Improve the user experience for CA Mobile OTP provisioning on mobile devices

Products

• CA Advanced Authentication
• CA Strong Authentication

Issue/Introduction

During ArcotID OTP credential provisioning on mobile phone, an end user needs to input three fields:

• Server URL
• User Identifier
• Activation Code

As the required Sever URL for provisioning a user on CA Mobile OTP is a long string, the required input on a mobile device is error prone and cumbersome.

Environment

• Release: 9.1
• Component: Strong Authentication

Resolution

CA Mobile OTP for iOS and Android supports the linkify feature, which allows the Mail App or Browser to automatically bring up the CA Mobile OTP via a special OTP link. With the information supplied on the OTP link, CA Mobile OTP will automatically fill the 3 required fields. 

For example, if you have the following activation info:

• Server URL: https://my.example.com/iam/im/mobileactivation
• User Identifier: newuser1
• Activation Code: 1234

The OTP link will look like this:
otp://p?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmy.example.com%2Fiam%2Fim%2Fmobileactivation&n=newuser1&c=1234

1. Once the OTP link is ready, the link can be sent to the end user via Email.
2. After receiving the email on Mobile device (such as iPhone), the end user just clicks on the OTP link and the CA Mobile OTP will automatically bring up CA Mobile OTP App with all the 3 fields populated.

Additional Information

Email App on some Android 4.x version does not support the OTP link properly. A workaround for such devices would be a HTTP link provided via email, the HTTP link points to a JSP/PHP page which would automatically redirect the browser to the OTP link, in this case the browser on Android will bring up the CA Mobile OTP with the fields populated.