# /users/by-external/ not working

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/users-by-external-not-working/57401>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [February 15, 2017, 4:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/users-by-external-not-working/57401 "2017-02-15T04:09:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 8

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**Author:** ![mpalmer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mpalmer/32/45740_2.png) [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)\
**Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 7:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/users-by-external-not-working/57401/8 "2017-02-15T07:34:18Z")

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Is your `external_id` `1`, or is your `user_id` 1? Can you show a dump of your `single_sign_on_records` table? Also, `external_id` is all about using _another_ site as the SSO provider; if you’re using Discourse as the SSO provider, as you stated, you don’t need `external_id` because you’d use the `user_id` from Discourse to lookup the user.

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