As a customer company, Autodesk continually looks to improve its API lifecycles for its global partners. The Partner Integration team is on the frontline, solving issues while coordinating API-related collaboration between engineering, product, leadership, and partners.

There was friction in partner onboarding and integration deployment, along with multiple tools being used for API testing. The rate at which partners were integrating Autodesk APIs needed to be expedited. API-related tasks were predominantly manual, which caused delays and prevented API consistency.

Many versions of collections were shared between teams and over various channels, such as email, causing partners to be confused. During onboarding, a great deal of time was spent adjusting collections and then solving partner issues.

It became clear that a central API platform was necessary, especially as the partner Integration team wished to simplify collaboration by creating a single source of truth for partner API collections

The Postman API Platform has been gaining popularity at Autodesk since its first use in 2019 for testing. Implementing the Enterprise plan provides Autodesk with a dedicated, highly responsive Customer Success team. With this plan, Autodesk has provided and received feedback which has improved the partner licensing experience and scaled API use.

“The Customer Success team has provided honest feedback to elevate our Postman experience. We've saved hours in everyday API activities such as partner support and time to first call.”

Domenico Scuotto, Senior Partner Integration - EMEA, Autodesk

Collaboration has been significantly enhanced, as there's a single source of API truth, making API discovery, onboarding and adoption straightforward. Stakeholders, including internal teams and partners, can easily access collections. The time to first call (TTFC) has been reduced dramatically.

There is only one version of an API, eliminating work duplication and confusion. Now, changes to values can be made and seen in real time. Several processes have been automated, including credential authentication, which has streamlined adoption.

All the incremental changes implemented using Postman have created a positive developer experience and led to an increase in API creation and use, with 50 Autodesk PWS APIs now available.

“Our public workspace has enhanced partner engagement. Partners can fork collections and receive updates in their local environment, ensuring they always have access to the latest version.”

Domenico Scuotto, Senior Partner Integration - EMEA, Autodesk

Partners have been enthusiastic about Postman and have been requesting collections. Since 2020, Autodesk has had a public workspace. Partners can find the latest working version of their specific API. Consequently, partner issues are resolved quickly because everyone is using the same API, and incorrect inputs can be easily identified.

“Postman's features enable us to evolve. Partner Workspaces allowed Autodesk to easily move to a new business model, APIs were only shared with partners in countries with the new model.”

Domenico Scuotto, Senior Partner Integration - EMEA, Autodesk

In 2023, Autodesk started using Partner Workspaces to ensure that only the relevant geographical territories could access certain APIs. In the first few months, the workspace's popularity was clear, with 100 partners onboarded.

Partner Workspaces have increased partner engagement. Most importantly, Autodesk teams can gather detailed feedback from best-in-class partners and make modifications during the design phase resulting in more reliable APIs.

Autodesk's public APIs have seen a compelling upsurge in partner-related API transactions facilitated by Postman. Previously, 40 million API requests were made per year. This figure has been eclipsed, as today, 60 million API requests are made every month.

The move to workspaces in 2020 improved the developer experience. The Integration team has now onboarded over 200 global partners to the PWS APIs using workspaces and is set to continue this.

Workspaces and collections have enabled partners to save time. Integration time has been expedited, and partners are continually scaling their integrations, with Postman enhancing developer productivity.

The TTFC has been reduced from less than an hour to 3 minutes, and hours are also being saved when solving partner issues. Due to efficiency gains, partners are scaling reliable APIs with teams of the same size.

“Postman makes designing API journeys as intuitive as building ideas. It simplifies the visualization and testing of API testing workflows, leading to smoother API interactions and faster implementation.”

Domenico Scuotto, Senior Partner Integration - EMEA, Autodesk

For the Partner Integration team, API work has been centralized in Postman, where all API changes and releases to partners are captured. Postman has streamlined API processes, contributing to the increase in the number of PWS APIs from 10 to 50. APIs are integral to Autodesk's innovation, with the portfolio of APIs increasing by approximately x5 to meet business needs. API-related work has become frictionless with Postman making the management of a larger portfolio of APIs easier.

Autodesk is unlocking the power of reusable APIs with partners being able to scale, engage and build public APIs that developers love.