Launching Voice Verification and the Ability to Change Phone Numbers

by Michael Ducker, Product Manager

Over the past nine months, we’ve been humbled by the support and feedback we’ve received to grow our platform and reach developers all over the world. A big part of that is being able to consistently think about how we can make phone verification better. Our team has thought of different scenarios where end users might experience various use cases to complete their phone verification process. So, just in case your users change their phone number or an SMS delivery doesn’t work, you’ll have another layer of protection, to make sure they get verified. We’re thrilled to say that we’ve recently added both of those capabilities!

Phone number changed? No problem.

We know that a big concern when adopting phone numbers in your app is what to do when users change their number. Don’t worry! Digits manages your entire user lifecycle. Rather than taking on all of this hard work yourself by relying on other APIs, Digits simplifies this entire process for you.

Users can simply visit digits.com and update their phone numbers within their dashboard — on both mobile or web. We recognize you need to know about these changes, so the next time the user launches your app, we’ll notify you in app of the new number. See how to receive session updates on both iOS and Android in our docs.

This is only the first of many phone number change scenarios, and we're excited to support more scenarios in the future!

Phone verification — now via both text and voice

We spend a tremendous amount of time making sure that our global SMS delivery rates are better than the industry standard. When an SMS fails, we’ll now fall back to a phone call for verification.

Instead of having to build a new UI, contract with new providers and handle new services when using REST APIs, the power of the Digits SDK gives you all this for free. Simply upgrade Digits to the latest within your Fabric Mac app / Android IDE plugins to enable voice verification:

We’re starting this an experiment on web and iOS in certain countries, so stay tuned as we open it up to more clients and countries in the near future!

We made some other enhancements in July as well. Here’s our internal changelog:

Infrastructure

  • Added SMS support for telecommunications in China

Web

  • Added support for voice confirmation for phone verification in designated rollout countries

Android

  • Use AuthRequestQueue for all API request to ensure we always have a valid DigitsAPIClient
  • Fixed critical issue where Digits sessions are lost when using Proguard
  • Added Phone number change and Session update notifications

Digits June Update

by Michael Ducker, Product Manager

Now that it’s officially summer, we’re sharing all the “hot” updates we’ve been working on. This month, we focused on optimizing the entire Digits experience for your users -- everything from visual integration to intelligent error handling to new language support.

Text field that perfectly blends Digits into your app

In June we continued to ship upgrades that make Digits seamlessly blend with your UI. Our latest enhancement allows you to launch the Digits flow from a text field -- in addition to buttons -- which gives you even more flexibility to make Digits feel completely native within your app. This is especially powerful for building a phone verification experience to help users fend-off spam or attacks on their accounts.

For example, suppose you've implemented Digits into your "user profile settings" page within your app. Inside that page, it would be ideal to show a phone number text-input field -- instead of a button -- so users can enter their number directly to have their account verified:

     

     

Once the user enters their number, Digits will launch and automatically pre-populate the phone number field within the Digits flow:

With these latest upgrades, you can build an even better phone verification experience that not only blends perfectly with your app's ambience but also makes the process completely seamless for users.

Inline error messaging

One of the biggest pain points customers told us about on iOS was the pop up message they would get when phone numbers were invalid. We heard you loud and clear, and in June we've built out a subtle notification to handle the user input error. Now, when users enter their phone numbers within the Digits flow, they'll know exactly what they need to fix in context:

     

     

Enhanced language support

When we launched Digits last year, we already supported 32 languages with Digits' phone verification flow. Now, your apps' users will see the SMS confirmation code message in their devices' language -- the language that they're most familiar with.

We’ve also fine-tuned our networking and session management functionality. All of these enhancements and upgrades are available in the latest Digits Kit -- so be sure to upgrade Digits in your Mac app / Android IDE plugins today!

Here’s our internal changelog:

iOS

  • Fixed several networking bugs

  • Reduced the network error dialogue

  • Fixed bugs around our session management and token handling

  • Now making fewer network requests because we do basic form field validation client-side

  • Only show the resend confirmation code button after 30 seconds

  • Pin code field is now a password text field

  • Return normalized phone number on signup and login

Android

  • Fixed crash on StateButton for multiple clicks

  • Added a new public API to authenticate method that allows developers to provide a phone number

  • Changed Pin code edit text to password type

  • Return normalized phone number on signup and login

  • Reduced the network error dialogue

  • Fixed bugs around our session management and token handling

  • Fixed a memory leak and rare crash on Android





 

Digits May Update

by Michael Ducker, Product Manager

Taking a break from sipping margaritas in the foggy San Francisco landscape, we’re back to ridding the world of passwords forever. This month, we released Digits as its own kit, open-sourced Digits for Android, added major new customers — and more!

