vRealize Network Insight - Add usergroup with an underscore

Unfortunately, vRNI shows only 5 results when the search is performed without the underscore and naturally the required group is not in the list.

Knowing that vRNI has a well-documented API, I set out to add the group using the API.
The API is documented at the VMware {code} and in the application itself.

And a postman collection for vRNI can be found at: https://lostdomain.org/2019/01/24/postman-collection-for-vrealize-network-insight-apis/ This collection is very helpful, because the API documentation isn’t showing the complete API call. So in my first try is was missing /api/ni in my API call.

Before you can retrieve information from vRNI you need to request an access token. This can be done using the api call: https://<vRNI server>/api/ni/auth/token and you need a body containing the user and password. For example, the body for the local admin account:

The API call in Postman should return a token, which needs to be used for the next API calls.

Once a token has been retrieved the group can be added to vRNI. Since we need to add a group from vIDM we need the API call: https://<vRNI server>/api/ni/settings/user-groups/vidm

Before you can POST the API call, the access token needs to be placed in the header of the call.
Select the Header and create a new key. Call this key Authorization and enter the value NetworkInsight <access token>. The Header should look like this:

In the Body the name of the group and domain location need to be entered, for example:

In Postman the API call, the Body and result should look similar to the screenshot below.

Using the API method I was able to add multiple groups containing an ‘_‘ underscore in the name. Hopefully this post saves you some time in searching thru logs and documentation.