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Introduction | Yext Hitchhikers Platform
Overview
In order to use OAuth 2.0 as an authentication method to access APIs in the Connectors framework, you must link an account and authenticate with the API’s provider. Any providers you wish to authenticate with that are not supported out of the box can be added as a custom provider. This may include less-used providers, or providers that require a very custom setup, such as using a business-specific authorization URL.
Use this guide to walk through adding a new custom provider and linking your account (or as many accounts as you wish) to then create Connectors using OAuth 2.0 authentication to fetch data.
Recommended Use Cases
As mentioned above, if your data lives within an API that requires OAuth 2.0 authentication, you can4generate a token that we can pass to the API by linking your account to Yext. Although we host a suite of built-in providers to add Linked Accounts, Custom Providers will come in handy when your specific provider is not supported, and you’d like to make an authenticated API call in a Pull Connector.
This may be the case for providers we have not yet heard of, OR for providers that require a unique developer app for every individual’s account (so a generic “Yext” app would not work in this case). Some common providers with an OAuth flow that require this include:
- Shopify
- ServiceNow
- Zendesk
Because the authorization URL and token URL are account specific (i.e. www.yourInstanceURL.service-now.com/oauth_oauth.do is required, rather than using a generic www.service-now.com/oauth_oauth.do authorization URL endpoint) , you’ll need to create your own developer apps in these provider accounts. When you create the app within your provider, you’ll generate a client ID, client Secret, and specific authorization and token endpoints to be provided to Yext.