### Release notes Description: Self-managed customers now have the capability to seamlessly access service ping data through a REST API connection, a significant improvement from the prior method of file downloads. This advancement allows for the direct integration of downstream systems, enhancing efficiency and enabling real-time data analysis with greater ease. Documentation: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/usage_data.html#export-service-ping-data ## Problem Brought up on Slack https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gitlab-OKRs/-/work_items/4595#note_1645861060 and in by @mbruemmer: A customer wants to monitor their own Service Ping data. Currently, Service Ping data can be downloaded from the UI or generated via Rails. Both options are not super accessible from standard BI tools. Problem with the UI download is that, while you can access the JSON directly (/admin/application_settings/usage_data.json ), this needs an admin login which can't easily be provided as credential to external systems. The biggest requirement we are seeing here is the ability to plot this over time ([example](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lnlRZHuoNmDJ-o4KzT7bVREgg8tQQRY1yhgOD_K7uzA/edit#gid=1889170139)), so that customers can report adoption progress. ## Desired Outcome 1. Add an API endpoint to Gitlab users to download pre-generated ServicePing on self-managed. 2. The API endpoint should be accessible by a separate Auth token which can only be generated by instance admins but only allows access to this endpoint. 3. Usage of the endpoint should be tracked to verify whether the feature is used. ## Proposed Solution - Create a new scope for Personal Access Tokens that's only available to instance admins, e.g. `service_ping_access` - Encourage admins to create tokens with only that scope and nothing else if they want to expose service ping. - Expose already last calculated Service Ping Payload via REST endpoint that's only available through PAT with the `service_ping_access` scope - Add internal event and metric (total count 7d/28d) for usage of endpoint. ## How to verify Set up self-managed instance, e.g. via GDK, generate PAT token and try to retrieve Service ping