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Users

ZITADEL differs two different types of users:

  • Users (Humans)
  • Service Users (Machine Accounts)
User types

A human user has an email address and a password, and can additionally save information about phone, nickname, gender, language. A service user only has a name and a description aside his username.

A service user can be authenticated with JWT profile or Personal Access Tokens. Both methods can specify an expiry. A human user can authenticate itself with his password, add multiple factors for additional security, and enable passwordless authentication.

Service users are primarily used to gain access for a backend service or iot device. The fact that service users can also be ZITADEL managers is used to restrict access to specific projects or organizations. To get an understanding on how service users are used, take a look at our NextJS B2B Demo application.

Create User​

To create a new user, go to Users and click on New. Enter the required contact details and save by clicking “Create”.

Add Human

After a human user is created, by default, an initialization mail with a code is sent to the registered email. This code then has to be verified on first login. If you want to omit this mail, you can check the email verified and set initial password toggle. If no password is set initially, the initialization mail prompting the user to set his password is sent.

You can prompt the user to add a second factor method too by checking the Force MFA toggle in Login behaviour settings.

When logged in, a user can then manage his profile in console himself, adding a profile picture, external IDPs and Passwordless authentication devices.

Profile Self Manage

Metadata​

When building complex applications, having the possibility to add metadata is essential. ZITADEL provides a key value storage for users on the user pages. Just navigate to the section Metadata and click on edit.

In our Point of Sales example from the projects guide, you could add a stripeCustomerId as a metadata key. In your client application you could then easily fetch the customer from Stripe APIs for your payments.

User Metadata

Metadata can requested via our auth and management APIs, from userinfo endpoint or ID Token. To get your metadata from the userinfo endpoint, add urn:zitadel:iam:user:metadata to your authentication request. Take a look at our reserved scopes here or take a look at our metadata guide.

You can then toggle User Info inside ID Token in your application settings, if you need this information in the ID Token too.

ID Token settings

Authorizations​

As described in Roles and Authorizations, authorizations are shown on user profile pages too. If you need user roles in the user info endpoint, check the Assert roles on authentication checkbox in your project as described in Authorizations. If you need them in your ID Token, toggle User roles inside ID Token in application settings.