Create an API token

Create an API token to programmatically authenticate through API requests.

About API tokens

Token-based authentication enables identity validation without sharing user credentials. Instead of authenticating to an online service by entering your user name and your password, you pass a base64url-encoded alphanumeric string that contains basic profile information. This data is enough to validate the user profile identity, and to proceed or not with the authentication.

Intelligence Center users can create API tokens to access Intelligence Center API endpoints and to consume Intelligence Center API services.
Authentication through API tokens enables integrating the Intelligence Center with external systems and services to automate tasks in a process pipeline.
An Intelligence Center user profile enables creating as many API tokens as necessary.

The benefits of token-based authentication as an alternative to user name and password pairs are:

• You authorize a service to use tokens to perform authentication.

• You can revoke the authorization at any time.

• You can set an expiration date to constrain the validity lifetime of the token.

• A user profile can generate as many tokens as necessary to connect to the services they want to consume.

• Tokens are machine-friendly.
  For example, it is possible to pass an authentication token as an argument of an API request to automate the process, and to integrate systems and services through API calls.

Create an API token

To create an API token for a signed-in Intelligence Center user profile:

1. In the side navigation bar click the avatar image of your user profile.

2. From the pop-up menu, click My profile.

3. In the My profile view, click Edit on the bottom-right corner.

4. In the Edit your profile view, browse to the API tokens section.
   Any existing API tokens are listed here.

5. To create a new API token, click Create API token.

6. In the Create new API token dialog, enter a reader-friendly, descriptive name to identify the API token.

7. If you want the token to become invalid after a period of time, select the Select expiration date checkbox.

8. From the drop-down menu select one of the predefined time intervals:

   1. Expire in 2 months: the API token becomes invalid 2 months after the creation date and time.

   2. Expire in 6 months: the API token becomes invalid 6 months after the creation date and time.

   3. Expire in 12 months: the API token becomes invalid 12 months after the creation date and time.

   4. Expire in 24 months: the API token becomes invalid 24 months after the creation date and time.

   5. To set a custom expiry date for the token:
      

      1. From the drop-down menu select Specify exact date.

      2. Select the desired token expiration date and time in the calendar, and in the hour and minute timer, respectively.

9. Click Generate token to create a new API token with the selected settings, or Cancel to abort the operation.

Copy the API token

After generating the API token, a confirmation dialog displays the token value in plain text.
This is a one-off action: after closing the confirmation dialog, you won't be able to view the token value anymore.

Copy the token value and, if necessary, store it for reference.

View API tokens

To view existing API tokens belonging to a signed-in Intelligence Center user profile:

1. In the side navigation bar click the avatar image of your user profile.

2. From the pop-up menu, click My profile.

3. In the My profile view, click Edit on the bottom-right corner.

4. In the Edit your profile view, browse to the API tokens section.
   Any existing API tokens are listed here.
   You can view the following token details:

   1. API token name.

   2. API token expiration date.
      

   3. The most recent date when the API token was last used.