Set up a Grafana connector

C1 provides identity governance and just-in-time provisioning for Grafana. Integrate your Grafana instance with C1 to run user access reviews (UARs) and enable just-in-time access requests.

Capabilities

Resource	Sync	Provision
Accounts
Organizations

The Grafana connector supports both self-hosted Grafana instances and Grafana Cloud. The required credentials and provisioning behavior differ between the two — see Gather Grafana credentials below.

The Grafana connector supports automatic account provisioning and deprovisioning.

For self-hosted Grafana, when a new account is created by C1, the account’s password is sent to a vault. For Grafana Cloud, account creation is invite-based and no connector-generated password is returned.

Grafana Cloud: enabling the basic login form is a prerequisite for creating brand-new users

Grafana Cloud instances ship with the basic login form disabled by default (users authenticate through grafana.com / SSO). While it is disabled, Grafana rejects instance-level invites for users who do not yet exist in the instance, and account creation fails with:

Cannot invite external user when login is disabled.

With the service-account token the connector uses, this means:

• Users who already exist in the instance (provisioned earlier via SSO, SCIM, or grafana.com) are added to the organization normally — account provisioning works for them without any change.
• Brand-new users cannot be created until you either:
  • enable SCIM provisioning (Grafana’s recommended path for automatic user lifecycle in Cloud), so users are provisioned by your identity provider before C1 assigns organization roles; or
  • enable the basic login form on the instance (set disable_login_form = false), which permits instance-level invites for external users.

Managing membership directly through the grafana.com portal is a separate API and credential (a Grafana Cloud Access Policy token) that the connector’s instance service-account token cannot use.

Grafana Cloud: provisioning organization roles for externally synced users

In Grafana Cloud, users who sign in through an external identity provider (such as Grafana.com SSO, Okta, Azure AD, or any OAuth/SAML provider) have their organization roles controlled by that provider. By default, Grafana blocks API-level role changes for these users, which prevents C1 from provisioning organization entitlements for them.

To allow C1 to manage organization roles for these users, enable Skip org role sync for the relevant SSO provider in your Grafana instance:

1. In Grafana, go to Administration → Authentication.
2. Select the SSO provider your users log in with.
3. Enable Skip org role sync (equivalent to setting skip_org_role_sync = true).

Once this is enabled, Grafana stops overriding org roles on login and C1 becomes the authoritative source for role assignments. This is a global setting that applies to all users under that provider.

This step is not required for self-hosted Grafana instances using basic (username/password) authentication.

Account access origin

Starting with connector version 0.2.3, each synced account’s profile includes attributes that identify how the user’s access originated. They appear in the account’s Profile attributes in C1 and support access reviews where the origin of access matters:

Attribute	Type	Present	Meaning
is_externally_synced	Boolean	Only when Grafana returns the flag (Grafana Cloud)	true when the user’s organization role is managed by an external identity provider (role sync), taken verbatim from Grafana’s native isExternallySynced flag; false when the role is managed locally. Omitted entirely when Grafana does not return the flag (see below).
auth_labels	String	Externally authenticated users only	The external authentication provider(s) associated with the user (for example, grafana.com or an OAuth/SAML provider name), joined with ; when there is more than one. Absent — not an empty string — for local users.

is_externally_synced surfaces Grafana’s native isExternallySynced flag verbatim and only when Grafana actually returns it. Whether the flag is returned depends on the endpoint the connector reads, which differs by mode:

• Grafana Cloud reads the organization users endpoint (/api/org/users), which always returns the flag, so is_externally_synced is present and mirrors Grafana’s value exactly. It reflects only whether the user’s organization role is managed by an external identity provider (role sync) — it is not derived from auth_labels, which is a different concept (how the user authenticated). In Grafana Cloud every user authenticates through grafana.com, so auth_labels is effectively always grafana.com; an admin whose role is managed locally therefore reports is_externally_synced: false even though their auth_labels show grafana.com.
• Self-hosted Grafana reads the global users endpoint (/api/users), which does not return the flag. Rather than derive a value from a different concept, the connector omits is_externally_synced from the profile entirely. Use auth_labels to reason about authentication provenance in this mode.

Gather Grafana credentials

Configuring the connector requires credentials obtained in your Grafana instance. The credentials you need depend on whether you are connecting to Grafana Cloud or a self-hosted Grafana instance.

Grafana Cloud

For Grafana Cloud, the connector authenticates using a service account token. Basic username/password authentication is not supported in Cloud mode.

To create a service account token:

1. In your Grafana Cloud instance, go to Administration → Users and access → Service accounts.
2. Click Add service account, give it a name, and assign it the Admin role.
3. Open the new service account and click Add service account token.
4. Copy and save the generated token — it will not be shown again.

You will need:

• Your Grafana Cloud instance URL (e.g., https://your-org.grafana.net)
• The service account token generated above

Done. Next, move on to the connector configuration instructions.

Self-hosted Grafana

For self-hosted Grafana, the connector authenticates using the username and password of a Grafana admin account.

