Exploring API Insights

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Exploring API Insights

    API Insights provides a centralized workspace designed for enterprise architects and CMDB administrators to analyze, manage, and take action on their organization's API inventory. It enables users to search, monitor, and govern APIs, connect APIs to business contexts, and integrate API data into the Configuration Management Database (CMDB) to achieve enterprise-wide visibility and control.

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    Key Users and Roles

    • Enterprise Architect: Accesses the workspace to search APIs, monitor team APIs, view managed APIs, track activity, and manage API lifecycle aspects such as ownership and product models.
    • Enterprise Architect Administrator: Manages API settings, evaluates API usage metrics, configures API creation parameters, connects APIs to business context, and sets workflows for API access requests.
    • CMDB Administrator: Configures and manages API-related Service Graph Connectors, handles clustering recommendations, compares APIs, and adjusts API data management settings within the CMDB. Additional roles and permissions are required for accessing specific features and widgets related to events, vulnerabilities, and incidents.

    Example Workflow

    • A CMDB administrator configures API Service Graph Connectors to import API data and resolves connection errors.
    • An enterprise architect administrator customizes ownership settings for APIs.
    • An enterprise architect enriches API records by adding relationships, business context, ownership, product models, and API designs.
    • The enterprise architect analyzes detailed API information, including ownership, deployment, consumer usage, security incidents, alerts, and dependency mapping.

    Benefits

    • Centralized API Inventory: Provides a system of record and workspace for enterprise-wide API management.
    • Enterprise-wide Visibility: Automates discovery and ingestion of API data from diverse sources into the CMDB.
    • Business Context Mapping: Facilitates mapping of APIs to application services and business contexts through configurable workflows.
    • Data Integration: Supports broad ecosystem integration using Service Graph Connectors.
    • Efficient API Search: Offers a user-friendly interface for locating relevant APIs quickly.
    • Access Request Workflow: Enables customization of workflows for managing API access requests.
    • Comprehensive API Insights: Displays detailed usage, security, service mapping, and relationship data to aid governance and operational decisions.

    Next Steps

    ServiceNow customers can further explore configuring API Insights, administering and monitoring API data, managing API access, optimizing API organization with clustering recommendations, and managing Service Graph Connector connections to maximize the value of their API management strategy.

    Learn about API Insights with a sample workflow and review the benefits it can provide for different users in your organization.

    API Insights overview

    API Insights is a centralized workspace for enterprise or software architects and Configuration Management Database (CMDB) administrators to analyze and take action on their organization's application programming interface (API) inventory.

    API Insights users

    Table 1. Users
    User Description
    Enterprise architect Users with the sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect role can access the API Insights workspace to search APIs, monitor team APIs, view managed APIs, track API activity, review API access requests, and manage API life cycle aspects, including APIs without interfaces, business applications, ownership, or product models.
    Enterprise architect administrator Users with the sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect_admin role can access the API Insights workspace to search APIs, evaluate metrics on API usage, set parameters for creating an API, connect APIs to a business context, specify the group attribute for ownership, and associate a workflow for granting access to APIs.
    CMDB administrator Users with the sn_cmdb_admin role can configure and manage the API-related Service Graph Connectors. They can accept or reject clustering recommendations, search for and compare APIs, and adjust settings related to API data management within the CMDB.
    Note:
    A CMDB administrator needs additional roles such as ml_report_user, platform_ml_read, and cmdb_inst_admin to access some of the features and data.

    Additionally, the CMDB administrator needs the following security roles to access specific widgets:

    • sn_si.basic or evt_mgmt_user – Required for Events and Critical alerts
    • sn_vul.vulnerability_read – Required for Active vulnerability items
    • sn_msi.msi_incident_read – Required for Security incidents
    • sn_si.read – Required for Incidents

    API Insights example workflow

    Figure 1. Example workflow for the API Insights users
    Workflow describing various tasks a user with the sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect_admin, sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect, or sn_cmdb_admin role can perform in API Insights.
    1. A CMDB administrator with the sn_cmdb_admin role logs in to API Insights and configures the API Service Graph Connectors to import API data from various sources. Also, reviews and resolves any connection errors to ensure a smooth data import process.
    2. An enterprise architect administrator with the sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect_admin role accesses the settings page and adjusts the ownership settings according to their preferences.
    3. An enterprise architect with the sn_api_insights_ws.api_mgmt_architect role navigates to the APIs missing data section to enrich API records by adding relationships and references. This includes associating business context, assigning ownership groups, linking product models, and defining API designs.
    4. The enterprise architect explores the API page, which provides a centralized view of all APIs and views all APIs in one place. They drill down into specific APIs to analyze details such as ownership, deployment locations, consumer usage, security incidents, and alerts. Additionally, they assess how each API fits within the broader ecosystem, identifying key relationships and dependencies in the API relationship map.

    API Insights benefits

    Benefit Feature Users
    Implement a system of record for enterprise-wide APIs. Workspace to view and interact with API inventory API Insights administrator
    Achieve enterprise-wide visibility of APIs. Automated discovery and ingestion of API data from various sources into Configuration Management Database (CMDB) API Insights administrator
    Map APIs to application services and business context. Workflow for mapping APIs to relevant application services and business context API Insights administrator
    Integrate API data from a broad ecosystem of sources into the CMDB via Service Graph Connectors. API data ingestion using API Service Graph Connectors into CMDB CMDB administrator
    Search for relevant APIs. API search functionality with a user-friendly interface API Insights administrator
    Enable workflow configurations for API access requests. Customization of API access request workflows API Insights administrator
    View the usage, security, and service mapping of each API and its components. Detailed view of API inventory, requests according to minute, unique consumers, security data, IT Operations Management (ITOM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) data, and relationship mapping API Insights architect

    API Insights administrator

    CMDB administrator

    What to explore next

    To learn more about configuring and using API Insights, see: