ChurchTools offers you and your congregation various ways to sign up to the system.
You can even use your ChurchTools system as a registration server to sign up to third-party systems.
Simple registration and log in #
If you are looking for information on how to register and sign up in ChurchTools without any further technical requirements, our help pages register and log in on the web and register and log in in the app will help you.
If you use two-factor authentication for your ChurchTools system, please take a look at the linked help page.
You can specify whether your ChurchTools users have to sign up to ChurchTools every day or every seven days. To do this, adjust the Stay logged in switch in the System settings under Login in the General section.
Login with third-party systems #
Beyond simple native registration, ChurchTools can be used with LDAP or OAuth.
If you’re not familiar with LDAP and OAuth, check out our brief explanations on What’s the difference between LDAP and OAuth?
LDAP #
If you would like to find out more about the possibilities of signing up with LDAP, the best place to start is our Overview of LDAP help page.
OAuth #
The possibilities that ChurchTools offers you with OAuth are also very interesting. On the one hand, you can use your ChurchTools system as an authentication server to enable your congregation to sign up to third-party systems such as NextCloud, Seafile or others.
However, it is also possible to set up a third-party system as an authentication server for your ChurchTools system. This can even be another ChurchTools system, for example, the system of your congregation association or the central ChurchTools of your church association.
To use OAuth, first navigate to the Login page. To do this, first open the main menu (1) via the tool icon in the header. Select the System settings there. In the sidebar of the System settings, you will find the Login (3) entry in the General section.
Here you can add your OAuth servers (4) and OAuth clients (5) on the Login page.
You can find more information about OAuth and how you can use it in ChurchTools on the help page What is OAuth? (Login to third-party systems) and the pages linked there.
Assign necessary permission for OAuth #
In order for users of your ChurchTools system to be able to sign up to a third-party system via OAuth, they need permission to log in to the third-party system via the ChurchTools account (Login to External System) for the respective client.
This permission is necessary so that the user is logged in directly to the ChurchTools server after registering via the third-party system. This is the only way the server can share data with the client.
You can find this permission in the rights management in the Administration section.
As this is a global permission, you can assign it, for example …
- … to all users with the person status “Member”,
- … to a whole type of group, perhaps the whole “youth work”,
- … only to the members of a certain group such as the “church leadership”
- … or only to individual users, such as the administrators of the server system.
Hide ChurchTools Login #
If you have set up at least one other login via a third-party system, you can deactivate the login via your ChurchTools system using the Deactivate standard login button.
The ChurchTools login can still be called up using the GET parameter in the URL. If, for example, Login is no longer possible via a third-party system, admins can sign up to the system to make any necessary adjustments.
The GET parameter is: /?q=login?default_login=true