Authenticating from a website, directly into CollectiveX
So, one of the challenges I'm faced with at the moment, is that I have a bunch of users in a Joomla Based website, who have failed at creating an online community, primarily because of the built-in Joomla Tools that have been used.
What I'd like to be able to do, is allow registered users of my Joomla Website, to automatically be logged in, when they visit a CollectiveX Group site.
Is there any mechanism that might allow for us at some point to be able to integrate the CollectiveX authentication with the authentication on our own websites, be they Joomla, Drupal, or any other CMS based system??
Even if it's just an open API, that allows us to create our own authentication mechanisms, I'd love to know if there's anything in the pipeline, or any interest from other users to be able to integrate at such a level..
The main reason for doing this, is to be able to add custom surveys, and custom content on the website, which is available to registered users, and to then be able to extend that content piece into a social network - but instead of creating all the social networking functionality, it would be great to just be able to use everything that CollectiveX has created so far.
Thanks
Farhan
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Farhan,
Authentication with other websites is something that users have expressed interest in having. Most are interested in enabling existing members of their current website's members only area to be able to login to their CollectiveX-powered Groupsite without having to enter new login credentials. Is this what you are requesting?
The challenge is... some sites authenticate with "username" and password, others like CollectiveX use "email address" and password. How would you envision a CollectiveX API solving this problem? It is also important that users be aware that they have a CollectiveX account even if they automatically get one as a result of having a shared password with another website.
What are your thoughts?
Regards,
Clarence
Hey Clarence...
That's exactly what we're after too...
Interesting challenge... One possible solution that I can think of is as follows..
On the Paid and Enterprise versions, have the option to Allow External Authentication to the groupsite. Clearly, for someone with many sites, you may want to have a central authentication page for them to work from.
Then, developers can use the default CollectiveX authentication, or they can create their own "custom" connection, where they can use a username, but have that associated with an email address, so that the first time the user logs in, it passes their email address, with the username, and then after that it can use just the username and password. You could also create an intermediate page, that gets displayed upon login, that requests additional info when people first visit the CollectiveX group.
Under a custom connection, the developer can map each CollectiveX field name, to the incoming field name they want to use, with email, and password being required, but then letting the developer have an internal username, that's associated to an email address.
With regards to letting people know they've joined CollectiveX, perhaps you can have a customisable email that gets sent out to the user, after the first time they login, with some key basic information, but also which allows the owner of the site to add a more personal message, into the basic templated form, like have a basic welcome message with optional paragraphs that can be overwritten by the manager of the groupsite.
I suppose you'd also want to look at having some basic "connector" plugins, for example, for OpenID, and perhaps some of the more popular cms's that people might use, i.e. Joomla, or Drupal, or Plone (or let developers write a custom plugin to connect, and then have that in the drop down list, of existing connection types)...
You may also want to allow managers to "import" users, if they want to have a seamless integration for their existing user base... In which case, would it be a problem if people didn't know they were using Collective X??
I suppose, depending on if you show the "powered by CollectiveX" at the bottom of every page or not, it could potentially be invisible to the user, but then if they visited CollectiveX.com, and went to create a new account, it could just email them letting them know that they're already a member, and listing which groups they belong to.
I think it's nice to be able to use the tool, without necessarily having the CollectiveX branding on it, especially if people want to use their own branding, and create a seamless integration. Then the only way people would know that it's powered by CollectiveX, would be when the try creating a login, and find out that they already have a login..
What do you think?
Best wishes
Farhan
Farhan,
Yesterday, we finalized and released the specs for our Enterprise single sign-on API (available for enterprise customers only). It should work well for integration into your Joomia-based website. However, you must become an enterprise customer before we extend you an API-key for integration.
We look forward to working with you. :-)