What is Cloud Directory?

Enhance security with email verification

To sign up your users, you can use the pre-built email verification flow that comes with Cloud Directory. If you enable email verification on the settings page, the users who sign-up for your app must verify their email. After they signed up, you can allow your users to have limited interactions with your app until they verify their email address.

Allow greater user control with default sign-up and sign-in widget and flows

App ID provides a default sign-up and sign-in widget with pre-built user flows, such as reset password and email verification. By default, Cloud Directory is available to your users through the Login Widget, in addition to Facebook and Google. You can choose which identity providers you want to configure at any time. For more information, see Using the Login Widget.

In the Cloud Directory dashboard, you can configure the level of self-service you want to allow in your application. You can use the Cloud Directory APIs and dashboard to allow users to change their account details and password through App ID's prebuilt screens for those functions. You can update the settings at any time without needing to change your code or redeploy your application.

Brand your app with custom UIs and flows

You can replace the default App ID sign-in and sign-up UIs and flows with customized options to support your brand recognition and policies. For more information, see Branding your app. When a user signs up to use your app, you can customize the flow in various ways. For example, you can add extra fields to the flow (for example, phone number), validate the password length by policy, and accept only specific email addresses or check emails against a blocklist.

You can customize the sign-in flow by configuring the forgot password process.  Additionally, you can enable single sign-on (SSO) to provide your users a smooth authentication experience between multiple web apps. App ID provides SSO for Cloud Directory users. Therefore, if enabled, your users do not need to reenter their credentials every time they sign-in. Instead, users are automatically signed in to any of your apps that are protected by the same App ID instance.

With App ID Cloud Directory, you can make the sign-in flow more secure by requiring multiple authentication factors. With a second authentication factor, you can increase the security of your application by confirming that a user can access their registered email or phone number.

Integrate App ID with your own mail provider

With Cloud Directory, you can send email messages to your users to verify their email address, allow them to reset their password, and more. By default, you can use App ID to deliver the email messages. However, if you choose to define a custom extension point to be called when an email needs to be sent, you can provide a better experience to your users.

For example, by using your own mail provider, you can reduce the chance that your emails get filtered as spam by replacing the default domain with your own recognizable domain. Additionally, you can gain deeper insights directly from your email provider, such as whether your email was delivered and opened. The email insights can help you identify and solve issues since you can track individual messages and see overall statistics. For more information about the custom mail feature, see Use Your Own Provider for Mail Sent with IBM Cloud App ID.