Direct Login

ShipEngine partners have the ability to create and manage ShipEngine accounts on behalf of their customers.

In order for one of their customers to access ShipEngine’s discounted carrier rates, they must complete ShipEngine’s Onboarding Element or onboard within the ShipEngine Carrier Portal.

During either process, the customer will need to accept carrier terms, enter billing information, and then fund a balance to pay for ShipEngine’s carrier services.

Direct Login to the Carrier Portal

The ShipEngine Carrier Portal is a special version of the ShipEngine Dashboard designed to let customers of partners complete a branded onboarding wizard or manage carriers and billing information.

The Direct Login feature allows a partner to generate a URL to the ShipEngine Carrier Portal for a specific customer, without requiring them to enter their username or password.

This guide will go through how to generate a link to the ShipEngine Carrier Portal for your merchants.

Generate a Token

To access the ShipEngine Carrier Portal, you must generate an authorization token. This token has a 10 second lifespan so it should be generated just-in-time each time dashboard access is requested.

On-Behalf-Of should be set with the customer account’s API key you wish to create an access token for.

You can specify a parameter at this endpoint that will return a constructed URL that you can use for redirecting. See the “Configure a URL” section below for details.

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POST /v1/tokens/ephemeral&redirect=shipengine-dashboard HTTP/1.1
Host: api.shipengine.com
API-Key: __YOUR_API_KEY_HERE__
On-Behalf-Of: __CUSTOMER_API_KEY_HERE__
Content-Type: application/json

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{
  "token": "eyJ..",
  "redirect_url": "https://dashboard.shipengine.com/api/directlogin?token=eyJ.."
}

Configure a URL

The call to generate a token also generates a URL you can use to redirect your customer to the ShipEngine carrier portal. Use the redirect_to parameter to determine which page your customer will land on by default. You can redirect to the Carriers, Billing, or Onboarding pages. Add the theme_id parameter to this URL before redirecting your customer so they will be directed to a branded experience. Review our Customize Themes with the Partner API page for more details about creating a branded onboarding experience.

Query parameters should be appended to the end of the URL string.

Example:

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https://dashboard.shipengine.com/api/directlogin?token=eyJ..&theme_id=550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000

Default Experience

Below please find a series of screenshots for the default flow for onboarding.

Customizations

The following items can be customized in the onboarding experience for your customers using the Theme endpoint:

We may offer partners additional customization of the ShipEngine Carrier Portal for an additional fee as part of their contractual agreement. Below are some of the bespoke options available: