OAuth is an open standard for access delegation, commonly used as a way for users to grant websites or applications access to their information on other websites but without giving them the passwords. 

Totango leverages the OAuth protocol to allow developers to write third-party applications that interact with Totango using secured API calls. You can then register these applications in Totango to ensure secured connectivity.

Understand key concepts

This section explains the key concepts that administrators should take into consideration when designing and maintaining third-party applications for registration with Totango.

Scopes

Scope is the OAuth equivalent of permissions. Each Totango API declares the scope(s) that are required to invoke it. The application’s developer is responsible for keeping track of the set of scopes that are required by the application, so they can be configured when the application is registered in Totango.

Supported grant types

The OAuth standard defines several grant types for different use cases. Totango supports the following types:

• Authorization Code: For applications that access Totango on behalf of end users. When a user accesses the application for the first time, they’ll be redirected to the Totango application so they can grant permission to the application to access Totango on their behalf.
• Client Credentials:  For applications that access Totango directly (sometimes referred to as Machine-To-Machine). You’ll need to select a user that the application will use, since Totango API requires a user identity for most operations.

Mutual TLS

Mutual TLS is an optional feature that is not part of the official OAuth standard, but it provides an additional layer of trust between the interacting applications by requiring applications to use TLS client certificate bound access tokens.

Applications using this feature must send their client certificate to the token endpoint. When enabled, Totango automatically issues Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) of certificate and private key, and allows you to export it so you can include it in your application. Requests without the certificate will be rejected.

If enabling TLS, the certificate has an expiration date of one year, and should be renewed in time. If the certificate expires the application will not be able to access Totango APIs.

Register an OAuth application in Totango

Totango limits the number of applications you can create to two. Contact your Totango representative if you need additional applications.

View and update application details

From the OAuth Applications list, you can click an application to view its details. In the details page you can:

• Update the access token expiration
• For applications with an authorized code grant type:
  • Modify the list of authorization callback URLs
• For applications that enabled TLC (client certificates):
  • Export the certificate
  • Renew the certificate
• Delete the application: This will also revoke all access tokens granted to the application, as well as the application certificate (if certificate binding is enabled)

For Developers

The following information is for developers designing and implementing third-party applications using Totango APIs using OAuth

Configuration

In addition to the client id and client secret provided during registration, you’ll need to configure the Totango OAuth endpoints in your application’s OAuth library:

• Authorization: /oauth/authorize
  • (Required only for Authorization Code grant type)
• Token: /oauth/token

Note that the endpoint should be prefixed with a base url according to the region your account belongs to:

• US: https://api-gw-us.totango.com
• EU: https://api-gw-eu1.totango.com

Scopes

Scopes are organized based on entities (e.g., accounts, users) and operations (e.g., read, update) according to the following patterns. This structure allows you to either provide fine-grained access to specific operations, or to use the :all scope to simplify and shorten the scopes list.

• {entity}:all - Has access for all operations and scopes in the entity
• {entity}:read - Has access to fetch data
• {entity}:create - Has access to create data
• {entity}:update - Has access to update data
• {entity}:upsert - Has access to create and update data
  • Combines update & create scopes
  • Some entities do not have different APIs for create & update
• {entity}:delete - Has access to delete data
  • Some entities do not have this API
• {entity}:definitions:read - Has access to read definitions (e.g., attributes)
• {entity}:definitions:upsert - Has access to update definitions (e.g., attributes)
• {admin} - Has access to all scopes
  • Use with caution. This is useful during the development phase, but is usually considered a security anti-pattern in production systems.

Totango APIs

The following table lists the supported APIs and their corresponding scopes. Make sure to add the prefix according to your region, as described in the configuration section.