webMethods Developer Portal
Easily build an API ecosystem that third-party developers and B2B partners can easily find, access and use
Attract developers and grow your API ecosystem
APIs are setting the stage for data to serve as your value creator—and your differentiator. Organizations are unlocking the value of data with APIs to optimize sales channels, improve efficiency, drive revenue and ultimately—deliver innovation. Consumption by internal and external stakeholders requires you to ensure the stability, reliability and quality of your APIs. webMethods Developer Portal enables you to attract developers and grow your API ecosystem.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) enable the efficient sharing of information and data across real-time, distributed cloud and mobile applications. Through that sharing, APIs can connect products or services to massive new communities, spanning across a broad range of industries. Extending your reach through the delivery of APIs turns your data into a value creator for your business. This allows OEMs and distributors to include virtually any developer interested in incorporating a company’s features and services into new social and mobile applications—driving up revenue opportunities.
For the developer community to find, read about, discuss and test your APIs, you need webMethods Developer Portal. Developer Portal provides a consumer-centric UI for the discovery of APIs. The portal exposes API documentation to third-party developers, manages the developer onboarding process, and allows these developers to use the exposed APIs for creative new uses. When developers leverage your APIs with new mashups and apps or to support new devices, new channels are opened up to your corporate assets. If you want to reach new customers and unlock the business value of your corporate assets, you must make your APIs easily accessible to developers.
Key benefits
- Single solution for both external and internal developers
- Analytics at the portal to better understand your users
- Intuitive user interface
- Highly customizable look and feel
- API security is ensured through the use of API keys and OAuth2 credentials support
- Seamless integration with other webMethods components
Key features
Support your open API initiatives while leveraging your current investments. Developer Portal was designed to integrate with, and complement, webMethods API Gateway and CentraSite to enable full lifecycle API management.
Branding
Customize and brand the portal in accordance with your company’s corporate identity (i.e., logos, skins and corporate colors). Add additional pages. Make it entirely your own!
Automatic synchronization
API documents (descriptions) are automatically generated from the enterprise API catalog (CentraSite) metadata, so no duplicate maintenance of API descriptions for internal and external consumers is necessary.
Information
Rich descriptions of the APIs, examples of how to use the APIs, file attachments for additional documentation and information about policies enforced on the API level are all available on the portal.
Community support
A collaborative community environment allows users to rate APIs and contribute to open discussions with other developers. Create groups for collaboration on single or multiple APIs. Administrators can announce events and moderate discussions, as can coordinators who are defined during group creation.
API support
Designed for REST APIs, Developer Portal also fully supports traditional SOAP-based APIs. This allows you to leverage your current investments in SOAP-based APIs while adopting REST for new APIs.
Integrated API testing
Developers can easily try out APIs directly within Developer Portal to see firsthand how the API behaves. Code samples and expected error/return codes with descriptions are provided. Try test invocations with different input parameters and quickly see the results.
Built-in usage analytics
Understand where your visitors are coming from, what pages gather most interest, which APIs are popular and which are not. API providers can use this information to gain valuable API insights, improve the portal’s customer experience and increase API adoption by developers. This is especially useful for line-of-business and marketing executives to determine what’s working and what isn’t, so that immediate corrective actions can be implemented. In addition, the Google Analytics™ plug-in can be used for additional insight on visitor traffic and how your marketing programs are performing.
Search
Developers can quickly find the APIs they need with full text search capabilities.
Design
Count on responsive design for both desktop and mobile access. Use the webbased administration interface to manage users, groups and permissions.
API grouping
Group APIs using definable criteria and help developers discover APIs in larger API catalogs—such as free vs. paid, business domains or public vs. B2B partner. Also, group APIs based on configurable maturity level (i.e., beta APIs vs. final APIs).
Multiple deployment options
Deploy behind the firewall, in the DMZ, in your private cloud or in the public cloud. The choice is yours.
Built-in workflows
Use an approval process workflow to manage API access requests. Access tokens are automatically provisioned to the gateway infrastructure (webMethods). Use an onboarding workflow to allow users to sign up as a developer on API Portal.
Track specific APIs
Sign up to track the APIs you are interested in and automatically receive notices of changes to them.
Integration with CentraSite
For advanced API lifecycle management, you can publish your APIs directly from CentraSite. The API gallery will be dynamically rendered based on metadata definitions, and the documentation will be automatically generated from the metadata.
