Integrations

Via integrations, ThousandEyes is able to exchange data with third-party applications to enhance either your experience of ThousandEyes or your experience of your third-party app, and in some cases, both. For example, you could create an integration to receive ThousandEyes alerts within the apps you most monitor for service performance; you could receive test recommendations from us for the apps and services you most care about to optimize your testing regime; you could set up custom webhooks or OpenTelemetry streams. New integration options are constantly being added, providing you with greater flexibility to meet your needs.

Integration Methods

There are currently two ways to create an integration using our platform (for ThousandEyes for OpenTelemetry integrations, which can also be configured using APIs, see ThousandEyes for OpenTelemetry API).

1. The traditional method (1.0) – this is an all-in-one screen where you set up the link between ThousandEyes and the app with which you wish to exchange data, and specify the use case by which you will use the data.

2. The connector/operation method (2.0) – increasingly, we are designing integrations that allow you to set up the data link (connector) and use case (operation) separately. This allows you to use a connector or operation across multiple integrations, reducing setup time and increasing flexibility.

Instructions for creating integrations using the traditional method (1.0) are self-contained in their specific articles. For the remainder of this article, we describe how to use the connector/operation method (2.0) to create integrations.

Connectors

Connectors create the secure links between ThousandEyes and your third-party app. For many integrations, this link is a simple and straightforward REST API or gRPC token exchange which allows one party to send read requests to the other party to retrieve a particular set of data. Because these connections are fairly simple and work across many apps, they are called generic connectors.

You create the link by specifying the domain you want us to retrieve data from, and then you specify an authentication type and provide the key or token required to securely allow us to retrieve the data.

Some generic connectors have preset fields to help you set them up, which you can access by clicking the Preset Configurations dropdown. Select the template you want from the options to populate the fields beneath.

Some connectors require more than a domain name and an authentication key to create the connection. Amazon Web Services (AWS), for example, requires a Role ARN number to create the connection. Because of this, it is not generic, but AWS-specific and is set up through a separate connector screen.

Operations

Operations allow you to define how to use and configure the data that gets exchanged. Typically, operations are categorized according to what they allow you to do with the data, such as alert notification, test recommendations, call quality or telemetry. Once you choose the category, or “type”, you can refine the operation in multiple ways depending on the type:

1. You can enable or disable ThousandEyes interacting with your third-party app. This allows you to turn the operation on and off without having to delete and recreate it. This is useful, for example, if you temporarily want to disable alert notifications being sent to the app, or if you want to temporarily decrease costs on an integration with third-party cost implications, such as AWS data transfer fees.

   
2. If the operation requires further third party-specific information, you add it here. For example, when sending alert notifications, which Slack channel should they go to, or which AppDynamics Node and Tier?

   
3. If the operation requires further ThousandEyes-specific information, you add it here. For example, when streaming test data to OpenTelemetry, what tests do you want to nominate? Or, when sending a custom webhook alert notification, what template should we use for the webhook headers, query parameters, and body?

   

Linking Connectors to Operations

Connectors and operations aren’t very useful on their own. The magic happens when you link a connector to an operation.

After you create a connector, you will be prompted to choose or create an operation to connect it to, and vice versa.

Once both connector and operation are configured correctly and successfully linked, the integration shows a status of Connected on the Operation screen (some connections may require further steps to resolve a status of Pending to Connected; see specific integrations for details). Because connectors can link to multiple operations but each operation can link to only one connector, only the Operations screen shows the status of the integration to eliminate ambiguity.