fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) and OAuth 2.0

Xero recently launched a beta version of OAuth 2.0 for the Xero APIs for developers building new integrations. OAuth 2.0 is a replacement for the current OAuth 1.0a which works with various app “types”, including partner, public and private. fmAccounting Link uses the private app type – with OAuth 2.0 the concept of “app types” will be going away and all developers will use OAuth 2.0.

Xero’s OAuth 2.0 implementation is built to the industry standard spec for OAuth 2.0, so if you’ve used it before it will be very familiar (we use this in our fmAccounting Link (MYOB AccountRight Edition) solution for the MYOB AccountRight Cloud).

Last month Xero announced that from 2 December 2019 developers will no longer be able to create OAuth 1.0a apps on the Xero platform and that all new apps will need to use OAuth 2.0. We will be releasing a free update to fmAccounting Link in December that supports OAuth 2.0 – essentially this involves changing how the authentication process works (see preview video below). We will have further details on the changes involved if you wish to update your existing integration when we release this update.

One of the additional benefits of the move to OAuth 2.0 is that we can finally remove the plug-in dependency for authenticating with the Xero API that was necessary when using OAuth 1.0a. This has been the reason why we haven’t been able to release a version of fmAccounting Link that runs natively on the FileMaker 16 Platform or higher without requiring a FileMaker plug-in. There are a number of benefits to removing the plug-in dependency, including faster API request processing and the ability to use other clients like FileMaker Go (without being connected to FileMaker Server).

As part of the migration to OAuth 2.0 Xero have announced that existing OAuth 1.0a apps will continue to be supported until at least December 2020, allowing you sufficient time to migrate across to the new platform. This means by December 2020 you will need to update your integration to use OAuth 2.0.

fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) currently supports FileMaker Pro v12 or higher and the native functions and script steps that replace the plug-in calls were only introduced in FileMaker Pro v16, so we will be releasing 2 updates to fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) over the next few months:

1. our first update that we are planning to release in December, 2019 will be for new customers and those who are happy to continue using the plug-in (e.g. if you are using FileMaker Pro v15 or earlier). This will be a free update so all users will have a solution to the OAuth 2.0 migration (we’ve been releasing free updates for fmAccounting Link for over 5 years now).
2. we are also working on an update to fmAccounting Link (Xero Edition) that will not require the plug-in and will require FileMaker Pro v16 or later. As you can imagine this is a massive undertaking (having been through this process for our WooCommerce, Shopify, fmSMS and MYOB AccountRight solutions we know the time commitment involved) and this release will be the first paid update to fmAccounting Link in over 5 years. We will have discounted upgrades for existing customers who also wish to make the transition to a native integration. We are planning to release this update in the first quarter of 2020.

We will be in contact with all existing customers once we have the first free update available and will have further instructions on our website about how to make the transition to OAuth 2.0. If you would like to see how this will look here’s a preview video showing the changes to the authentication – you can also watch this directly on YouTube here.