Monday.com Answers: what is oauth & what is a token?

Integrations are an amazing way to get all of the platforms you use connected to monday.com and working for you (and not the other way around)! If you’re curious about how we connect with other apps, I’m going to share a bit about authorization methods in this post.

There are two different ways to authorize an integration to work with your monday.com account: OAuth and by using a token. Depending on the application you’re trying to connect with, you’ll use one of these two methods.

OAuth
Here’s a quick overview of OAuth. OAuth is a simple way to grant monday.com the ability to access other websites or applications. For example, OAuth is used to connect to Gmail and Outlook.

When you go to the Gmail integration and select a recipe, you’ll see a prompt to “Connect” your account:

When you click “Connect” you will be redirected to a page asking you to Sign in with Google. You can choose an account that’s already logged in, or “Use another account”:

When you click on the account you want to use, you’ll be redirected back to monday.com to set up the rest of the integration.

Outlook has a similar process. You’ll first click “Connect”:

Then you’ll be asked to sign in to your Microsoft account:

Each OAuth process will look slightly different based on the application you’re connecting.

Tokens
As for token-based integrations, they may seem a touch more complicated to set up, but they are equally secure. Token-based authentication allows you to verify your identity and then obtain a unique token. A token is a sort of hall pass. As long as it’s valid, monday.com will be able to access data on the token’s application.

Jira is a great integration to look at as an example. When you try to add a Jira recipe for the first time, you’ll be asked to enter your email address, token, and subdomain:

The “i” icon to the right of the field where you would paste the token gives instructions on how to locate a Jira token:

In this case, you would go to Jira, click on your profile avatar, select account settings, then security, and then create and manage API tokens. From there, create an API token. Copy and paste it into the “Token” field on monday.com.

As with OAuth, the process for collecting a token will always be slightly different based on the application.

To learn more about setting up integrations on monday.com, visit our Help Center and search for the integration you wish to connect with!

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