Observe tokens

Observe token types

Observe has the following primary types of tokens that are used to authenticate users and systems to Observe.

Token typeDescriptions
User session tokensUser session tokens are automatically created each time a user logs in to the Observe platform.
  • Login session tokens are generated when you log in to Observe using a user name and password.

  • SSO session tokens are generated when you log in to Observe via a SAML IDP.

User session tokens are bound to a specific user.
API tokensAPI tokens are created by the user in the Observe platform, as described in Observe API authentication. API tokens are used to interact with Observe's REST APIs and are bound to a specific user or service account, depending on how the token was created.
Ingest tokensIngest tokens are created in the Add Data portal, by selecting Data & integrations > Add data in Observe.

Ingest tokens can be routed to various places. For example, you can create a token and specify that your data with resource_attributes."k8s.cluster.name" = prod gets sent to the Prod Logs Dataset. Then, you can re-use the token as needed without having to create a new ingest token for each data source.
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Note

API tokens cannot be used to ingest data via the Observe ingestion pipeline. If you are attempting to ingest data, you must obtain a data ingest token.