If you’ve been keeping up with the Postman blog, you already know that completing your Postman public profile is an important step toward maximizing adoption of your API. A solid, professional profile for your team can put users at ease, giving them confidence that they’ve found the right place and that your APIs are high quality.
It’s one thing to promote your public APIs when you have a single product. But what if you’re a large enterprise with public APIs that span multiple business units and product lines? How do you set up your teams’ profiles so that your customers can find the API that is relevant to them? Let’s take a look at some examples from the Postman Public API Network.
Give your APIs a strong introduction
Esri is known for its geographic information system (GIS) software, solutions, and services. Their products include desktop GIS software such as ArcGIS Pro and ArcMap, as well as web-based GIS solutions such as ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise. Their ArcGIS APIs give developers a set of libraries and interfaces that let them work with GIS data and functions and use them in their apps.
Let’s look at the Esri team profile.
Esri describes their APIs and pins popular workspaces and collections
Here’s how Esri’s team profile is set up:
- Uses rich Markdown to introduce and highlight their ArcGIS APIs
- Highlights two of their workspaces as well as two of their most popular collections
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
Esri has made it easy for users to find their public APIs by pinning these elements to their team profile, and on top of that, they’re also giving them direction so they know where to start.
Highlight your brands
Meta contains a handful of major social media and networking brands, including WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and many others. WhatsApp is a messaging app that allows users to talk, text, and create group chats with end-to-end encryption and no international call fees, while WhatsApp for Business is designed for businesses to communicate securely with their customers. Facebook allows users to share updates, photos, videos, and other content with their friends. Instagram allows users to upload and share photos and videos, apply filters and editing tools, and add captions and hashtags. On Meta’s Postman profile, each of these brands has a public API.
Let’s check out the Meta team profile.
Meta created a workspace for each of their brands
Here’s how Meta’s team profile is set up:
- Has workspaces that correspond to different brands, including WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram
- Organizes each workspace to suit each brand: WhatsApp has separate collections for different use cases, such as WhatsApp for Business, while Facebook and Instagram only need one collection each
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
Create multiple workspaces for one versatile API
LinkedIn is a site for professionals to connect with each other, build their personal brands, and look for job opportunities. It offers a job search platform, a learning platform, and a content creation platform, among other things. With LinkedIn’s Developer API, you can make apps for custom recruitment and staffing, advertising, and learning management systems.
Let’s check out the LinkedIn team profile.
LinkedIn uses separate workspaces for each function
Here’s how LinkedIn’s team profile is set up:
- Provides a strong introduction in the About section
- Has workspaces that correspond to different business areas, like marketing, compliance, and talent solutions, and pins them to their profile
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
Whether you’re looking to use the LinkedIn Developer API to create a job posting, pull data and insights about your organization’s LinkedIn content, or integrate LinkedIn Learning courses into your own platform, their team profile will help guide the way.
Manage a profile for each product platform
Oracle is best known for Oracle Database, but they also have a wide range of enterprise software products, including app development tools, business intelligence tools, enterprise software apps, and cloud services. Their APIs allow developers to develop custom apps that integrate with their databases and also access and manipulate the data that is stored there.
Oracle has different team profiles on the Postman API Network for different parts of their business. Let’s start by taking a look at the Oracle Developers team profile.
Oracle creates different teams for different business units
Here’s how the Oracle Developers profile is set up:
- Highlights their most popular workspace, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure REST APIs
- Pins some popular collections to make it easy to work with their API Gateway API and Anomaly Detection API
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
Though they have many more public APIs and other public workspaces, their profile gives a good overview of the most-used elements.
Oracle also has a team profile for their Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform.
Oracle has a separate team profile for their hospitality software platform
The Oracle Hospitality Integration Platform (OHIP) is a cloud-based integration platform made for the hospitality industry. Their APIs make it easy to connect hospitality systems like property management systems, point-of-sale systems, inventory management systems, and guest loyalty programs in a way that is secure and scalable.
Here’s how the OHIP team’s profile is set up:
- Uses a single workspace, Oracle Hospitality APIs
- Highlights their three most popular collections
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
By creating a team profile that’s separate from their main Oracle Developers team, Oracle has made it easier for their hospitality integration platform clients to find the APIs they need. You might also notice that both the OHIP and Oracle Developers team profiles link to the same Oracle profile on GitHub, but each team has its own developer landing page and Twitter account.
Oracle also has its MuShop team profile, one of their open source projects.
Oracle has a separate team profile for their microservices demo project
MuShop is an example app that shows how you can use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to create your own cloud-native, microservices-based e-commerce app. Their set of RESTful APIs can be used to access the Oracle MuShop app’s different services and features, such as browsing products, searching for artists and albums, adding products to a cart, checking out, and managing user profiles.
Here’s how Oracle’s MuShop team profile is set up:
- Shows off their Catalogue Service API, their MuShop Catalogue Service collection, and their only workspace, MuShop Microservices
- Includes links to their GitHub and developer documentation
Oracle maintains separate team profiles for different business units within the company. With such a large number and wide variety of APIs, this strategy can help consumers focus their search when they’re looking for the right API for their use case.
Use multiple profiles for multiple markets
Cisco is a technology company that makes routers, switches, and other networking equipment, and they offer APIs for all of their networking and communication technology. These APIs let network administrators and developers automate and manage their networks programmatically, as well as connect Cisco’s technology to other systems and services.
Let’s take a look at the Cisco DevNet team profile.
Cisco uses separate team profiles for products that reach separate markets
Here’s how Cisco has set up their DevNet profile:
- Highlights Cisco DevNet’s Public Workspace, which is a place where people can learn about Cisco’s APIs and find guides
- Pins two of their collections: Cisco SD-WAN-AlwaysOn, which is a part of a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) solution that provides secure and scalable office networking, and the Cisco ISE 3.0 ERS REST API, which gives programmatic access to the Cisco ISE network security solution
- Includes links to their Twitter, GitHub, and developer documentation
For its cloud-based solution, Cisco has the Cisco Meraki team profile.
Cisco uses a separate team profile for their cloud-based services
Unlike the primary Cisco product line, Cisco Meraki’s networking solutions can be managed in a cloud-based dashboard. This business unit targets a different type of customer, one who’s looking for a solution that’s easy to manage using a dashboard interface.
Here’s how Cisco has set up the Meraki profile:
- Highlights Cisco Meraki’s Public Workspace along with collections for their dashboard API
Wrapping it up
These five companies’ products and services cover everything from social networking to networking hardware. Some have many public APIs available, while others might have a single API with a wide range of uses. Like many large companies, they contain different business units that cater to different markets. In each case, these businesses have a wide range of users to serve, and they’ve found a variety of effective ways to reach them.
Which one do you think will work best for your public APIs? Update your team’s public Postman profile today! Be sure to start strong with a profile image that reflects your brand and complement it with a banner image. If you don’t have permission to edit your profile yourself, be sure to share this post with your team’s Community Manager.
The post 5 ways to set up your Postman team profile for greater success appeared first on Postman Blog.
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