Single Sign On and SharePoint Online. Why so much re-authentication?

Question

We are migrating to SharePoint Online 2013. Much of the organization is already on o365 for Exchange and Linq.
Most clients are Windows 7 using IE 11.
From what I understand there is an AD to ADFS sync and a custom SSO login page that accepts our enterprise user and passwords.
Looking at this, a few dumb questions:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh852486.aspx
In our organization, authenticating into our desktops and network does not automatically authenticate us into o365, Exchange, Linq or SharePoint Online.   Furthermore, Authetnicating into Exchange and Linq, does not automatically authenticate me
into SharePoint Online.  I can create a map to SharePoint Document library while HTTP authenticated into SPO, but if reboot and log into our network and then Exchange/Linq and attempt to access that map the SPO library I get an error.  If I then
authenticate into SPO, the map works again.
These are all MS products and technologies.  Are these gaps in SSO normal and expected or are these limitation in our organization?
What would it take to seamlessly have access to SPO resources automatically after authenticating into our AD network?
Any chance MS SSO can work like a ChromeBook login, where all Google resource are automatically available without prompt for authentication?

Answer 1

The problem is that the cookie/token for SPO expires. You need to periodically login there to renew it. Using a smart link to authenticate directly to SPO and get a persistent cookie will help:
http://samhandle.no/2014/06/24/sharepoint-online-with-webdav-and-sso/
You will still have to open SPO even with the above setup, but a lot less frequently. If you keep running into issues with mapped drives, refer to this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2616712