How many service accounts should we have?

Question

Hi everyone, 
 Happy 2023. 
 I've got a question about service accounts: we've got a single environment with no Dev + Test + Prod set up. Just one environment a number of devs at our company all use. A sort of "sandbox" where we have a number of applications. As an example, if 10 of us each had their own application that had an RPA object and a Connected System object (ie: for Portals).... would we need 20 different service accounts with 20 different API keys? Or, can we use 1 service account (+ its API key) for everything? 
 Many thanks, Uel

Mike Schmitt · Accepted Answer

If security considerations are low (which it sounds like, in your case), then I'd guess one API Key service account might be usable. Make sure to make all actual security setup configurations group-based (via app-specific groups and related), at least if you ever plan to port / deploy these elsewhere. Then your single service account can just be added as a user in those security groups as needed. And if you need to switch up to using a few different ones for whatever reason, it can simply be managed by updating which service user(s) are in which groups.

How many service accounts should we have?

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