I am unable to invite members to an organization using the Auth0 Management API. The issue is that I cannot grant organization access directly through the Management API, as Auth0 prevents this saying “Machine to machine access for system apis is not supported”. When I attempt to do it via the Management API, Auth0 returns an error.
I also tried using a custom API to achieve the same result, but that approach does not work either.
What is the correct way to perform organization-related activities in Auth0?
Hi @pratyush1, and welcome to the Auth0 Community!
To manage organization members programmatically, you need to call the Auth0 Management API using an access token obtained on behalf of a user, not a token from a standard Machine-to-Machine (M2M) application. The recommended approach is to build a small internal tool (like a dashboard) where an administrator logs in to perform these actions.
Once you have created a user who can act as an administrator, you can automate the tasks in the internal tool using their token.
I hope this answers your question!
Teodor.
Thanks for the suggestion. I noticed in the Auth0 docs for the POST /api/v2/organizations/{id}/invitations endpoint that it shows using a Management API access token obtained via the client credentials flow. That’s the approach I’d like to take.
However, when I try this, I’m running into an issue: the Management API token doesn’t seem to be able to access the organizations like in a custom API. Could you clarify why that might be? Is there a scope, permission, or configuration step I’m missing?
If the Management API truly can’t access these organizations, what’s the recommended alternative for inviting users programmatically without requiring an interactive admin login?
Hi again @pratyush1!
Auth0 does not support granting direct Machine-to-Machine (M2M) access to the Management API within an organization’s context. This is a deliberate security design.
The only supported way to programmatically call organization endpoints on the Management API is with a user-based access token. To achieve this in a non-interactive way, you could create a dedicated “service user” and use the Resource Owner Password Grant (ROPG) to log it in from your backend. However, this pattern requires storing the service user’s credentials in your backend configuration. Please ensure you secure these credentials appropriately.
Here is a link to our docs for ROPG.
I wish you a great day!
Teodor.
Hi there, I’m following up on the topic from this thread. I successfully used the access token obtained on behalf of the user to call the Auth0 Management API, but I’m running into a major issue. The token does not have the necessary permissions or scopes to perform any operations within the organization. I’ve tried all other options, but I’m still stuck. Any guidance on how to resolve this would be greatly appreciated.
p.s. I tried using a regular web application to get the token from auth0 and specified the necessary scopes in the request among various other methods.