Great feature! i love just using single-click
Few months back we added the ability to login to Zoho with your Google and Yahoo! Accounts. It was an instant success as we received good feedback from users and observed more users using Zoho than before.
The approach we started with had its limitations. We used AuthSub interface which wasn't primarily intended for authentication as were requesting permission to access the Contacts from user's Google account. Also, with this approach, you had to grant access to Zoho every time you used your Google credentials to login to Zoho.
Today, Google released Google IDP and we are glad to be part of it. Zoho now uses Google IDP, replacing AuthSub. This means, with this new approach, when you login to Zoho with your Google account, you just authorize Zoho to obtain your email address alone from Google (unlike obtaining the entire contact list in the previous case). More details on this are available in the Google IDP Authorization page.
This new approach comes with an important advantage. As you see in the screenshot above, if you enable 'Allow zoho.com to remember me' option, you can automatically sign-in to Zoho with a single click when you are already signed in to Google. This is a great advantage compared to the previous approach where you had to grant access every time you login with your Google credentials.
We'd like to thank Google for inviting us to participate in this initiative and thank our Zoho Accounts team which has been doing an awesome job under the hood to provide smoother experience to our users. The team has more exciting things coming.
Great feature! i love just using single-click
I take this post, and yesterday's port Re: Microsoft's announcement and the MS-Office business model as a signal that perhaps there is a backstory in the timing of these announcements. I frequent WebMasterWorld.com where such things are discussed by many very knowledgeable online technologists. Related link (a ping of sorts).. http://www.webmasterworld.com/google_toolbar_tools/3776913.htm Go ZOHO go!
The new sign-in process does not work with Google Apps accounts, whereas the previous method did. IDP/SSO is not available for Google Apps Standard Edition, so would it be possible to bring back the prior method as an alternative for Google Apps Standard Edition users? Of course, supporting OpenID would make this moot, as I aready have that too (with 2-factor auth, no less). (grin)
Zoho currently leverages Google's OpenID support which is the recommended way for authenticating Google users. Zoho previously used Google's authsub mechanism which is more suited for authorization purposes for fetching user data like contacts etc. Google apps users can be supported as and when Google OpenID enables support for the same. Regarding OpenID support, Zoho is planning to support OpenID based login for users in a couple of months.
Do you support adding personal IDPs (ala Shibboleth) like Google does to personalize a corporate's login experience.
@ Chris G. Sellers : Thanks for your interest. We do have plans to support other IDPs/LDAP for Zoho Business Organization Users. Will update ... Pandyah ! Zoho Accounts
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