Postman Public Workspaces builds community and bolsters collaboration for Siemens

Traditionally, developer portals only include static API definitions and documentation. It creates a disjointed experience as the portal requires signing up for an account or making an authentication request via email. This inconvenience causes a time delay and interrupts developers from accessing APIs for product evaluation. Commonly, as developers are time short, they will abandon the API product evaluation process and move on elsewhere.

Siemens' objective is to provide a positive, frictionless developer experience that is best in class. Naturally, collaborating with the best-in-class API platform, Postman made sense. For Siemens, creating an ecosystem of partners that benefits customers with the broadest reach of experience and technology is crucial.

Siemens recognized that developers need to feel at home, and for 30 million developers worldwide, Postman is that home. Speed is of the essence, and Postman expedites the time to first call (TTFC) regardless of whether the developer used an API key or mock server.

The Siemens developer community has a quick way to request access and/or authenticate APIs from the Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal. Now, developers can self-onboard and fork a Postman Collection. Postman provides real-time updates on collection changes so developers can respond with contributions when needed.

“We use an environment from Postman to create a seamless user experience when testing and working with APIs. This approach makes developers feel at home with us right from the start.”

Peter Koerte, CTO and CSO, Siemens

To ensure developers can utilize APIs quickly, Siemens provides guidance on how to fully leverage Postman with videos and tutorials. Siemens has created dynamic examples using Postman Collections, documentation, and the Run In Postman button.

Executable API documentation guides developers through making their first API call. API documentation enhances developer experience by providing discoverable, easy-to-execute content, resulting in increased levels of API traffic and revenue. The need to create a developer account and credentials has been eliminated through Postman.

“By meeting developers where they already are, we simplify the journey from discovery to testing and can seamlessly communicate changes to the APIs.”

Hanna Hennig, CIO, Siemens

The Run in Postman button is directly integrated into the Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal, which leads developers to the Siemens Xcelerator Workspace, a public workspace on the Postman Public API Network. Additionally, the Run in Postman button improves the SEO ranking for the words 'Siemens' and 'API'.

“The Postman Public Partner Network allows Siemens to reach the biggest API developer community and, vice versa, provides developers with easy access to the Siemens Xcelerator API ecosystem.”

Alexander Dranov, Technical Director Siemens Xcelerator Portfolio, Siemens

The Siemens Xcelerator Workspace is a shared community space that complements the Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal and functions as an extension, showcasing Siemens' APIs. The Postman verification badge in public workspaces makes it easy to identify which Siemens workspace is a genuine, reliable source that can be trusted.

Postman's AI-powered assistant Postbot provides additional functionality in workspaces. It can generate code, write advanced tests quickly, and provide Siemens-API-specific data visualizations.

“Postbot enhances the developer's journey by helping to write test cases and providing visualizations of responses.”

Radoslav Rusev, Xcelerator Developer Portal Product Owner, Siemens

Postman mock servers allow instant API test drives using the Run in Postman button without requiring any previous authentication. Developers can experience, evaluate and consume APIs within seconds using mock servers. Advanced features like private mock servers and custom delays provide gated access and realistic integration scenarios before providing access to production APIs.

Postman allows users to see HTTP requests and view responses in a user-friendly interface. It's easy to create requests by specifying the HTTP method, URL, headers, and body. Responses can be visualized in a variety of formats, including JSON, XML, and HTML. It's straightforward to test API endpoints and debug issues. This flexibility bolsters the developer experience.

Postman also offers features for organizing and sharing collections of API requests. Developers can create collections of requests for different APIs or endpoints, share them with team members and collaborate with comments and pull requests. This makes collaboration on API development projects effortless and ensures everyone is on the same page.

“We want to collaborate easily when building solutions, and Postman provides the ideal environment for our partners and us.”

Preeti Koka, Principal Key Expert, Siemens

Siemens' API teamwork is further strengthened as changes to collections are visible in real-time, preventing duplication of work. When there is a change, the integration can be tested immediately in the developer's own Postman environment. This helps to identify, fix and communicate breaking changes quickly.

Postman's collaboration with Siemens has resulted in a seamless and more enjoyable developer experience and strengthened collaboration. Siemens Xcelerator Workspace is directly integrated into the existing Siemens Xcelerator Developer Portal pages with an easy-to-follow tutorial to guide developers. Consequently, developer productivity has been enhanced, resulting in higher volumes of traffic.

Within minutes, developers can easily and quickly pull an APl, replicate it, and use mock servers for credential-less testing. Those using the Siemens Xcelerator Workspace can use Postbot to add additional layers, including advanced testing and Siemens API-specific visualizations, all within ten minutes. The time delays caused by authentication challenges, outdated API versions and manual collection sharing have been eliminated.

Postman is empowering developers to create better quality APIs and streamline the delivery of APIs to end users, resulting in a faster time to market.

“Postman provides an interactive API experience, allowing you to explore their functionalities. I really like that I can create a mock server and test the API on my own.”

Igor Milovanovic, Principal Key Expert for Software Architecture, Siemens

The collaboration between Siemens and Postman continues to grow with the mission of expanding and curating APIs by utilizing custom credential helpers (EasyAuth) and leveraging Postbot to its full potential.

Siemens has also rolled out its generative AI co-pilot, and the plan is to add new features to improve the developer experience further and complement Postman Collections next to an even wider selection of API products and solutions from the Siemens Xcelerator Portfolio.

Siemens' approach is to leverage expertise from different stakeholders to create huge benefits for users and customers, and working together with Postman is one of many great initiatives revolving around Siemens Xcelerator.