Authenticated links give you a way to see data on which Members are accessing your external content in the app. You can then tailor your content based on your Members' preferences.
You can embed existing web content from external systems in the Folder system. This allows Hosts with a web development team to implement additional functionality in the form of web apps.
When Authenticated links are enabled, every time a Disciple community loads content from your external system, it will pass through encrypted data that provides information on which Members is accessing your content.
What do I need to do to set up Authenticated links?
To set up your Authenticated links, simply head to your console and go to the Integrations tab.
From here, you will see the option to generate a token for your authenticated links, please remember to keep this token safe, this is effectively the key to the link between your app and the system you are connecting it to.
When you have done this, you can reaccess the code if you need to at any time from the console. You can also remove it and generate a new one from here if needed.
What do I need to set up each link?
When the configuration is part is complete that you manage the links on a per-folder or link basis, all you need to do is set the link to make it an authenticated link.
All requests for this type of URL will have a _dm query string parameter included, just like this:
https://example.com/?_dm=ac8b52d84194a523ce6f25116109df8cac8b52d84194a523ce6f25116109df8c
The extra param _dm is an AES-256 encrypted JSON object that can be decrypted using your secret key:
{
"id": 1234,
"email": "johnny@example.com",
"link_created_at": "2019-01-01T00:00:00"
}
The link_created_at timestamp indicates the time at which the link was generated/the Member opened the link. This is for security reasons to ensure that link authorisation cannot be held indefinitely.
We have sample code and instructions on how to decrypt the data available in our sample code repository.