You can use this page to choose the appropriate Turnkey user-login capability for your application and find the related configuration guidance.
Overview
MDriven Turnkey supports several ways to handle how users identify themselves and start a session. Choose the option that matches the way your users access the application:
| Capability | Use it when | What to consider |
|---|---|---|
| SysUserAuthentication package | You want Turnkey users to authenticate with the built-in user-authentication support. | Confirm how users are created, registered, and managed in the environment where you deploy the application. |
| Password Reset package | Users must be able to recover access when they do not know their password. | Password and registration behavior can require server-side attention. See Change password MDriven Server. |
| Hide Password login | You need a login experience that does not expose the password while the user enters it. | Verify the intended login-screen behavior in your application before release. |
| Social login | You want users to sign in with an existing Google, Facebook, or Microsoft account. | Follow the social-login walkthrough in MDriven Turnkey Series, Turnkey Session 6. |
| Simulate login | You need to test the application as a user during development or troubleshooting. | Treat simulated access as a testing and administration concern; verify the behavior appropriate to the deployed environment. |
Choose a login approach
Use the following questions to decide what to implement.
- Do users need to sign in with a username and password managed by the application? Start with the SysUserAuthentication package.
- Must users recover a forgotten password? Add the Password Reset package.
- Do users already have an account with Google, Facebook, or Microsoft that you want to accept? Configure social login.
- Are you testing actions, views, or access behavior as a particular user? Use simulate login according to your development and administration process.
For example, an internal application can use built-in user authentication and password reset. An application aimed at external users can offer social login so that users sign in with an existing provider account.
Configure and test login behavior
Before making the site available to users, work through this checklist:
- Decide which sign-in methods the application will offer.
- Configure the selected authentication support in the Turnkey application and deployment environment.
- Test signing in with a valid user account.
- If password reset is enabled, test the complete recovery path with a non-production user account.
- If social login is enabled, test each configured provider account and the return to the application after sign-in.
- Test the application as users with the access differences that matter to your model. The Turnkey series explains using the logged-in user and AccessGroups in Session 5.
- Review session behavior. Span.TurnkeyTimeoutMinutes covers the Turnkey client timeout setting.
Access and the logged-in user
A successful login identifies the user for the current Turnkey session. You can use that identity when designing which actions a user may access. For an example of accessing the logged-in user and using AccessGroups, see Turnkey Session 5 in the MDriven Turnkey Series.
For example, if an action should be available only to a particular group of users, test both cases: sign in as a member who should see and use the action, then sign in as a non-member who should not have that access.
Password and registration troubleshooting
If you turn user registration back on in MDriven Server and it does not take effect, a server "zap" may be needed. See Change password MDriven Server for the documented note and the related MDrivenServer password guidance.