Step-by-step instructions on how to change the organization owner.

IBM API Connect on IBM Cloud has several offering styles, including IBM API Connect Reserved Instance. It is an individual API Connect instance that runs on IBM-managed infrastructure and provides a single-tenant environment at a lower cost and with more control over your environment than a traditional cloud-based offering.

Goal

In this post, I am introducing how to change the organization owner. The organization owner has the full set of access permissions to API Connect functions and can also commission APIs and tracks their business adoption. IBM does not have access to change the organization owner in IBM API Connect Reserved Instance, so this operation needs to be done by the user.

Please note that these steps are targeted for IBM API Connect Reserved Instance version 2018 users. If you are using the normal IBM API Connect on IBM Cloud or the IBM API Connect Reserved Instance version 5, you must contact IBM Cloud support to change an organization owner.

Prerequisites

An apic toolkit is provided as executable files, so no actual installation is necessary. You just need to download the required compressed file and extract the contents. In this post, we are using a CLI that provides a command line environment for working with IBM API Connect Reserved Instance.

Step 1. Use apic toolkit and log in to your IBM API Connect Reserved Instance

First, you need to log in to your IBM API Connect Reserved Instance via the toolkit:

apic login --server <server-hostname>

Replace <server-hostname> with the URL of your API Manager home page. Enter your API Connect credentials and provider/default-idp-2 as its Realm.

Command example:

apic login --server api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com
Enter your API Connect credentials 
Realm? provider/default-idp-2 
Username? kazuki
Password? ***** 
Logged into apicserver successfully 

Step 2. Get a list of organizations

Obtain a list of organizations and the name of the organization that you are planning to change the owner:

apic orgs --server <server-hostname>

Replace <server-hostname> with the URL of your API Manager home page.

Command example:

apic orgs --server api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com

Response:
ibm-kazuki-test
ibm-kazuki-dev

Step 3. Get a list of members in the org

We are going to use the URL of the user who will be the new organization owner. Use the command below to obtain user details, including the URL.

apic members:list --scope org --org <org-name> --server <server-hostname>

Replace <org-name> with the organization name obtained in Step 2 and <server-hostname> with the URL of your API Manager home page. 

Command example:

apic members:list --scope org --org ibm-kazuki-test --server api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com

Response:
kazuki    [state: enabled]   https://api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com/api/orgs/ORGID/members/XXX
jason    [state: enabled]   https://api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com/api/orgs/ORGID/members/abc123

Note: In this example, we will make the json to a new organization owner.

Step 4. Create a json file with the owner’s member url

The URL of the user needs to be saved as a json file in the following format:

{ 
    "new_owner_member_url": "https://apicserver/api/orgs/ORGID/members/abc123",
} 

I named this file changeOwner.json

Step 5. Change the organization owner

Let’s execute this command to change the organization owner:

apic orgs:transfer-owner --server <server-hostname> <org-name> <json-file>

Command example:

apic orgs:transfer-owner --server api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com ibm-kazuki-test changerOwner.json 

Response:
ibm-kazuki-test    [state: enabled]   https://api-manager-ui.example.apiconnect.cloud.ibm.com/api/orgs/ORGID

What’s next?

Changing the organization owner is now complete if you have followed these steps. If you have multiple organizations in your instance, you can perform the same steps to change the owner. If you have any questions or concerns with the command usage, please contact IBM Cloud support for assistance.