Creating a Seamless Login Experience
One way to improve the user experience as users go from your website/portal/application to the crunch application is to hide the authentication steps and log the user into Crunch automatically without having to enter a username or password.
The hooks Crunch offers to enable this include:
- OAuth authentication: By default, Crunch users enter a password to access the Crunch application. However, if the user's company uses Google Apps or the user's email account can use Google/Gmail as an OAuth provider OR you as a partner can act in the role of an OAuth provider, then Crunch can log the user in without needing to enter a password. For more details on how to set up the partner's OAuth provider, see the Set up partner OAuth provider article.
- SAML authentication: SAML is a widely adopted enterprise solution that improves user experience by only requiring users to sign in once to access multiple applications. For more details on how to set up the partner’s SAML provider, see the Set up partner SAML provider article.
- One-click login: By default, Crunch users enter their email address to identify who they are, but if your website/portal/application already knows who the user is then you can embed their email address when you link to Crunch and the user can then log in without having to enter their email address. To use one-click login, simply link users from your website/portal/application to the crunch application adding the email address to the query string like this:
<a href="https://your-domain.crunch.io/authentication/login?email=user@company.com">Go to Crunch</a>
- One-time passwords: If you as a partner prefer to maintain total control over a user's crunch access, you can keep the account email address and password to yourself and generate one-time passwords to log the user into Crunch automatically. For more detailed information about how to set up one-time passwords, see the One-time passwords article.
By employing one-time passwords, SAML, or OAuth+one-click login, customers can link directly from your website/portal/application to the Crunch application without having to enter a username or password.
Here's how it works:
All routes shown above work, but the highlighted routes indicate the most seamless ones with the least amount of user interaction.