SSO - Unexpected Login Prompt When Redirecting from App-B (Auth0) to App-A (Cognito) via OIDC Federation

I am new to SSO and trying to integrate SSO from App-B to App-A using OIDC federation, where:

  • App-B uses Auth0 as its Identity Provider (IdP)
  • App-A uses Amazon Cognito as its IdP
  • Cognito is configured to federate with Auth0 as an external OIDC IdP
  • The OIDC connection is working — the correct issuer URL, client ID, client secret, and endpoints from Auth0 are set in Cognito.

Issue:

  1. A user logs into App-B(app-b.com) using App-B’s custom login screen (not Auth0’s Universal Login).
  2. The user then clicks a link from App-B to access App-A(app-a.com).
  3. This triggers Cognito to redirect the user to Auth0 (the configured OIDC IdP).
  4. However, the user is then shown Auth0’s universal login screen (e.g. https://dev-rtzntglnlqlrabap.us.auth0.com/u/login), rather than being seamlessly redirected into App-A.

Expectation:

Since the user is already authenticated in App-B (which uses Auth0 behind the scenes), we expected the SSO flow to proceed without showing the Auth0 login screen again when redirecting to App-A via Cognito.


What We Suspect:

We understand that:


Question:

How should I resolve the issue in this scenario to achieve SSO between App-B (Auth0) and App-A (Cognito), when:

  • App-B uses a custom login screen (not Universal Login)
  • We want users already logged in to App-B to seamlessly access App-A via the federated
  • Auth0 → Cognito flow

App-A’s cognito has little control and we want to make the changes in App-B(auth0) and custom login screen.