Create, rotate, re-role and delete your carrier's API keys in Orbit Connect, so your TMS or telematics can read and update your tours.
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An API key lets your own systems work with Orbit without a person signing in: your TMS reads the tours your clients give you, your telematics reports where they are. As a carrier administrator you create and manage your carrier's keys yourself in Orbit Connect under API-Keys.
Key highlights:
orb_car_live_…7Fq2.API-Keys appears in the navigation of Orbit Connect, below Vehicles, for carrier administrators. Other users of your carrier do not see it. Your client, the company that gives you the tours, can manage your keys too, in Orbit MissionControl.
Each row shows the key's Name, its Role, the end of the Key, when it was Last used and when it Expires. A row can carry these markers:
| Marker | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In 5 days | The key expires in fewer than seven days. |
| Expires on 20.10. | The old key of a rotation, working until that date. |
| Expired | The key no longer works. The row is greyed out. |
Last used is updated at most every 15 minutes, so a key in constant use can show a time a few minutes ago.
In Orbit Connect, open API-Keys in the navigation.
Select Create API-Key. The card New API-Key opens above the list.
Enter a Name that tells you where the key is used, for example Telematics Northern Light.
Choose the Role and when the key Expires: Never, In 30 days, In 90 days or In 365 days.
Select Create. A dialog shows the key. Copy it with Copy and store it where your system can read it, then select I have saved the key.
Warning
The dialog is the only place the key is shown. If you close it without saving the key, delete the key and create a new one.
The role decides what a key may do. Role offers:
To change a key's role, open the row's … menu and select Change role …. The new role applies within a minute.
Rotating replaces a key with a new one that has the same name and role. Use it when a key may have been seen by someone else, or regularly as a precaution.
Open the row's … menu and select Rotate ….
Choose when the old key expires: At once, After 24 hours or After 7 days (recommended).
Select Rotate. The new key is shown once, as after a create. Enter it in your system before the old one expires.
A key can be rotated once; to replace it again, rotate the new key. An expired key cannot be rotated.
Open the row's … menu, select Delete … and confirm with Delete. Systems using the key lose access within a minute. A deleted key cannot be restored.
Select History in a row's … menu to see what happened to a key: when it was created, rotated, re-roled or deleted, and by whom. The history of a rotated key also lists the keys it replaced.
Nordlicht Spedition in Hamburg drives tours for a logistics company. Its administrator Julia creates a key named Telematics with Carrier API Key Full Access for the telematics system and a second key with Carrier API Key Read Only for a planning spreadsheet in Bremen. When the telematics provider changes, Julia rotates the first key with an overlap of 24 hours and enters the new key in the new system.
Carrier keys work with the Carrier API. The page links its reference under Go to the Carrier API. Send the key in the x-api-key header.
No. Orbit stores only a fingerprint of each key, so nobody can show it again. Rotate the key or create a new one.
No. You see and change only the keys of your own carrier, and every key you create belongs to your carrier.
Nothing. A key belongs to your carrier, not to a person, and keeps working.
Orbit remembers a key for up to a minute. After that every request uses the new state.