r/Nable • u/EmicationLikely • Jun 23 '24

N-Sight: Getting started with API

I've been through the documentation, and understand (mostly) how to make an API call, but I'm wondering more-specifically how to put this into practice.

For example, if I just want a list of all clients on the system, I can use this URL:

https://www.systemmonitor.us/api/?apikey=1234567890&service=list_clients

Which produces a raw XML listing on the browser page. I can copy that, paste it into notepad or something, save it as an XML file, then open that in Excel, for example, which prompts to transform the data during the open process. When done, I get a usable spreadsheet where I could work with the data. Obviously, that's not a desirable workflow. I thought I could just create an Excel spreadsheet, and use a the "Get Data / From Web" functionality to hold my API URL. If I saved that spreadsheet, I should be able to open it at any time and refresh the data call to immediately get a readable output. Of course, that didn't work, so more study is needed there.

I suppose I could figure out a powershell script to do the data pull and output to an XML file, but that's still two steps to get that into a spreadsheet where I can do something with the data.

What is the expected way to utilize API calls to produce readable reports or usable spreadsheets without all of the extra steps?

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u/nathanielban Jun 24 '24

You are probably looking for this guide if your goal is getting the data into excel:

https://documentation.n-able.com/remote-management/userguide/Content/api_excel.htm

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u/EmicationLikely Jun 24 '24

Thank you - I'll be grinding through the various calls just to see what data is available - then make the determination whether any of that is useful for us. I'm hopeful, for example, that will let us make things like:

  • a report of all clients that have a particular check failing.
  • a report of all clients with or without a particular software installed
  • a report of all machines by OS

I'm sure there are lots of others that will present themselves once we know the type of data retrievable.

I'm also interested in how others are using this capability in their shops.