Lab Guide: Manage Authentication with Amazon Cognito

Welcome to the QA lab guide for Manage Authentication with Amazon Cognito!

In this hands-on lab, you will use the Amazon Web Services Management Console to create users, register an application with Amazon Cognito, and test user authentication.

Students generally report that they aren't able to create the pool and, therefore, can't add the user to that pool.

However, upon closer inspection, you can perform both tasks. Below you'll find an extra series of checks you can perform to ensure you don't run into any permission errors. Note that our student labs have various security rules in place that can cause you to see an error if you don't perform the steps exactly as shown in the lab instructions. 

• Create the Pool
• Importing Users to a User Pool

Create the Pool

1. Ensure that the lab environment has loaded 100% prior to opening and logging in to AWS:

2. Login using the provided credential for the lab session.

3. Proceed to the next step and ensure that all instructions were followed strictly,  for step: Creating a User Pool.

   1. Go to Cognito services and click manage user pools, ensure you are on the correct region:

   2. From here, create a user pool, and ensure that the values entered are as given in the instruction:

      1. Pool name text-box, enter MyCustomers:

      2. Click Set through settings:

      3. In the How do you want your end users to sign in? section, under Username, check Also allow sign in with verified email address.

      4. In the Which standard attributes do you want to require? section, check the Required check-box for the email attribute.

      5. In the What password strength do you want to require? section, uncheck all check-boxes except Require numbers.

      6. In the Do you want to allow users to sign themselves up? section, select Only allow administrators to create users.

      7. In the How will a user be able to recover their account? section, select Email only

      8. In the App Client step, click ad app client:

      9. Name the app client as TestAuthApp:

      10. Please take special note of instruction 20

      11. Click create App Client and click next

      12. Review all of your settings and click Create pool when ready.

      13. This should allow you to successfully create the pool and pass the step:

Once I finished with the above steps, I continued with the step task.

Importing Users to a User Pool

First, download the provided CSV file.

In the Amazon Cognito console, navigate to General settings > Users and groups, and click import users.

Enter the following in the Create import job dialog:

• JobName: MyCusts

• IAM name: Select Cognito-UserImport-Role

Upload CSV, click Select file and use the file picker to select the CSV file you downloaded previously, click Create job and then start:

After a few minutes, the impost should have succeeded, you may also click refresh to update the status:

This should let you pass the check:

Below is the final list of users I was able to upload (except Jane who is created in the next step):

Note that our policies are very strict, and any small change can compromise the lab.

Ensure you selected the correct region and that all settings, values, and names are exactly as described in the instructions. Also, take a look at our Help Center article, Troubleshooting Problems With Labs.

I hope you found this lab guide helpful!

If you have any additional questions or concerns, email support@cloudacademy.com or click on the Submit a Request button at the top of this page. 

Happy Training!