Developer Network master NZ account that can access/support each member IZ
This is an idea to improve the infrastructure of the Developer Network for consortia central offices.
Consider the case of support staff in the central office of a consortia. When using the Ex Libris Support Center, we are able to view open cases from across our consortia members and update them, assist them, etc as necessary, using our central consortia "master accounts"
Unfortunately, in the Developer Network, we have a central account, but it is only connected to our Network Zone for managing API keys, seeing API usage, and managing users. If we want to be able to support all of our consortia members, we need to create a separate account for each Institution Zone, and each of these accounts has to have a unique email address. Yes, we can use the "+IZName" trick in the email (such as "account+IZName@host.name"), but this still leads to multiple accounts that need to be supported and maintained, and if these accounts are shared by central office staff, it limits the ability of using multi-factor authentication.
What we are proposing is that the central NZ API accounts that have the "user manager" role also have the ability to have that role and access for each of the member IZs in the consortia.
In short, we want to encourage our institutions to use the Developer Network if they have interest in programming with APIs, but they run into roadblocks with creating user accounts and then they lose interest by the time we can sort it out. Often the ‘user manager’ left the institution long ago and we have to open a case from the Central Office to get access and name a new user manager for the institution, and this takes too long. A consistent ‘user manager’ across all the campuses would really help with this.
Alex Fletcher
shared this idea
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Rouven Schabinger commented
I completely agree, the managing of a consortia regarding API-Keys via Developer Network is not ideally designed.
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Alevtina (Allie) Verbovetskaya
commented
This enhancement would significantly streamline API development support while addressing serious security concerns. The current need for multiple Developer Network accounts prevents proper implementation of MFA and introduces unnecessary security vulnerabilities through credential proliferation. Aligning Developer Network permissions with the Support Center model would both improve security practices and make it easier to support member institutions exploring API development. We currently have to choose between secure authentication and effective consortium-wide support—we shouldn't have to make that trade-off.