One of the major trends in the AEC industry is companies developing elaborate dashboards to help analyze and streamline their BIM workflows. Using BIMcollab’s Connection API makes it simple for developers to access issue data and to visualize issue data and statistical information about those issues.

When developing such a connection, there are two hurdles which need to be taken when it comes to authentication and authorization:

1. Create a special user

It is important to understand that any connection to BIMcollab is authenticated using a user’s credentials. Additionally the data you can then access is restricted to the projects that user is assigned to as well as the roll given in each project. So when creating your connection, it will be necessary to create a special user in BIMcollab and then assign this user to all projects which you will need to access for the dashboard to work.

2. The “eternal refresh token”

As these dashboards are services running on internal servers, needing to regularly authentic using the normal OAUTH method is not an option as this would require human interaction. But because, as stated above, all connections must me based on an actual user, one is limited to the “authorization code” flow. The solution is to request the “eternal refresh token” feature to be switched on. When enabled, the service will only need to authenticate itself once with the BIMcollab space. After that it can make use of the refresh token to authenticate any communication. And as this will never expire there will be no need for any further interaction.

To request having the refresh token enabled for your application or to answer any questions you may have, contact us via the button below.