- Introduction
- What are Tests in ThousandEyes?
- What is AppDynamics?
- Configuration Guide
- Prerequisites & Assumptions
- AppDynamics Configuration
- Find your AppDynamics URL Instance
- ThousandEyes Configuration
- Validation
- Resources
Introduction
“There is no favorable wind for the sailor who doesn’t know where to go” – Seneca.
Just as a sailor needs a destination to harness a favorable wind, Network and Application teams often find themselves with powerful monitoring tools like ThousandEyes yet struggle to pinpoint the most critical areas to target in ThousandEyes Tests. This challenge can lead to inefficient monitoring and missed insights.
The AppDynamics integration provides that essential direction. By leveraging AppDynamics Insights, specifically from Real User Applications, this integration offers intelligent Test Recommendations directly within ThousandEyes. This empowers you to precisely identify and monitor the critical application paths and services that matter most, ensuring your ThousandEyes test deployment is always aligned with real-world user experience and business impact.
Ready to gain precise insights into your application performance? Follow these steps to integrate AppDynamics with ThousandEyes!
What are Tests in ThousandEyes?
ThousandEyes Tests are a fundamental component of the platform, serving as the primary mechanism for collecting the valuable insights it delivers. These tests predominantly rely on active monitoring, generating traffic, and simulating user interactions to measure network and application performance from various vantage points.
ThousandEyes organizes Tests into two main categories, each designed for specific monitoring requirements and utilizing different Agent and Test types:
- Network & App Synthetics: These tests leverage Cloud & Enterprise Agents deployed globally or within your private infrastructure.
- Endpoint Experience: These tests utilize Endpoint Agents installed on user devices (e.g., laptops, desktops, android devices, etc.). They provide granular visibility into the actual performance experienced by individual users, including Wi-Fi performance, application responsiveness, and browser-based issues.
The AppDynamics integration specifically enhances the Network & App Synthetics category. It provides intelligent recommendations for test creation, ensuring that your Cloud & Enterprise Agent tests are precisely aligned with the critical network paths for your Applications and services identified by AppDynamics Insights.
What is AppDynamics?
AppDynamics, a part of Cisco, is a leading Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solution designed to help organizations understand and optimize the performance of their applications, infrastructure, and business transactions.
It provides end-to-end visibility into the entire application ecosystem, from the end-user experience (Real User Monitoring) to application code, databases, servers, and third-party services.
In the context of this document, AppDynamics' ability to provide deep insights into Real User Applications and their performance is crucial. It serves as the intelligent source that informs ThousandEyes about which application components and user journeys are most critical, thereby guiding the creation of targeted and effective Network and App Synthetics tests.
Configuration Guide
With our context defined, let's get into the details of how to create the integration between ThousandEyes and AppDynamics!
Prerequisites & Assumptions
This guide requires you to have the following information and access:
From ThousandEyes
- Organization Admin or Account Admin role.
- An active subscription for ThousandEyes Network and Application Synthetics (Units).
From AppDynamics
- Active License with End User Monitoring (EUM) capabilities
- Account Owner/Administrator permission
- AppDynamics instance must be cSaaS and running build 23.4.x or upper build releases.
AppDynamics Configuration
For Authentication between AppDynamics and ThousandEyes, we can choose either Basic (User and Password) or an API token, in this tutorial we will use API token (OAuth Client Credentials).
Note: Both the AppDynamics GUI and process for API Token creation could change in the future. The steps and images in this article are valid as of December 2025. For any changes, please check the official AppDynamics documentation. We've included a link in the Resources section at the end of this article.
Log in to your AppDynamics Controller UI as an Account Owner or other roles with the Administer users, groups, roles permission. Once there, take the following actions:
1. Click on your account name at the top right.
2. Select Administration.
3. Select API Clients.
4. Click Create.
5. Enter a name for your API Client.
6. Set the Default Token Expiration according to your business needs. For this tutorial we used 24 hours.
7. Click Generate Secret.
8. Copy the Client Secret from step 7 and save it somewhere safe (you will need this later during the ThousandEyes configuration).
9. Add Administration / Account Owner roles for the API Client.
Note: For production environments, consider granting only the minimum necessary permissions (Account Owner) as a security best practice.
10. Click Done.
11. Click Save.
12. For the same API Client, click Generate Temporary Access Token. Copy and save this somewhere safe (you will need this during the ThousandEyes configuration).
13. Click Save.
Find your AppDynamics URL Instance
To locate the URL of the AppDynamics instance you want to integrate with ThousandEyes' Test Recommendations perform the following after logging into your account overview (https://accounts.appdynamics.com/overview)😞
1. Click on your user id in the upper right corner.
2. Click Account Management Portal.
3. Expand your tenant name by clicking on it. Both the URL and Controller Version will be located there.
With those pieces of information in hand, we are ready to continue the integration in ThousandEyes.
ThousandEyes Configuration
Log in to your ThousandEyes Web Application instance (app.thousandeyes.com) and do the following:
1. Click Manage.
2. Click Integrations 1.0.
3. Click +New Integration.
4. From the list that populates, select AppDynamics.
5. Enter a name for the integration. Duplicate names are not permitted.
6. Input the URL for your AppDynamics instance (you saved this earlier).
7. Select your Auth Type. For this guide we used OAuth Client Credentials.
The next steps will need the AppDynamics information you stored earlier - make sure you have it available!
Set the fields as follows:
8. Token URL: (Your AppDynamics URL + /api/oauth/access_token)
9. Client ID: (Your API Client Name configured in AppDynamics + @ + Your instance name, e.g. ThousandEyes_Integration@hopper202512080502473)
10. Client Secret: paste the secret you generated in AppDynamics.
11. Token: Paste the Temporary Access Token generated in AppDynamics.
11.1. Note: You can also click Get Token for this step and the integration should still work.
12. Select ServicesReady to gain precise insights into your application performance? Follow these steps to integrate AppDynamics with ThousandEyes today! > Test Recommendation.
13. After inputting this information click Test to validate. You should see the message "Testing completed successfully!"
14. Click Save.
The status will be shown as Pending while the Integration processes and discovers the Applications within AppDynamics. Once completed, the status will change to Connected.
Validation
With the integration now complete, the next step is to ensure it works as we expect. To create tests based on the recommendations from AppDynamics take the following steps:
1. From ThousandEyes, click Network & App Synthetics from the left hand menu.
2. Click Test Settings.
3. Click on Guided Setup.
You will now be able to choose AppDynamics as an option - allowing you to select targets from AppDynamics Test Recommendations. No more bouncing between programs!
Resources
- ThousandEyes Documentation: AppDynamics for Test Recommendation.
- ThousandEyes Documentation: Tests.
- AppDynamics Documentation: API Clients Creation.
- Need some extra help? Contact our Support team!