Join the ApiShare Ecosystem

ApiShare helps our customers tackle the difficulties they might encounter whilst defining their API Governance. A seemingly vague concept, which however poses some very real challenges when the goal is to have a centralized, consistent API Catalog linked to the Application Catalog regardless of the APIs’ technical development.

The objective here is finding, not only which APIs are available or currently in the works, but also placing each API and Application into the right working group, in order to share visibility and control over each API among the right users, at the right stages of its development.

One way ApiShare achieves this, is by an opportune application of the concept of sharing, not only of Enterprise Assets (the APIs), but also processes, use cases, rules, guidelines, and knowledge in general amongst all the users who joined the API Ecosystem, be they consumers, contributors or administrators. Knowledge Share is, after all, the core of our philosophy at User Group. (As well as our motto!)

Before anyone can start sharing and contributing, however, one must first Join the ApiShare Ecosystem. So what exactly is one joining?

The Ecosystem’s structure: Organizations and Groups

ApiShare’s owners are invited to divide the Ecosystem in units called Organizations, which can be managed within the portal. These can be internal or external depending on whether the “knowledge” is to be shared only internally within the company, or also to partners. In turn, each organization is made up of Groups which house the actual Users, each with their own Role. (Note: A user may belong to only one Group per Organization.)

A user can take on different roles. The available roles are: Owner, Org. Admin, Group Admin, Contributor and Consumer. Each role has different grants and therefore different fields of action within the Ecosystem. Read more about roles here.

A user can become part of an Organization (and therefore a Group) in two ways:

1. By registering on the portal as a guest and asking to join one or more Organizations.

2. By being invited by an Admin into a specific Organization. In this case, if the user isn’t registered on the portal yet, they will have to sign up.

In both scenarios, all interested users will receive an email and a push notification.

Joining an Organization

If you want to join an Organization, whether you are a guest user, or you are already a member of a different Organization, you can always click on the relative top right icon to display the available Organizations in the Ecosystem. Pick one or more Organizations and press “JOIN”, as displayed in the short video below.

The respective Admins will receive the join request. They will then need to approve it by assigning you a role and a Group within the Organization.

Inviting users into an Organization (Admins only)

If you are an Admin, go to the “Organization” section, select an Organization and, after finding the right Group, click on the “Add users” button as shown in the video below. You can then search among the registered users, select all the ones you need, assign them a role, and invite them. They will be notified and added immediately to the Group.

If the users you are looking for are not yet registered on ApiShare, you can enter their email, and they’ll receive an invitation to sign up. Once they do, they’ll have immediate access to that Group.

And you are in!

We have seen two ways by which you can join the ApiShare Ecosystem. Now that you are in, keep up with our blog to discover how you can contribute to your API Ecosystem with ApiShare. And if you want to learn more about anything in ApiShare, you can always talk to our team who’s ready to guide you on how to adopt ApiShare for your company.