I setup a password reset flow using Azure B2C and local Azure accounts that uses the user's email address and verification code. However, my client would like to have a password reset email sent to the user based on the user name, not email address. The user email would be looked-up behind the scenes and an email sent that would include a link to the password reset page as shown in the flow below.
After reading a gazillion articles on custom Azure B2C policies, I'm struggling to convince myself if it is possible to do what the client is asking for using Azure B2C.
In the sample password reset flow shown below, some of the areas I'm struggling with include:
Is it possible to create custom pages in the password reset flow such as the page in Step 4 that displays the user's masked email address, or the information page in Step 7?
Is there built-in functionality to look-up a user's email address and Active Directory Object ID based on their user name or would I have to call out to a custom Azure Function and use the Graph API to do this?
Is it possible to create and send a custom email that includes a hyperlink to the password reset page that includes the user's Active Directory Object ID as a query string parameter so the password reset page knows which user's password is being reset?
At the moment, it seems like it would be easier to create a completely custom ASP.NET MVC app to handle the requirements than it would be to use Azure B2C custom policies, but that isn't really a path I want to go down.
Is it possible to create custom pages in the password reset flow?
Yes you can create your own custom password reset user flow using azure active
directory B2C
In your case if you want to figure out your custom page you could
refer here
Is there built-in functionality to look-up a user's email address and
Active Directory Object ID based on their user name or would I have
to call out to a custom Azure Function and use the Graph API to do
this?
Using Microsoft Graph REST API you could fetch your user
information.
In your case you could use
List users
Get a user
To access user information you could also refer here in a great
details
Is it possible to create and send a custom email that includes a
hyperlink to the password reset page that includes the user's Active
Directory Object ID as a query string parameter so the password reset
page knows which user's password is being reset?
You can use the company branding feature to customize the
content of verification emails for resetting password.
Note : For better clarity you could check the Azure AD B2C: Frequently asked
questions (FAQ) before final work around Which definitely guide you to
define ultimate go ahead.
Update
As per Microsoft document right now you cannot create according to your sample exactly. See the screen shot there is and important remarks.
Thank you.
This GitHub project covers the case you describe. Still needs a lot of understanding about custom flows to get it working.
https://github.com/yoelhor/aadb2c-verification-link
Related
Hoping someone can shed some light on the following matter;
I got an Angular & .Net core Web API application that uses Azure B2C to authenticate users.
User accounts are created by the users themselves via the signin/signup custom policy or administrator can create accounts via the app using the Graph API.
Due to the requirements, the app uses usernames (as opposed to email addresses) to log into the application. So far I've managed to get everything working except for the following scenario:
When an account is created via the Graph API, the owner of that account cannot reset the account's password. The error is "An account could not be found for the provided user ID".
This isn't the case for accounts that get created via the custom signup policy so I did some comparison and found that for those account that get created via the Graph API, the Email is missing (which can be found under User -> Authentication Methods). I looked at populating that field, but it appears the "Mail" attribute is 'read only' (not sure if that's the right attribute anyway).
At the moment I'm having to manually set the email via Azure so those account's passwords can be reset by their owner if necessary. This is obviously not ideal and wanted to see if there is anyone that might have gotten around this issue, or a least get confirmation that this is indeed a limitation of the Graph API.
Thanks in advance for your help
So I managed to get this working using the approach outlined by Jas Suri. These are the steps that I went through
Created a custom attribute in my B2C tenant to hold the account email address
Included the custom attribute claim type (extension_emailAddress) as well as the strongAuthenticationEmailAddress in the TrustFrameworkBase.xml
Updated my apps's custom policies to include the technical profile for local account discovery. I basically just copied the necessary bits and pieces from here
Updated the local account discovery to perform the comparison against the extenstion_emailAddres instead of strongAuthenticationEmailAddress.
Added an extra step to the Sign up user journey so that the value in strongAuthenticationEmailAddress is copied to extension_emailAddress
Updated my Web API / Graph API "create user" function so that it sets the extension_appidguid_emailAddress
That's it. Now it doesn't matter how the account gets created, the email address will be stored in the extension attribute and the password reset will be able to find the account using that attribute.
happy to provide more details if anyone comes across this.
The problem is as you’ve identified, the Sign Up policy uses the strongAuthEmail attribute to store the verified email for a username based account. The Password reset policy will use this to verify the user owns the username. When creating the user with graph api, you can’t populate this field, it’s not exposed. The only option is to use a custom policy which stores this secure email in an extension attribute, and your graph api created users can then also target the same attribute to allow the stars to align.
Mail attribute is not the same as the Email under Authentication Methods, and currently there is no such graph api to set the Email value under Authentication Methods.
By the way, there is no need to create Azure AD B2C user for a user as users can sign up themselves.
How is it possible to pre-create users programmatically (via Graph-API) and have a same mail address configured for them to be used along with the password reset user flow?
I figured that the signInNames mail or StrongAuthenticationUserDetails mail attribute are being used with the standard flow. BUT, signInNames are unique and StrongAuthenticationUserDetails (Authentication contact info: Email) is not editable via Graph API as of now.
