Optimizing IT with Riverbed IQ: Seamless Integrations for Improved Efficiency

In today’s fast-paced IT landscape, seamless integration between platforms is critical for efficiency and agility. In this third installment of our series, we explore one of Riverbed IQ’s most transformative features: the Integrations Library.

Integrations Library 

With over 35 pre-built connectors, adapters, and integrations, Riverbed IQ simplifies and accelerates the connection between its platform and popular third-party tools such as ServiceNow, Splunk, Microsoft Azure, AWS, AppDynamics, and Datadog. These integrations take the complexity out of connecting diverse data sources, giving IT teams instant access to enhanced visibility, diagnostics, and automation within IQ workflows. By simply installing an integration subflow, the associated capabilities become available for use in Automation workflows, reducing the need for custom coding or extensive setup. 

The Integration Library provides seamless interoperability, allowing IT teams to quickly pull external data into Riverbed IQ for faster decision-making and streamlined troubleshooting. Whether it’s an issue detected by Riverbed’s monitoring tool automatically generating a ServiceNow ticket, or triggering a notification in Slack, these integrations boost operational efficiency.

And for teams with unique requirements, the customizable connectors in the library enable you to tailor integrations to meet specific business needs. This means Riverbed IQ isn’t limited to standard tools—it can be adapted to integrate with virtually any platform, driving deeper automation and broader data integration. 

Figure 1. The new Integrations Library makes it easy to add outside data into Riverbed IQ or export actionable insights to other solutions. 

As part of its relentless drive to streamline and expand automation capabilities, Riverbed IQ has rolled out several powerful features to support its Integration Library. These updates—JSON as a subflow input, OAuth parameters for secure authentication, and auto-insert Liquid template variables—allow IT teams to elevate their workflows, integrate with external systems, and improve the security of their operations.

JSON support

Support for JSON as a subflow input allows users to integrate external systems and services by enabling HTTP requests within automation workflows. As JSON is a lightweight, widely used data format for transmitting structured data, this capability makes it easier for IQ to ingest input from various APIs, cloud services, or third-party tools. By configuring HTTP requests that deliver JSON payloads as subflow inputs, organizations can dynamically feed data into workflows, triggering automated actions such as gathering diagnostics data. This flexible approach enhances interoperability and streamlines integration, allowing IT teams to create more adaptable, data-driven automation strategies within Riverbed IQ’s ecosystem. 

OAuth parameters

OAuth parameters are a way to provide secure, flexible, and streamlined authentication for connecting to external services and APIs, in this case, for integrations with third-party platforms. OAuth (Open Authorization) is a widely used protocol that allows applications to access resources on behalf of a user without exposing credentials like usernames or passwords. By supporting OAuth, Riverbed IQ ensures secure, token-based authentication when interacting with other systems. 

Liquid template auto-insert variables

Auto-insert variables are dynamic placeholders that can be used within Liquid templates to automatically insert real-time data into workflows, reports, or notifications. These variables allow users to customize outputs by pulling relevant information from within the Riverbed IQ or third-party environments, without manual input.

Some sample use cases include: 

• Incident Information: Automatically insert data like {{ incident.id }} or {{ incident.severity }} to provide full incident context. 
• Time and Date: Ensure your workflows are time-stamped with real-time data, using variables like {{ incident.timestamp }}. 
• Affected Systems: Display which services or devices were affected by pulling data directly into templates using {{ incident.affected_services }}. 

API endpoint for incident generation from external source

The API endpoint for incident generation from external sources allows third-party systems to send data to create incidents within the Riverbed IQ platform. This API endpoint is designed to accept data about incidents, including details such as the type of issue, affected systems, and severity, to automatically generate and manage incidents. 

A unified, automation-driven IT ecosystem 

The culmination of these enhancements positions Riverbed IQ as a critical tool for organizations looking to analyze, automate, integrate, and optimize their IT environments. The Integrations Library, combined with JSON support, OAuth authentication, and Liquid templates, creates a robust foundation for building dynamic, secure, and scalable workflows that integrate seamlessly with a wide variety of external systems. As IT organizations increase the implementation and usage of automation to simplify the task of managing increasingly complex networks and enabling resolution of issues at lower levels of the organization, Riverbed IQ’s automation serves as the essential glue in this strategic initiative.