What is Connect Sessions?
With the Connect Sessions API, you can easily integrate Connect into your app or website with just a few lines of code. By creating a new Connect Session, you can seamlessly redirect users who are already logged into Connect through your app, where they'll be automatically authenticated and directed to a specific flow or feature.
Using Connect Session always requires a customer to have some kind of backend service, and to be able to authenticate users.
Please see the API documentation for Connect Sessions here.
With Connect Sessions, you can choose which parts of Connect you want to surface. By only creating Connect Sessions with the Intents you want to use, you will give your users access to those Connect features, and nothing else.
What if you can't authenticate a user?:
Unauthenticated Connect Sessions are a special kind of session that are available for use when you can't authenticate a user yourself. In these instances, Connect will ask the end user to log in by providing a verification code that's sent to their email address.
While we do support these unauthenticated Connect Sessions, they still require you (as the direct Gigs customer) to have a server for these sessions to be created on.
But what if you don't have a server at all? Wouldn't it be great if all Gigs customers could use the benefits of Connect Sessions? Now they can, with Connect Link.
Connect Link:
Since Connect Link is a newer feature, all intents are not available quite yet.
Currently, "Create New Subscription" is the only intent available in the 1st iteration.
Connect Link allows you to use the benefits of Connect Sessions with only needing to write minimal to no code. It's a publicly accessible link that you can use to redirect your users. Once clicked, your users will sign in, and then Connect Link creates the Connect Session for you.
You, as the provider, can create a Link in Dashboard. You can then specify everything Connect Sessions supports, including where to redirect to after the user completes the flow, and optional intent properties (like a pre-selected voucher code or a plan). A Link is then generated, which would look something like this:
Once the Link is clicked:
When a user clicks on the Link:
The user will need to login, e.g. with a social login or magic email login.
Connect Link creates a Connect Session.
The Session will then work as a regular Connect Session.
The next time the user clicks on the Link:
Connect Link will remember that the user already logged in and asks them to continue with the same account.
The user can skip the login and Connect Link will proceed to create the Connect Session. The Connect Session will also redirect the user into Connect.
Implementing a Link:
A Link is a simple URL – and you can do a lot with them!
Add the link to your website
Add the link into your native app
Use a URL shortener
Which can include branded URLs and URLs used for analytical tracking
Send a link via Chat
Send a link via Email
Embed a link in a QR-Code
Redirect to the link on the server
Disabling a Link:
If you don’t want to allow access to this Link any longer, you can just delete it, and the intent can’t be created any longer.
How Connect Link look in Dashboard:
Example use cases:
Since Connect Link is a newer feature, all intents are not available quite yet.
Currently, "Create New Subscription" is the only intent available in the 1st iteration. The below examples showcase what prime usage of Connect Link is.
Custom Storefront with a website builder:
A provider could build their own storefront with a website builder. They are selling 4 plans, so they create 4 links to checkout a new subscription with the plan. They additionally want to link to Connect Portal, so they create another Link to manage subscriptions.
It’s Black Friday, and they want to temporarily apply a voucher to some plans. So they change the links of those plans and add a voucher code to them. After Black Friday, they remove the voucher from the link.
Only allowing plans in upgrade, but not in checkout:
When it comes to listing plans and their availability, there are often questions: What plans are listed for a user to purchase? Can all active plans be purchased? What if you only want some plans to be used in plan upgrade/downgrade, but not for new subscriptions?
Connect Link can solve this by simply not creating a Link for those plans.