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Connect the New Relic MCP server

Connect New Relic to Atomicwork via MCP to query APM metrics, alerts, and health data.

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Written by Riya Sebastian

Integrate the New Relic MCP server with Atomicwork to connect your New Relic observability account to your workspace via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, your AI Coworker can query your New Relic observability data—such as APM metrics, application health, and active alerts—directly within Atomicwork to streamline your operations and speed up incident resolution.

Understand the New Relic MCP integration

By connecting New Relic to Atomicwork, you equip your AI agents with real-time observability insights. This allows your team to automate incident triage, perform on-call diagnostics, and run automated health checks without switching platforms. To learn more about how tools empower your agents, see Admin 202: Understanding the AI Workforce.

Verify your prerequisites

Before you begin the setup, ensure you have the following permissions and credentials:

  • Atomicwork admin access: You need organization admin permissions in Atomicwork to access the MCP Store.

  • New Relic user access: You need access to your New Relic account to retrieve a User API key.

Connect the New Relic MCP server

Follow these steps to retrieve your credentials from New Relic and complete the setup in Atomicwork.

Retrieve your New Relic credentials

  1. Log in to your New Relic account at https://one.newrelic.com.

  2. Click your user profile/avatar (in the bottom-left of the navigation), then select API keys. Alternatively, go directly to https://one.newrelic.com/api-keys (or https://one.eu.newrelic.com/api-keys for the EU region).

  3. Click Create a key, set the Key type to User, give it a descriptive name, and create it. Copy the key immediately, as you won't be able to view the full key again after creation. This key starts with NRAK-.... It must be a User API key — the integration cannot authenticate using an Ingest or License key.

  4. Identify your New Relic account region. Your region is either the United States (which uses the US value and routes to api.newrelic.com) or the European Union (which uses the EU value and routes to api.eu.newrelic.com). Because credentials are partitioned by region, selecting the incorrect region will cause authentication to fail.

Install the integration in the MCP Store

  1. Navigate to Settings > MCP Store > New Relic > Connect.

  2. Paste your copied NRAK-... key into the User API Key field.

  3. Select your Account Region (either United States or European Union) from the dropdown.

  4. Complete the setup process to save your credentials. Once finished, a list of all available New Relic tools is displayed on your screen.

Manage tool access for your AI workforce

After completing the setup, you can control which tools your AI agents can use. This helps you practice the principle of least privilege by granting only the necessary capabilities to each agent. In addition to standard agents, the AI workflow builder and the coding agent automatically have access to the MCP server while building workflows and writing code scripts respectively.

  1. Navigate to AI workforce > AI Coworker > Tools in Atomicwork.

  2. Select the specific AI Coworker you want to configure. For more details on configuring your agents, see Setting up an AI Coworker.

  3. Grant granular or complete access to the available New Relic tools based on your workspace requirements.

Review best practices

To ensure a secure and stable connection, follow these recommendations:

  • Use a dedicated User API key: Create a dedicated key specifically for this integration rather than using a shared or personal key. This makes it easy to rotate or revoke the key without affecting other integrations.

  • Match your region exactly: If your New Relic account is hosted on the EU data center, always select "European Union." Mismatching your region and key results in a 401 authentication error.

  • Avoid leading or trailing whitespace: Ensure there are no accidental spaces when pasting your API key. While the platform trims whitespace automatically, copying from certain user interfaces can introduce invisible characters that survive trimming.

  • Scope your key appropriately: Your User API key needs at minimum read access to your New Relic account. A 403 error during installation indicates that the key is valid but lacks the required permissions. If this occurs, regenerate the key with the correct scopes.

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