Why would I use a service user?

[GosiaMurawska]

Who can create service users and grant them permissions?

[Jon2 · Accepted solution]

Service Users are non-human identities that are meant to be used by applications, services, or automated processes to interact with other services and resources. Only an account administrator can create service users, grant the intended permissions and then through IAM policies allow one or many user groups to make use of the service users. 

Currently, service users are meant for use within the Workflows app. This may change in the future. 

[AshokBolla]

Hi @Jon2,

We have a small requirement involving the integration of a new dashboard app with a custom application. In the new dashboard app, there is no anonymous access link available, so we are considering using a common user in the background to log in to the Dynatrace portal.

In our custom app, we have around 400 users. When they click on the Dynatrace dashboard link, they will be redirected to the Dynatrace sign-in page. We want to use a service user in the background for this process. Will this approach work and be feasible without any issues?

[Jon2]

Hi @AshokBolla 

I can't say I fully understand the use case with the custom application in the middle. Still, the gist of it seems to be: allowing anonymous users to access a dashboard built with the new Dashboards app that in turn uses a dedicated service user to connect to underlying secured services and data.

I could see leveraging the service user idea within the Dashboard visualizations themselves as that traffic would be service-to-service (btw, this is not available yet), but the access security for the Dashboard document itself is something separate. So the service user cannot interactively 'login' on behalf of the user.

Instead I would argue your business case could be a request for enhancement to consider implementing  anonymous access links in the new Dashboard app.

The new Dashboard app would have to first