Skip to Main Content
IBM Cloud - Structured Ideas


This portal is to open public enhancement requests against IBM Cloud and its products. To view all of your ideas submitted to IBM, create and manage groups of Ideas, or create an idea explicitly set to be either visible by all (public) or visible only to you and IBM (private), use the IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com).


Shape the future of IBM!

We invite you to shape the future of IBM, including product roadmaps, by submitting ideas that matter to you the most. Here's how it works:

Search existing ideas

Start by searching and reviewing ideas and requests to enhance a product or service. Take a look at ideas others have posted, and add a comment, vote, or subscribe to updates on them if they matter to you. If you can't find what you are looking for,

Post your ideas
  1. Post an idea.

  2. Get feedback from the IBM team and other customers to refine your idea.

  3. Follow the idea through the IBM Ideas process.


Specific links you will want to bookmark for future use

Welcome to the IBM Ideas Portal (https://www.ibm.com/ideas) - Use this site to find out additional information and details about the IBM Ideas process and statuses.

IBM Unified Ideas Portal (https://ideas.ibm.com) - Use this site to view all of your ideas, create new ideas for any IBM product, or search for ideas across all of IBM.

IBM Cloud Support Center (https://cloud.ibm.com/unifiedsupport/cases/form) – Use this site for any IBM Cloud defect or support need.

Stack Overflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ibm-cloud) – Use this site for IBM Cloud technical Q&A using the tag "ibm-cloud".

ideasibm@us.ibm.com - Use this email to suggest enhancements to the Ideas process or request help from IBM for submitting your Ideas.

Status Not under consideration
Categories Account Management
Created by Guest
Created on Aug 1, 2022

We need a REST and CLI interface to generate API keys for the account owner and other functional/service IDs.

I am part of a team that manages over 1 hundred IBM Cloud accounts and counting. We have automated all the steps of configuring a new account, e.g., resource groups, access groups, access policies, inviting users. But creating an API key requires a manual step using the UI. We need a REST API and CLI to automate this step. In order to scale to the level of IBM Cloud usage we are targeting we need account management to be fully automated.
Idea priority High
Needed By Yesterday (Let's go already!)
  • Admin
    Gautam Zalpuri
    Reply
    |
    Oct 13, 2022

    While the automation need is understandable, this introduces the risk of potentially expose the admins api key at account creation time if returned without authentication, and also possibly leading to sharing of the key between users. There are also conflicts that could potentially arise with default IAM settings at account creation (e.g. MFA)

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Aug 11, 2022

    I would think to help with automation, when using the API's to generate an Enterprise Sub Account, the identified owner of the new account should automatically have an API Key generated, which is returned in the output when the sub account is created. Today, you generate the sub account, then manually log into that account via the CLI using the --sso option or through the web console, then generate a new API key. Only then can you use that API key to automate the rest of the account setup. We're trying to skip that middle step.

  • Guest
    Reply
    |
    Aug 11, 2022

    Yes, we are aware of the IAM API for creating an API key. But that requires authentication of the caller.

    To clarify the scenario, the issue arrises at the time of account creation. The only user that exists is the account owner and the creation of its API key is not automated.

  • Admin
    Gautam Zalpuri
    Reply
    |
    Aug 11, 2022

    IAM does provide an API to create API keys https://cloud.ibm.com/apidocs/iam-identity-token-api#create-api-key

    Could you please provide more detail to help better understand this?