How to create API Products
API Products are the published APIs from a Frends Tenant.
This guide walks you through the process of creating and publishing API products in the Frends API Portal. API products allow you to package one or more API operations from the connected Frends Tenant together and make them available to organizations and users in the portal.
Creating a New API Product
To create a new API product, navigate to the Manage API Products section in the API Portal. Click Add New API Product to begin the creation process. You'll need to provide some basic information about your product before configuring its technical details.
Start by giving your API product a clear and descriptive name that helps users understand its purpose. Add a detailed description that explains what the API product does, what use cases it supports, and any important information users should know before integrating with it. This description helps users discover and evaluate whether your API product meets their needs.
Configuring Visibility
One of the first decisions you'll need to make is how visible your API product should be in the portal. The API Portal offers two visibility options: public and private.
A public API product is visible to everyone in the portal, including users who are not logged in. This means anyone can browse your API documentation and learn about what the API offers. However, visibility doesn't automatically grant usage rights—users will still need proper access and tokens to actually call the API operations. Public visibility is ideal for APIs you want to promote widely or make available to a broad audience.
A private API product is only visible to specified and authorized organizations. This option is useful when you want to restrict who can even see that the API product exists, such as for internal APIs or partner-specific integrations. Private products won't appear in the portal's catalog for organizations that don't have the appropriate access.
Adding Documentation
After setting the basic properties, you can add comprehensive documentation for your API product using Markdown. This documentation appears on the API product's page in the portal and should provide developers with everything they need to understand and integrate with your API. Include information about authentication requirements, common use cases, example requests and responses, error handling, and any limitations or rate limits.
Good documentation is crucial for API adoption, so take the time to write clear, complete, and accurate information. The Markdown format allows you to structure your documentation with headings, code examples, tables, and links to make it easy to read and navigate.
Including API Operations
Now comes the technical configuration: selecting which API operations to include in your product. Click Add APIs to see a list of all APIs available in your connected Frends Tenant's development environment. The portal displays all APIs that have been created and are available in your Frends instance.
Select the APIs you want to include in your product. The powerful aspect of API products is that you don't have to include entire APIs—you can pick and choose individual operations from multiple different APIs and bundle them together into a single product. This allows you to create logical groupings of functionality that make sense for your users, even if the underlying implementation spans multiple Frends processes.
After selecting your APIs, you'll see a list of all available operations from those APIs. Choose which specific operations you want to include in this product. This granular control means you can create focused, purpose-built API products that expose exactly the functionality you want without including unnecessary operations.
Adding Tags for Discovery
To help users find your API product in the portal, you can add description tags. These tags are used for search and filtering, making it easier for users to discover relevant API products. Think about what keywords or categories users might search for when looking for the functionality your API provides, and add those as tags.
Configuring Access Control
Access control tags provide an additional layer of visibility control beyond the public/private setting. When you add access control tags to an API product, only organizations that have matching tags can see and access the product in the portal. This is useful for creating partner-specific or customer-specific API products where you want fine-grained control over which organizations can access them.
To use access control tags, you first need to create them in your organization settings. Navigate to your organization's settings and add the access control tags you want to use. Once created, these tags can be assigned to organizations and to API products. Organizations can only see and access API products that have access control tags matching the tags assigned to their organization.
Users browsing the portal won't see any indication that access control tags are being used—products simply won't appear in their catalog if they don't have the matching tags. This creates a seamless experience where each organization sees only the API products relevant to them.
Selecting Execution Environments
Every API product needs to specify where the underlying API Processes will execute in your Frends Tenant. The API Portal supports two execution environments: Production and Sandbox.
The Production Environment must be selected for every API product. This is where the live, production-ready API Processes run when users make actual API calls. When you select the Production Environment, you're telling the portal which Frends Environment should handle real requests from your API consumers.
The Sandbox Environment is optional but highly recommended. A Sandbox Environment allows users to test and experiment with your API without affecting production data or systems. This is particularly valuable during the development and integration phase, as developers can safely learn how your API works and test their implementations before moving to production.
Configuring Access Approval
The final configuration step is deciding whether users can freely access your API product or if they need explicit approval. This setting can be configured separately for Production and Sandbox Environments.
If you enable Require approval for access, users will need to request access to your API product, and an administrator must approve their request before they receive an access token. This gives you control over who can use your API and allows you to review requests before granting access.
If you disable this requirement, the API product is freely available to authorized users. When a user accesses the product, an access token is automatically generated for their organization, and they can immediately begin using the API.
The default and recommended configuration is to make the Sandbox Environment freely available while requiring approval for production access. This allows developers to freely explore and test your API in the sandbox, but ensures you maintain control over who accesses your Production Environment.
Publishing Your API Product
Once you've configured all these settings, the API Portal automatically builds and publishes your API product. The product will appear in the portal's catalog according to its visibility and access control settings, and users can begin discovering and requesting access to it.
After publishing, you can return to the Manage API Products section at any time to update your product's configuration, add or remove operations, modify documentation, or change access settings. The portal makes it easy to iterate and improve your API products based on user feedback and changing requirements.
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