Astra OAuth Generator

Introduction:

Astra is excited to announce the release of the Astra OAuth Generator, a dynamic tool for generating authorization parameters and for viewing and interacting with Astra’s SDK. 

OAuth is a modern and secure authentication protocol, giving you the ability to authorize an application to use or interact with another application on your behalf, without the need to share passwords. Astra uses OAuth, which enables end-users to authorize our customers’ applications to use Astra in order to orchestrate money movements on their behalf, while simultaneously verifying the authenticity of the end-user. 

If you’d like to learn more about the specifics of Astra’s OAuth flows, please reference the Authorization chapter in our documentation.

Astra’s Web Application:  

With Astra’s Web Application, fintech developers can effortlessly embed Astra’s flows in their mobile and web applications. Our web application handles a variety of flows from collecting an end-user’s authorization, to prompting an end-user to upload documents to verify their identity, to linking bank accounts and debit cards. While ultimately a simple user experience for an end-user and one of the many factors that enables Astra to reduce fraud by 1000x, managing all of the different states, actions, and related edge cases can be a complex web of query string parameters and URLs for the fintech developer to coordinate. The table below breaks down how each object, status, and action type combination yields various web application flows. Astra’s OAuth Generator takes the pain out of having to coordinate and build each URL.

Optimizing the Developer Experience: 

Having an intuitive API and clear documentation is critical when onboarding new customers. There is always going to be a learning curve and some developers have more experience with APIs than others. We strive to make our API as simple to understand and integrate as possible. 

Astra prides itself on how quickly customers can integrate with us. What typically takes months when integrating with 3rd party providers or when “rolling your own” as they say, it can take as little as a week when integrating with Astra due to the simplicity of our API design. We’re always looking for ways to shave off a few seconds, minutes, hours, or days of integration work. Over time we noticed that developers were struggling to see the full scope of functionality that our OAuth module and web application offers. However, we understand it can be a bit difficult to digest all the possible user flow permutations and the order in which they occur without something tangible and interactive. In some cases, we found that developer and customer success teams were sending end-users correct URLs, but for the wrong User status, or they were sending URLs with missing query string parameters. Manually constructing OAuth and web application URLs is prone to human error, and creating URLs without a clear understanding of what an end-user is going to experience can lead to end-user and customer frustration.

The Solution: 

In an effort to save time, reduce complexity, and decrease integration timelines, we developed the OAuth Generator: a powerful and simple-to-use tool that generates OAuth and web application flow URLs for all use cases and provides the ability to interactively view the corresponding flow in our embedded Web App. This not only reduces the potential for human error by removing manual URL creation, but also provides a view of the exact flow an end-user will experience. It’s a great tool for learning about the various flows we support and how end-users engage and navigate through them.

The Specifics: 

To use the OAuth Generator: 

1. 1. Navigate to your Production or Sandbox Client
2. 2. Click on the OAuth Generator in the Resources section of the sidebar
3. 3. On the left pane, you'll find the OAuth Links and Parameters section, which allows you to select the action (i.e. Collect Authorization, Submit Documentation, Link Account, etc), and specify additional parameters such as Redirect URIs, the account type (Personal or Business), the User Intent ID, and more 
4. 4. Client ID and Redirect URI are already pre-populated to match your client profile
5. 5. As different parameters are updated, the OAuth Generator will dynamically enable/disable other fields to further assist in directing you through the form while also demonstrating how the parameters work with each other
6. 6. Once all of the necessary parameters have been specified, select Generate at the bottom to produce a URL
7. 7. On the right, you'll find the newly generated URL and a view of the corresponding Web Application flow

Looking Ahead: 

As our product offering expands, so will the capabilities of the OAuth Generator and the tools we provide through the Developer Dashboard. We are always looking for ways to innovate and reduce friction, which allows us to better serve customers and ultimately create the best developer and end-user experiences possible. We love seeing what you build with Astra and hearing how we can make our platform even more useful. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us with feedback through Slack or email. Ad Astra!