Any idea how to accomplish the scenario above without developing our own password reset flow?
I assume the scenario is creating user by invitation, where customer changes their password after first login.
Here is the sample for doing that
https://github.com/azure-ad-b2c/samples/tree/master/policies/invite
If you want to use the user flows,
You can create a user account as mentioned below, and then set the password reset user flow link to them. But then you will need to ask your customers to update profile as well, so that you know more about them.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/active-directory-b2c-devquickstarts-graph-dotnet?tabs=applications#create-consumer-user-accounts
I maintain an app where we use Azure AD B2C to authenticate.
The flow is this:
Users are invited by email
They click a link to sign up using a B2C signin/signup flow
They fill in their info, including email address
They are redirected to our app
Now, what bothers me is that the users have to enter in their email address, even though we already know it. We just invited them using their email address.
It has been suggested that we could send people to a password reset page instead. But that doesn't seem ideal either, since they then have to verify their email address, even though we just verified it. After all, they started the flow by getting an email.
In many cases the users mis-type their email address when they are asked for it. That creates a lot of new issues, because we now have two different email addresses for the same users.
Similar question already answered # How to pass email suggestion to Azure AD B2C SignUp page. Answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/56503578/341185 describes how to send invitations.
Alternate approach using Javascript in custom policies
You can use custom policies along with Javascript to show email of the user in email address text box.
Approach:
While sending invitation link, send an extra query parameter like &email_hint=azureb2ccustomer#b2clogin.com and follow below steps to show this email_hint value in email address text box
Steps:
Enabling Javascript in custom policies https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/javascript-samples
Change page contract to allow custom policies to run javascript https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory-b2c/page-contract
Update SignupOrSignin user journey to directly take to SignUp page https://stackoverflow.com/a/56503494/341185
Update your blob HTML page to read query parameters and put the value inside email textbox
var urlParams = new URLSearchParams(window.location.search);
document.getElementById("email").value = urlParams.get('email_hint');
Click here for example request
Add your comments if you still require any other kind of approach than described above to fit into your business model.
If you want to use custom policies, you can use the flow for password reset that has:
&client_assertion_type=urn%3Aietf%3Aparams%3Aoauth%3Aclient-assertion-type%3Ajwt-bearer
&client_assertion=JWT
This puts the email address in a JWT so the user does not have to enter it.
I have 2 questions:
As per the client requirement, while Sign Up using Azure B2C UI flow (signInNames – Type is userName), user should get suggestions for username once they entered some value in username field(on the basis of existing usernames in B2C AD).
How we can achieve this functionality?
Note: I am using B2C built in Sign Up policy.
Other requirement is that multiple user can have same Email Id (as we are already using signInNames – Type : userName ).
So once user enters the email Id and if that email Id is already associated with other username(s), we need to populate the list of usernames associated with the email. How we can achieve this functionality?
Any help is very much appreciated, I actually got stuck so please offer any suggestion.
You mean the "email address" property, right, not the actual email messages? If so, you should be able to use the /users endpoint: https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/docs/api-reference/v1.0/api/user_get
What is the resource you want to access via the access token ? If resource is https://graph.windows.net/,you could use Azure AD Graph API to get the email information of the signed-in user :
GET https://graph.windows.net/me?api-version=1.6
Authorization: Bearer yourAccessToken
If resource is https://graph.microsoft.com/,you could use Microsoft Graph API to get the email information of the signed-in user:
Get https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/me
Authorization: Bearer yourAccessToken
In response you could check UserPrincipalName claim value which is an email address that can receive emails.
For the username suggestion part, if you are talking about when you fill out the username form field and the chrome/IE box pops up above, that is cached at the client and you can't do that. If you are talking about the user tries to register with a username that is already taken and you want to give them suggestions you may, but I doubt it, be able to do it in a custom policy. More than likely, however, you would need to use a custom web application to do that as that is more of an advanced sign in journey.
The second part of your requirements would also need to be fulfilled within a custom web application as well, you can retrieve and access AD items within the custom user journey's but again this is more of an advanced sign in journey.
I am using username for the identity provider for local account.
When an user forget their username, is there a out-of-box policy that handle the username recovery? Or I have to implement it my own?
If I implement my own, as sign-in policy doesn't have UI customization that I will not be able to add a link for "For get your username" to redirect the user to my code to retrieve their username. Is there a way adding links on the Sign-In page?
There is no out of the box policy for forgotten username. It seems a nice feature though. But I anyway enforce usage of e-mail as username. And frankly, the way to implement this is a bit of a tricky.
You can first get (and confirm) users e-mail address which is registered with the AAD B2C. You have to send him/her an e-mail with a code to make sure that he/she owns the e-mail. Once you get e-mail confirmation, you can query the Graph API for the list of users and search for the provided e-mail.
As for providing link - you can have fully customized "Sign-in or sign-up" policy, where you can put the link. You need to use the special sign-in or sign-up policy, because currently it is the only one that allows for full user experience customisation.