Introducing Digits Kit

Many of you have already adopted the Twitter Kit in Fabric, where Digits previously resided, primarily to access its key features: user authentication via two-step verification, custom social graphs and phone-based sign-in. But we wanted to make it easier to get all of the features and functionality Digits provides in the quickest way possible — as its own kit. That’s why in May, we separated Digits from Twitter Kit so you can install Digits seamlessly with complete flexibility to get the functionality you need. 

Following our long-standing respect for the strong open source mindset that is the basis of Android, we also took this opportunity to open source Digits for Android with its own dedicated repo. For those of you building on Android, you’ll now have complete transparency into our code through the Digits artifact. See our docs for more on Digits Kit or check out the Digits for Android repo. 

Major integrations: Amazon Cognito & Periscope

When Digits first launched, we imagined that brands all of sizes would connect their users all over the world with just their phone number. We’ve seen the likes of Buzzfeed, McDonald’s and Rdio use Digits for sign-in. In May, we were thrilled that Amazon, as well as Periscope (which Twitter recently acquired) have integrated Digits into their services.

For example, Amazon Cognito helps to securely manage and synchronize app data for users across their devices so that apps can work even when those devices are offline. With new, native support for Digits within Cognito, you can easily authenticate users without having to manage passwords or operate any backends. And you can offer your users a very simple onboarding flow. Check out their blog post on how to configure Digits for Amazon Cognito.

On the other side, Periscope integrated Digits into their app just six weeks after they were live in the app store. Now users can now sign in with their phone number, which helps Periscope grow its user base even more. 

 

Here’s our internal changelog:

Digits Core

  • Implemented new binaries, plugins and mac app for Digits Kit split from Twitter Kit
  • Open sourced Digits for Android
  • Shipped support for iPad
  • Improved logging of failures on iOS
  • Added normalized phone numbers to our responses
  • Introduce DGTOAuthSigning to generate OAuth Echo headers for Digits
  • Digits is now a separate framework

API Endpoint

  • Switched endpoint to using api.digits.com
  • Added new endpoint for secure validation of phone numbers

Accounts & Authentication

  • Fixed authentication issues causing user visible errors on iOS
  • Fixed issue affecting Digits verification of some Canadian numbers

Integrations

  • Digits implemented by Periscope
  • Digits implemented by Amazon Cognito

Open Sourcing Digits for Android

by Israel Camacho, Senior Software Engineer

One of our goals for Digits is to build tools that developers love and trust, starting with mobile identity. Long-respecting the strong open source mindset that Android found its roots in, we knew we wanted to strengthen our support of the Android community, and find more ways to help you build amazing apps!

That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’re open sourcing Digits for Android! Now, you’ll have complete transparency into our code through the Digits artifact.

Check out our repo here.

Introducing Digits Kit

By Michael Ducker, Product Manager, Digits

Since launching Digits in October, we’ve been thrilled with the response from the developer community. Digits is now used by some of the largest companies in the world to build an incredible onboarding experience for its users.

We’ve adopted Digits to ease the pain of getting users in developing markets to register. This should greatly improve our numbers!

Based on demand, today we’re splitting Digits out from the Twitter Kit. Now, you can install Digits seamlessly with complete flexibility to get the functionality you need.

We’ve seen many of you adopt the Twitter Kit in Fabric, where Digits resided, primarily to access its key features: user authentication via two-step verification, custom social graphs and phone-based sign-in. We wanted to make it easier to get all of the features and functionality Digits provides in the quickest way possible — as its own kit.

We also wanted to make phone number login more secure. Getting hundreds or thousands of phone number requests from users can be hard to validate. That’s why we’ve rolled out api.digits.com, making it easier to validate Digits tokens. With this, you can trust their phone numbers to build even richer experiences such as custom features built on top of your mobile graph. There’s no work required on your part and you can use the same API key from your existing implementation with Twitter Kit.

For those of you already using Digits, don’t worry — there are no code changes needed. Within the Fabric plugin, simply click “upgrade” next to the Digits Kit and you’ll be up and running with all the code in your app just as it was before.

See our new docs for more on the new Digits Kit. If you haven’t experienced Digits yet, get started today.


Digits: The future of identity

by Michael Ducker, Product Manager, Digits

A few months ago we launched Digits to make the onboarding experience for your app that much better. We wanted app login to be simple: with just a few lines of code, users can sign up for your app with just their phone number.

When it comes to your global growth, this is crucial. Phone numbers are the primary, native identity for mobile users in emerging markets – which now account for over 70% of the world's internet population of 3 billion users*. In those markets, many users only have access to mobile phones, and have never experienced an email and password login system on a desktop.

Digits can help you tap in to these markets with minimal effort. With Digits, you can:

  • Enable users to sign up and log in using their phone number

  • Add friend-finding functionality and two-step verification to your mobile app

  • Grow your mobile graph

  • Solve all of your onboarding and authentication needs with a few lines of code

We’re super excited to help you grow your user base around the world. Digits is currently available in 216 countries and in 32 languages, on iOS, Android and the web. With more features coming soon, you can download Digits here and start growing your user base!