Quickstart — Connect a Platform
This quickstart walks an administrator through connecting API-dex to one of the supported API management platforms and verifying it's live. For the developer/producer flow (publishing an API once an environment exists), see Publish your team's API.
Before you begin, you'll need:
- A portal account with the administrator role.
- Connection details for the gateway you're registering — see the platform-specific fields below.
- Network access from API-dex to the gateway's management API (confirm with your platform team if the gateway sits behind a firewall or VPN).
Register the environment
Sign in
Open the portal address your organization gave you and complete your organization's sign-in flow.
Open Admin → Environments
Expand Admin in the left sidebar and select Environments.
Start creation
Use Create new environment.
Name the environment
Give it a display name your team will recognise (for example "Production — Apigee" or "Test — Gravitee"). This is what appears in the environment switcher everyone else uses.
Choose a gateway provider
Select Apigee, Gravitee, or Azure, then fill in that platform's connection fields — see below.
Test the connection
Use Test Connection before saving. Resolve any validation errors (credentials, URL, network reachability) and re-test until it passes.
Save
Save the environment. It's now selectable from the environment control in every user's header.
Platform-specific fields
- Organization — your Apigee organization name
- Management API URL — typically the Apigee X/hybrid management endpoint for your org
- Service account credentials — a service account with API read/management scope
- Environment name — the Apigee environment (e.g.
prod,test) this connection targets
INFO
Exact field labels can vary by portal deployment/version — follow the on-screen labels in Admin → Environments as the source of truth, and confirm the required scopes with your platform team before you request service account or service principal credentials.
Set up who can access it
Create or confirm a permission group
Open Admin → Permission Groups. Create a group for this environment's access pattern, or open an existing one.
Link teams
Use Add team to link the consumer or backend teams that should have access, or leave this for team owners to request via Managing Your Teams.
Verify the environment is live
Switch to the new environment
From any page, open the environment control in the top bar and select the environment you just created.
Check the catalog
Open APIs. If the gateway already has published products, they should appear here. An empty catalog is expected for a brand-new gateway connection — that's normal until a producer publishes.
Confirm with a producer
Ask a producer on the relevant backend team to publish a test API specification (see Publish your team's API) and confirm it appears in the catalog for this environment.
INFO
Full detail on every Environments field and the rest of the Admin console is in Reference — admin tools. Background on how environments, platforms, and permission groups relate is in Core Concepts — see also Architecture for the end-to-end system view.