Web API provider

What are Integrations?

SquaredUp DS Integrations allow you to create your own providers. Each Integration has its own form to help you input the information required for different providers.

What is a provider?

Providers contain the connection details to external platforms. A provider only needs to be set up once and can then be used when creating tiles on a dashboard.

There are two types of integrations and therefore providers:

• generic Web API providers that can connect to any REST API
• dedicated providers that connect to a specific external platform or database (SQL, ServiceNow, Azure Active App Insights, Elasticsearch, etc.)

About Web API providers

The Web API integration allows you to create Web API providers. A Web API provider is a generic provider that contains the connection details to any REST API that returns JSON.

Which Integrations can I use for Web API tiles?

You can use generic and dedicated integrations to create your own providers. Of course, a dedicated provider like ServiceNow will only work with the ServiceNow API.

You need to have at least one provider before you can use Web API tiles (see How to use the Web API tile).

The Simple Web API provider has been created for you, and can be used by entering a URL and parameters on the fly in the Web API tile on a tile by tile basis. If you are going to create several tiles using a particular API we recommend you create your own API provider so you only need to configure it once.

Generic Web API providers

Walkthroughs for creating generic Web API providers for popular APIs

PagerDuty provider

Pingdom provider

Google API provider (such as Google Analytics)

Uptime Robot

Dedicated providers

Adding a Web API provider

1. In SquaredUp DS navigate to the right-hand menu ☰ > system > Integrations

2. Under Integrations click on Web API and choose either Simple, Basic Auth or OAuth depending on the API you are using.
   About the different types of Integrations and Web API providers

   Simple	No authentication, basic authentication (username and password in a header) or Windows authentication (configured automatically to use the application pool identity account).
   Basic auth	Basic authentication. Your specified username and password will be Base64 encoded automatically.
   OAuth	Token-based authentication according to the OAuth 2.0 standard. Many APIs use OAuth 2.0 for authorization, and will require an OAuth provider to include the additional information about how to authorize against the service.

   Note: When adding an OAuth provider you may get an message that the provider is not authorized if some of the provider configuration is incorrect (for example the username, password, secret etc), or if you use a proxy it could be that the proxy is not configured. See How to configure SquaredUp DS to use a proxy.
3. Complete the provider fields, using your API provider's online documentation as a guide.

   ignore invalid ssl: Turn the on/off switch to on if you are using a self-signed certificate.

   default headers headers sent with all requests using this provider, for example the API token in the format the API requires.

   url parameters url parameters sent with all requests using this provider. For example, a query parameter that is always used can be added here in the provider to save adding it to every dashboard configuration.

4. You are now ready to use this provider in a Web API tile (see How to use the Web API tile).

Further help for adding Web API providers

• Blog: Integrating SquaredUp DS with external APIs: UptimeRobot
• Webinar that includes New Relic

For other APIs, take a look at our Community Answers site, where there's a wealth of knowledge about APIs.

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