Defining an Integration Use Case

One of the most important parts of integrating with Auth0 is defining what the integration will do and how it will do it. Customers need to understand what problem your integration will solve and how it will go about solving it. This is probably an easy question to answer about your service on its own but, in the context of an identity platform like Auth0, it can be more nuanced.

This guide will help you understand the integration environment a little better and guide you to designing a great integration with Auth0.

Review: What does Auth0 do?

Here at Auth0 we ...

  • Enable easy and secure access to any application.

  • Provide an authentication and authorization service built on open standards like OIDC, OAuth2, SAML, and others.

  • Build an identity platform that exposes the appropriate building blocks targeted to different operators in the ecosystem.

  • Handle our customers' outsourced application security, user centralization, and user management by connecting networks of applications to a single source of identity.

What does your service do?

It's helpful for us to understand what your service is capable of doing and what use cases your customers rely on you to handle. A few questions that can help with framing your answer:

  • Are you a source of user identity?

  • Do you provide data or analytics?

  • Does your service expose a user interface of any kind?

  • Do you increase security? Observability?

Do you target specific industries or customer types?

Auth0 customers span throughout industries like software/tech, financial services, media, to travel and hospitality. we can handle application networks of all types but our main focus is Customer Identity and Access Management or CIAM. More specifically, we focus on B2C and B2B use cases where the goal is to help our customers generate revenue (B2B) and convert more customers (B2C) while making sure we protect our customers at all cost. We work with companies to create integrations that solve CIAM for any use case.

Companies that are a good fit with Auth0:

  • Are striving to change the perception that identity is hard

  • Focus on growing their B2B customers

  • Aim to increase revenue for their B2C customers

  • Don't compromise on security

Does your service do any of the following?

  • Focus on government, medical, eCommerce, or other specific applications?

  • Typically get used at a certain scale or traffic level?

  • Get installed on premise?

What problem(s) does your service solve for your customers?

In a general sense, it's important to know why, exactly, our mutual customers would use your service. Focusing on the problems that your service solves can help us find common ground and understand why an integration would be valuable.

Some examples are:

  • Low conversation rates caused by interruptive security measures like MFA

  • Spam sign ups and content submission

  • Too much or unhelpful log data

How does your service solve those problems in the context of an identity platform?

This is where we start connecting what your service does to the platform we maintain. We handle many different forms of authentication and authorization, all of which flow through a central context. The question here is asking what parts of our service might cause or exacerbate the problem(s) listed above.

A few ideas:

  • Centralized login creates lots and lots of log data that is impossible to monitor manually

  • A central user store makes augmenting a user profile beneficial for all applications in the network

  • Identity verification is easier to provision in one place rather than individually for specific applications

Can you provide a visual representation of how this integration will work?

System and/or sequence diagrams are helpful to explain how your integration is working to our partner technical team as well as our customers.

Are there any limitations to this integration?

Our identity platform enables logging in using a browser, mobile device, CLI, cloud functions, and more. We also gate some features by the type of plan that a customer is on.

Does your service have:

  • Technology limitations of any kind, including OS, language, platform, or devices?

  • Rate limits or payment gateways?

  • Asynchronous processing requirements?

  • Auth0 plan level limitations? See our pricing page for information on specific features.

What's next?

Now that you have a sense of how your service can work with Auth0, you are ready to learn more about Integrating with Auth0.