News: ownCloud Latch plugin

We have uploaded to GitHub our latest plugin for ownCloud. It makes it easier to use Latch technology with this free software similar to widely used Dropbox. You can download it form here. This is a little “how to” so you can check how easy the integration is.

Admins have to follow the usual steps if they want to protect ownCloud with Latch:

• Create a developer account if they haven´t it.
• Create an application with the features they want.
• Download the plugin.
• Install and configure the plugin in their ownCloud environment.

Steps 1, 2 and 3 are documented on the website of Eleven Paths and step 4 is going to explained in this post.

ownCloud plugin is a zip file, copy its contents to the apps directory of ownCloud.

ownCloud apps directory

After copying the plugin, ownCloud administrator has to access his own account and enabled. To do so, go to the “Apps” section, tap the “+ Apps” button and go to the Latch plugin referenced as “Latch Authentication Plugin”

Enabling Latch plugin

After enabling the plugin, the administrator has to enter the “Application ID” and the “Secret” to the section corresponding to “Latch Configuration” under the “Admin” menu.

Introduce the Application ID and Secret

Latch is now ready to be used and users are ready to pair their accounts. Users with ownCloud accounts have to set their own accounts going to “Personal – Latch Account”. Type the token generated on the phone into the text box displayed on the web.

Introduce the token generated by Latch

A notification will be received on the phone, announcing that the account is already paired.

Notification received after successful pairing

Now the user may lock and unlock access to his ownCloud account and a notification on his phone will be received, warning about somebody trying to access the account

Notification of an unauthorized access attemp

The database

When Latch is installed in ownCloud, ownCloud database is set to store the values needed by Latch. Specifically the oc_appconfig table stores the “Application ID” and “Secret”.

oc_appconfig table with the Application ID and Secret

The oc_ preferences table indicates which user account has been paired with Latch.

oc_preferences table with the users that have already paired their accounts