app > Add custom SAML app
Or, go to Apps > Overview > Web and mobile apps and select Add custom SAML app.
2) Enter the app details:
Name: for example, Productive SSO (so it’s easy to find later)
Optionally, add a description and an app logo.
2) Configure Google Identity Provider details
On the Google Identity Provider (IdP) details screen, you’ll see values that need to be copied to Productive. Keep this screen open.
1) In Productive, go to Settings > SSO and SCIM.
2) In Google Workspace, copy the SSO URL and paste it into Productive under Identity Provider Single Sign-On URL.
3) In Google Workspace, under Option 1, download the metadata file. Open it and copy its full contents.
📌 Important: Some text editors (e.g., macOS TextEdit, Windows Notepad) can hide or collapse XML tags. Copying from them may give incomplete XML, which breaks the SSO setup. To fix:
Open the metadata file in a code editor (VS Code, Sublime, Notepad++).
Copy the full XML and validate it with SAMLtool’s XML validator.
If the validator shows it’s incomplete, reopen in the editor and copy again.
4) In Productive, paste the contents into the Metadata field.
📌 Make sure the field is named Metadata, not Metadata URL.
3) Configure Service Provider details
Back in Google Workspace, configure the service provider values:
1) From Productive (Settings > Single Sign-On):
Copy the Single Sign-On URL (ACS URL) into Google’s ACS URL field.
Copy the Audience URI (Entity ID) into Google’s Entity ID field.
2) Tick Signed response and under Name ID format, select EMAIL. Click Continue to proceed.
4) Configure attribute mapping
1) In Google Workspace, define the following attributes:
First name → App attribute:
first_nameLast name → App attribute:
last_name
2) Click Finish.
5) Enable SSO
1) In Productive, click Enable SSO to save your configuration.
2) In Google Workspace, go to your new app (Productive SSO) and set it to ON for everyone.
📌 Once enabled, any user you add in Google Workspace will be able to access Productive directly from the Google Apps menu, along with the rest of the team.
