User Authentication

Authentication with Email Address

Zephr’s ‘Authenticate with Email Address’ function sets a user’s email address as a key unique identifier when they are signing up to your site.

To select this option, navigate to Settings > Identity Management and scroll to the Authentication section, then select ‘Allow Authentication With Email Address’.

Below, locate the text box for setting a notification message for when the email address entered conflicts with the email address of an already registered user. This is the error message that will be shown to users trying to register with an email address that is already taken.

Click Save.

When selected, Email Address will be a default field on your Zephr Registration Forms and will be required when creating a user via a Zephr API call, or within the Zephr Admin Console.

Note, this can also be used in conjunction with the ‘Authentication with Username’ option. When both are selected, a Zephr Registration Form will display a field for ‘Email Address/Username’. End-users will be able to enter either option when registering for your site.

Email Addresses can be edited within a Zephr User Profile by clicking the ‘Change Email Address’ button.

Authentication with Username

Zephr’s ‘Authenticate with Username’ function sets a user’s username as a key unique identifier when they are signing up to your site.

To select this option, navigate to Settings > Identity Management and scroll to the Authentication section, then select ‘Allow Authentication With Username’.

Below, locate the text box for setting a notification message for when the username entered conflicts with the username of an already registered user. This is the error message that will be shown to users trying to register with a username that is already taken.

Click Save.

When selected, Username will be a default field on your Zephr Registration Forms and will be required when creating a user via a Zephr API call, or within the Zephr Admin Console.

Note, this can also be used in conjunction with the ‘Authentication with Email Address’ option. When both are selected a Zephr Registration Form will display a field for ‘Email Address/Username’. End-users will be able to enter either option when registering for your site.

Usernames can be edited within a Zephr User Profile by clicking the ‘Change Username’ button.

Blacklisted Email Domains

Zephr’s blacklisted email domains feature allows you to set a list of email domains which Users are unable to subscribe with.

For B2B companies looking to gather company details, this may be domains like gmail.com or hotmail.com. More broadly, companies wishing to remove the ability for people to subscribe with well known ‘fake email’ domains may wish to restrict users from registering with a mailinator.com or test.com email address.

To add to your email domain blacklist, navigate to Settings > Identity Management within your Zephr Admin Console, then scroll to the Authentication section.

You will see an input box titled Blacklisted Email Domains. Add each domain you wish to blacklist on a new line within this box.

Below this field, add the error message you wish to show users attempting to subscribe with a blacklisted domain. Click Save.

Once saved Users will no longer be able to register with blacklisted domains. Any Users who are already registered via that domain will have continued access to log in to their account.

Require Email Verification

When registering a new User to a site, some companies require email verification as an additional way of authenticating their Users. When switched on, a User who has registered receives an email asking them to verify their email address. Clicking the link within that email results in redirection back to the site, and being logged in.

Having the Require Email Verification feature enabled is required when you want your users to be able to register or login using an Authentication Link within an email (previously known as Passwordless Authentication).

Through Zephr, you can switch this on via a simple checkbox in your Settings. Navigate to Settings > Identity Management within your Zephr Admin Console, then scroll to the Authentication section.

Tick the Require Email Verification. Once ticked, a text box will appear below. In this text box, add the copy you would like displayed to a User when they click register and are sent a verification email. For Example:

We've sent you an email! Click the link in your inbox to complete your registration.

Note: This message will only display when you are using an out-of-the-box Zephr Registration Form. If your registration and login are displayed via a UI Component, you will need to add this logic to the UI Component in order for it to display.

Below the Notification Message box, you will see a field for Authentication Link Timeout (Hours). This field sets the number of hours (between 1 and 24) that an Authentication Token will remain valid for. For example, if this is set to 1 hour, then when a User triggers an Authentication Link email, they will have 1 hour from the creation of the link to successfully authenticate their session.

The Authentication Link Timeout is a required field. If you have chosen to require email verification but set this field to 0, email verifications will not be sent, and your users will not be able to login successfully.

Once you’ve completed these fields, click Save.

Read our Email Templates guide to discover how to review and edit the verification email that is sent to your Users.

Allow Partial Registration

One common use case is for Zephr customers to create end-users via a CRM system. When this happens, there’s often additional information you’d like customers to add or confirm, such as providing an address or setting a password for their account.

Zephr enables this through our Partial Registration option, which creates a user in Zephr, then sends a ‘Complete User Registration’ email to that user to confirm their identity.

To enable this, navigate to Settings > Identity Management within your Zephr Admin Console, then locate the Authentication section. Towards the bottom of this section, you’ll see an option called ‘Allow Partial Registration’.

Once ticked, a field will display called ‘Path for complete registration form’. Here, enter the site path you would like used for hosting Zephr’s ‘Complete Registration Form’. When users click the link in the Complete User Registration email, they will be sent to this path.