# Generate Connect URL
source: https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/generate-2-connect-url-apis/index.md

There are a few options when it comes to generating a Connect URL for your customers to use. This section covers what Connect products are available for use, what functionality they provide, and when best to use them.

* **[Connect Full](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/generate-2-connect-url-apis/index.md#connect-full)** - enables your customers to search for their Financial Institution, sign in, grant consent, and connect multiple accounts.
* **[Connect Lite](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/generate-2-connect-url-apis/index.md#connect-lite)** - a minimalistic option if you want to handle the selection of Financial Institution and accounts in your own user experience.
* **[Connect Dashboard](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/generate-2-connect-url-apis/index.md#connect-dashboard)** - enables your customers to review their active and past consents, and revoke active consent.

Alert: Note that in order to launch Connect, you need to create an experience. If you haven't done so already, please reach out to your **Solution Engineer** or contact [support](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/support/index.md).

## How It Works {#how-it-works}

The Connect `experience` parameter allows you to configure parts of the Connect UI and functionality. See the [Configure the Connect Experience](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/configure-connect-experience/index.md) section for more information. The `redirectUri` specifies where the customer will be redirected to once they have completed authentication at their Financial Institution and permissioned access to their accounts.


These endpoints require [Authentication](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/onboarding/index.md#authentication).

### Session time-out {#session-time-out}

Connect URLs are valid for 2 hours after being generated. Once the customer opens the Connect experience, the session is valid for 1 hour after authentication. The Connect experience will display an alert after 5 minutes of inactivity (this is extended to 10 minutes if the customer is adding OAuth accounts to allow for time to interact with the bank's website), and the session will terminate after 2 further minutes of inactivity.

### Webhooks {#webhooks}

When you are calling an API for generating a Connect URL you may send a URL for receiving [Connect Webhooks](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/webhooks/index.md). This is where certain events that occur during the Connect lifecycle will be sent to. Consent webhook events give visibility to the customer's actions during the consent journey and may help troubleshoot some cases like why the customer didn't add the accounts or on which step the journey was abandoned and why.
Tip: For testing purposes you can use commonly used online tools like webhook.site, requestbin.com, beeceptor.com, or other tools that will receive webhooks and post the content for you to review (note that this is not an official endorsement for any of these services). In production you **must** use your own secure webhook service. Note: If we get a 200 HTTP response from your webhook listener server, the webhook event is registered as a success. For any non-200 HTTP status code (failed event), we will resend the webhook.

Our retry logic will function for 3 days with an exponential back-off, meaning we will try multiple times within the first few minutes followed by a retry every hour for 72 hours. The exact instances of each retry within the first few minutes are as follows:
12ms, 72ms, 432ms, 2592ms, 15552ms, 93312ms.

### Software Development Kits (SDKs) {#software-development-kits-sdks}

Once you have generated a Connect URL you will need to provide a front end experience for your customers to grant permissions on their financial accounts. The [Connect SDKs](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/integrating-with-connect/index.md) provide you with encapsulated tools to make this easy.

## Connect Full {#connect-full}

Connect Full provides all the screens needed for the complete user experience.
The Connect Full experience provides screens to allow the user to find and select their FI, sign-in, submit consent, and then select the account(s) that they want to connect to Open Finance.

You may already be familiar with the Generate Connect URL endpoint if you followed the [Quick Start Guide](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/quick-start-guide/index.md).


API Reference: `GET /connect/v2/generate`

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## Connect Lite {#connect-lite}

Connect Lite gives you the flexibility to build your own screens to allow the user to select the FI and account, with Mastercard hosting the Terms and Conditions and sign-in screens only.

In order to use Connect Lite you need to supply an `institutionId`. To facilitate this you can perform a search using the institutions endpoint given a search term from your customer. Once you have a customer select an institution from the list you will have the `institutionId` needed in the Connect Lite endpoint.


API Reference: `GET /institution/v2/institutions`

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Once you have the `institutionId` for the institution concerned, pass it to the following endpoint in order to generate a sign-in screen which is appropriate to the FI. The user will also be prompted to accept the terms and conditions and privacy agreement before sign-in.

API Reference: `GET /connect/v2/generate/lite`

## Connect Dashboard {#connect-dashboard}

As per CDR regulation, it is required to provide your users a way to review and manage their consent. To simplify fulfilling this requirement, Mastercard provides the Connect Dashboard.

API Reference: `POST /connect/v2/generate/consent/manage`

We also provide API endpoints for querying and revoking consents, see [Managing consent](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/consent/manage-consent/index.md).

## Next Steps {#next-steps}

Once your customer has completed the Connect experience and granted consent, you can retrieve their financial data:

* **Accounts and balances** - use the [Account Balance](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/products/account-balance/index.md) endpoints to retrieve available and cleared balances for connected accounts.
* **Transactions** - use the [Transaction Aggregation](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/products/transaction-agg/index.md) endpoints to retrieve transaction history for connected accounts.
* For the full list of available products, refer to [Open Finance Products](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/products/index.md).

## Resources {#resources}

* [Status Codes](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/errors/most-common/index.md) display when something interrupts the process of the Connect application. The error code number and description can help you know what the issue is and how to resolve it.
* [Connect Events](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/connect/integrating-with-connect/events/index.md) are events sent from the Connect app through the SDK to your web and mobile apps.
* Please refer to the [Consent](https://developer.mastercard.com/open-finance-au/documentation/consent/index.md) page to learn about the consent that the user gives as part of their Connect journey.