API ABCs

An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of instructions for accessing a web-based application. APIs let applications work together to get, send, or update information. Because APIs have no interface, the API documentation becomes the face of the product. As a technical writer, your job is to clearly define the API's concept, functionality, connectivity and messaging requirements, and expected responses for the API. Your audience is a developer. Your tasks are many:

• Decide how much business information to include for developers who may not be familiar with your industry
• Mine information from a variety of sources: detailed designs, developer meetings, acceptance testing, schemas, Wikis, change requests, QA samples, interviews with developers
• Structure the documentation so that the developer audience can quickly access functionality, message syntax, and samples
• Understand how versioning impacts your developers
• Use tools to help you read code and schemas

In this webinar, join Allison Ellington, Technical Product Manager, and Lori Guillory, Team Lead, Technical Communications, of Travelport, the leading travel commerce platform for the global travel and tourism industry, for an in-depth look covering everything you need to know about documenting APIs.

**Please note, we did experience some technical issues during the presentation and audio playback is lost at 30:06-31:46 and 41:17-42:42. We apologize for the inconvenience.**