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John Faber Managing Partner Follow
December 16, 2019

Chapter Three Partners with Google to launch next generation API portal

Many enterprises are adopting API Management software like Apigee. There are important technical reasons to use API Management software, among them are authentication, analytics, rate limiting and security.

Enterprises spend significant engineering resources to implement these tools. And while API Management is an important part of enterprise technology strategy, it isn’t the endpoint. Indeed, developer portals -- branded, professional websites that offer intuitive access to your company’s APIs -- are an increasingly essential element in the ecosystem that connects data to developer. And your products and services to consumers.

Developers who are tasked with developing apps may not know what features they will need, or which requirements need to be reflected in the portal. The engineers responsible for implementing API Management may not have strong opinions about the "developer experience" of finding and gaining access to APIs. To address this gap, ChapterThree offers the QuickStart with Kickstart package that will get your portal launched within about a month. We start with Apigee's Drupal 8-based install profile, called "Kickstart", a fully-featured website template that integrates easily with Apigee Edge.

The bonus of working with us? We worked with Google to develop Kickstart, so you’ll be taking advantage of our deep expertise and partnership with Google’s Apigee Edge product.

During the Quickstart with Kickstart, we go through common configurations related to:

  • Branding, fonts, colors
  • SSO integration
  • Teams feature 
  • Publishing OpenAPI documents
  • Hosting solutions
  • Role-based access control
  • Additional content & documentation
  • Email delivery

Instead of starting from scratch and going through a lengthy discovery process, we present common options that provide working solutions right away.

Apigee Developer Portal Quickstart
Quickstart Developer Portal for recent client

The goal of a QuickStart engagement is to get a developer portal up and running in about a month and to publish a small set of APIs quickly and then iterate the portal over time. Benefits:

  • No lengthy discovery process
  • Initial requirements aligned with Kickstart profile
  • Validate assumptions about API operations
  • Testing API publishing workflow
  • Start getting real developer users and feedback
  • Bring the portal into employee workflows
  • End-to-end testing, from creating and publishing an API to gaining access and sending authenticated traffic through

By skipping a lengthy discovery process, we can fast-forward to start getting feedback on how the portal is working (or not working) for a developer audience. Just like APIs that get refined over time, so should the portal user's developer experience.

At this stage the portal can be launched as a public beta. Great! Are we done? Well, yes and no. We’re done with the Quickstart with Kickstart project but we’ve left your team with a functioning beta site that allows your team to gather feedback from users and think about real requirements and needed enhancements for Phase 2 and beyond. 

Let’s get started!