You will need:

• The username and password for a Grafana account with admin-level permissions
• Your Grafana instance URL

Done. Next, move on to the connector configuration instructions.

Configure the Grafana connector

To complete this task, you’ll need:

• The Connector Administrator or Super Administrator role in C1
• Access to the set of Grafana credentials gathered by following the instructions above

Cloud-hosted

Follow these instructions to use a built-in, no-code connector hosted by C1.

1. In C1, navigate to Integrations > Connectors and click Add connector.

2. Search for Grafana and click Add.

3. Choose how to set up the new Grafana connector:

   • Add the connector to a currently unmanaged app (select from the list of apps that were discovered in your identity, SSO, or federation provider that aren’t yet managed with C1)

   • Add the connector to a managed app (select from the list of existing managed apps)

   • Create a new managed app

4. Set the owner for this connector. You can manage the connector yourself, or choose someone else from the list of C1 users. Setting multiple owners is allowed.

   If you choose someone else, C1 will notify the new connector owner by email that their help is needed to complete the setup process.

5. Click Next.

6. Find the Settings area of the page and click Edit.

7. Paste your Grafana instance URL into the Instance URL field.

8. Enter your credentials based on your Grafana deployment type:

   • Grafana Cloud: Select “API Key” as the auth method and paste your service account token into the API Token field.

   • Self-hosted Grafana: Select “Basic Authentication” as the auth method and paste the admin account’s username and password into the Username and Password fields.

9. Click Save.

10. The connector’s label changes to Syncing, followed by Connected. You can view the logs to ensure that information is syncing.

Done. Your Grafana connector is now pulling access data into C1.

Self-hosted

Follow these instructions to use the Grafana connector, hosted and run in your own environment.

When running in service mode on Kubernetes, a self-hosted connector maintains an ongoing connection with C1, automatically syncing and uploading data at regular intervals. This data is immediately available in the C1 UI for access reviews and access requests.

Resources

• GitHub repository: Access the source code, report issues, or contribute to the project.

Step 1: Set up a new Grafana connector

1. In C1, navigate to Integrations > Connectors > Add connector.

2. Search for Baton and click Add.

3. Choose how to set up the new Grafana connector:

   • Add the connector to a currently unmanaged app (select from the list of apps that were discovered in your identity, SSO, or federation provider that aren’t yet managed with C1)

   • Add the connector to a managed app (select from the list of existing managed apps)

   • Create a new managed app

4. Set the owner for this connector. You can manage the connector yourself, or choose someone else from the list of C1 users. Setting multiple owners is allowed.

   If you choose someone else, C1 will notify the new connector owner by email that their help is needed to complete the setup process.

5. Click Next.

6. In the Settings area of the page, click Edit.

7. Click Rotate to generate a new Client ID and Secret.

   Carefully copy and save these credentials. We’ll use them in Step 2.

Step 2: Create Kubernetes configuration files

Create two Kubernetes manifest files for your Grafana connector deployment. Use the secrets configuration that matches your Grafana deployment type.

Secrets configuration — Grafana Cloud

# baton-grafana-secrets.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: baton-grafana-secrets
type: Opaque
stringData:
  # C1 credentials
  BATON_CLIENT_ID: <C1 client ID>
  BATON_CLIENT_SECRET: <C1 client secret>

  # Grafana Cloud credentials
  BATON_HOSTNAME: <Grafana Cloud instance URL>       # e.g. https://your-org.grafana.net
  BATON_API_TOKEN: <service account token>

  # Optional: Include if you want C1 to provision access using this connector
  BATON_PROVISIONING: true

Secrets configuration — Self-hosted Grafana

# baton-grafana-secrets.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: baton-grafana-secrets
type: Opaque
stringData:
  # C1 credentials
  BATON_CLIENT_ID: <C1 client ID>
  BATON_CLIENT_SECRET: <C1 client secret>

  # Self-hosted Grafana credentials
  BATON_HOSTNAME: <Grafana instance URL>
  BATON_USERNAME: <Grafana account username>
  BATON_PASSWORD: <Grafana account password>

  # Optional: Include if you want C1 to provision access using this connector
  BATON_PROVISIONING: true

See the connector’s README or run --help to see all available configuration flags and environment variables.

Deployment configuration

# baton-grafana.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: baton-grafana
  labels:
    app: baton-grafana
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: baton-grafana
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: baton-grafana
        baton: true
        baton-app: grafana
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: baton-grafana
        image: public.ecr.aws/conductorone/baton-grafana:latest
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
        env:
        - name: BATON_HOST_ID
          value: baton-grafana
        envFrom:
        - secretRef:
            name: baton-grafana-secrets

Step 3: Deploy the connector

1. Create a namespace in which to run C1 connectors (if desired), then apply the secret config and deployment config files.

2. Check that the connector data uploaded correctly. In C1, click Apps. On the Managed apps tab, locate and click the name of the application you added the Grafana connector to. Grafana data should be found on the Entitlements and Accounts tabs.

Done. Your Grafana connector is now pulling access data into C1.