Enhanced Auth Dialog and Updates to Permissions

On March 9, 2012, we will begin turning on the enhanced auth dialog to new users for all apps. The new dialog includes new button text and provides added functionality to the publish_actions permission.

To ensure a clear experience for your users with this new dialog, make sure your logo, description, and other dialog fields are up to date through the Developer App.

Auth Dialog settings

Rollout of the enhanced auth dialog

The enhanced auth dialog will launch to 5% of an app’s incoming new users next Friday, and roll out more broadly in the coming weeks. You can opt to accelerate this roll out to 100% of your incoming new users by enabling "Enhanced Auth Dialog" in the advanced settings within the Developer App. Asking for publish_actions will also turn on the new dialog for 100% of new users, for apps that are not categorized as games.

Added functionality to the publish_actions permission

When we turn on the new auth dialog, we will also add some of the most frequently requested permissions to publish_actions to make the permission more robust and improve conversion. publish_actions now includes the ability to post status updates on the authenticated user’s own timeline, tag photos, publish photos and videos. Other actions such as posting to a friend's timeline still require the use of publish_stream.

Adding these common permissions to publish_actions eliminates the need for extended permissions and the second screen of the auth dialog for the majority of timeline apps built with the Open Graph. This makes the auth process clearer to new users and should improve conversion rates. Additionally, approved Open Graph actions are no longer required for the publish_actions permission. Apps should only ask for the publish_stream permission if they absolutely need functionality not present in publish_actions.

New button text

In the enhanced auth dialog, the button text will be one of four cases: "Add to Facebook", "Log in with Facebook", “Go to App”, or "Play Game". Each of these were extensively tested and showed that more specific calls to action help users better understand the auth process. As the first point of contact for an app, it’s important for the auth dialog to exhibit a great user experience.

See our Open Graph documentation to learn more about permissions and configuring the enhanced auth dialog.