Documentation forServer & Application Monitor
Monitoring your applications and environment is a key capability of SolarWinds Observability Self-Hosted (formerly Hybrid Cloud Observability) and is available in the Essentials edition. Server & Application Monitor (SAM) is also available in a standalone module.

Configure credentials for an API poller in SAM

Depending on the type of API poller authentication and authorization used by an API, you may only need to provide a username and password as credentials for an API request. Sophisticated APIs, such as the Azure API, require a client ID, client secret, access token URL, and other details. Some free APIs don't require any credentials. See API documentation for details.

There are several ways to configure API poller credentials, including:

In either case, you have the following options:

  • (Recommended) Add credentials on the Manage Credentials page, and then select those credentials on the API poller page.

    For API pollers created in earlier versions of SAM, add related credentials on the Manage Credentials page and then edit API pollers to use the new credentials.

  • Add credentials on the API poller page.

    To open the API poller page, click Settings > All Settings > Manage API Pollers. Click New to add a new poller, or select an existing poller to change existing credentials.

    Credentials added on the API poller page are sent by HTTP with plain text, instead of HTTPS. SolarWinds recommends adding credentials on the new Manage Credentials page instead and then assign credentials on the API poller page. Alternatively, access the API poller page directly from the SolarWinds Platform server to add credentials.

  • Select existing credentials added for a different API poller that accesses the same API.

    If you assign multiple API poller templates of the same type (for example, four Azure templates) to a node, the resulting API pollers can share the same credentials. If you assign different types of templates (for example, one Azure template and one Pingdom template), you'll need to configure separate credentials for each poller.

Before you begin

Review API documentation to determine the type of API poller authentication and authorization used, along with any other requirements. If an API poller is based on an out-of-the-box API Poller template, review prerequisites in the SAM API Poller Template Guide.

If your organization hosts applications that you want to access via API, some applications must be configured to allow access to data for API calls. For example, if your organization uses Azure applications accessed via the Microsoft Graph API, you may need to consult with your Azure Administrator to obtain credentials with the proper scope and permissions to the API, such as Group.Read.All and Directory.Read.All.

For tips on locating Azure credentials such as Tenant IDs, see Find Microsoft Azure credentials.

Configure credentials

To configure credentials for an API poller: 

  1. When adding a new API poller, click Configure on the API poller page.
  2. In the API Poller settings dialog box, click New credential.

  3. Add a name for the set of credentials and fill out the remaining fields.


  4. Click Save.