About User Authentication

The AppDynamics Controller UI imposes role-based access controls to users. 

The Controller can authenticate user credentials against local user accounts or by relying on an external LDAP server or SAML-based authentication provider.

Authentication provider settings are located in the Administration tab of the AppDynamics interface:

To access the Administration settings, click Settings -> Administration. You need to be logged in as a user with the administrator or account owner role to see the Administration link in the UI.

In the Authentication Provider tab, you can choose one of three authentication options: local authentication (labelled AppDynamics), LDAP, or SAML. LDAP and SAML require additional configuration. See Related Information for additional information on completing the configuration for these authentication providers.

Authentication settings in the Controller are specific to an account within the Controller. If you have a multi-tenant on-premise Controller, you need to configure authentication settings in each account individually.

About User Roles

Each user in the AppDynamics UI must have at least one role. The role determines the user's permissions in the UI, including what the user see in the UI or change in the configuration.

AppDynamics comes with a set of predefined roles, including, for example, administrator, account owner, and dashboard viewer role.

You cannot modify the built-in roles, but you can create your own. Custom roles are typically created to allocate permissions based on application, since not all users need or should have access to monitoring information for all applications.

To make it easier to assign to a large number of users, you can use groups. You can create local groups in the Controller or map existing groups from an LDAP server.

The following section provides links to additional information on these topics.

Related information

• Configure Authentication Using SAML describes how to set up SAML user authentication.
• Configure Authentication Using LDAP describes how to set up LDAP user authentication.
• Configure Users describes local user accounts.
• Configure Groups describes how to create groups to assign roles to multiple users at a time.
• Configure Roles describes how to set up user permissions.