Redbooth Integrations: Helping You Work Better, Faster

In addition to working on a number of great third-party integrations this quarter, including Timeneye and TestLodge, I’ve been focused on how we can make it easier for developers to integrate with Redbooth. And I’m pleased to be able to share the outcome of that focus: our new API and Developer portal!

New Redbooth Developer Portal

It was my goal to make it really easy for any developer to use the API, with minimal effort. With our Developer Portal’s tools, within 5 minutes a developer should be able to create a small Redbooth integration or a small app. Don’t just take my word for it — check it out for yourself!

My goal was to make integrating with the Redbooth API simple enough that someone with even just a basic understanding of programming can use the code snippets to create their own app or integration. Key to making this a reality was our inclusion of an Integrated browser based test console and hosted sandbox with ample test data.

The combination of these tools means anyone using our developer portal can test all the API endpoints (the function calls) without navigating away from the portal. Further, the console allows you to see what you can do with it without having to write a single line of code. Also in service of minimizing the time it takes you to get your Redbooth integration up-and-running, we’re providing developers access to a Redbooth sandbox account, that allows you to test your app against a number of test cases, without having to create test accounts on your own test server. We’d rather you put your energy into ideation on how to create a useful Redbooth app integration than wasting time parsing your own code.

Releasing Our First Redbooth Public API

To date, we’ve partnered with a dozen productivity tools to create useful Redbooth integrations to help your workflow go faster. We’ll continue to work on these deep integrations with key customers and third party developers, but wanted to provide an easier way for developers to engage with Redbooth, hence our first public API release.

To ensure that we encourage integrations with a wide variety of apps, our new API is a REST API, making it both language and platform agnostic. Similarly, we’ve provided code snippets in various languages (with full documentation) in the Developer Portal to facilitate your fast prototyping of apps. Additionally, the new API release is faster and provides enhanced data security. Not sure what apps we’re already integrating with and what opportunities there are for unique integrations? Visit our our gallery of integrations for inspiration.

For those developers who want to dive into greater depth on the possible integration points, the Developer Portal includes an overview of our API concepts which gives an understanding of the relationships between Redbooth’s functionality tech. We share our system architecture, describe how the parts are interrelated, plus a list of error messages and what they mean. All the information you need to use the API is self-contained within the portal.

Note that although this is our first freely available API, we’ve been using our API for years as the backbone to our cloud application and mobile apps. And it’s through working within the API every day, we’ve been able to refine and develop such a robust set of developer tools for interacting with Redbooth.

Our Vision: Helping Companies Create Seamless, Efficient Workflows

We understand that not everyone in your organization wants to directly access Rebooth’s functionality through their desktop. In fact, for some of your users, if their only ongoing interactions with Redbooth are occasional requests or task creations, it’s not the best user experience to require them to manage their own Redbooth account. And that’s where our customer integrations come in.

We’re helping our customers to enhance their workflows by helping them integrate Redbooth into their existing processes. One of our biggest users, a multi-campus university, has integrated our API into their website. When users who are seeking classroom IT support create a new technology request through the IT departmental website, the form submission auto-creates a task in Redbooth.

The ability to integrate Redbooth into your existing workflows in this way, provides your users with a low-friction way to accommodate your workflow process without having to navigate another technology system. Similarly, we work with enterprise clients to integrate with their legacy apps, and help flow our data into their proprietary reporting tools as well. With the release of our public API, all of our our customers now have the ability to quickly and easily create custom workflow integration solutions.

So if you’ve always wanted an on-the-go reporting tool for project manager’s via smartphone apps, now’s your time to create one with Redbooth. The possibilities are limitless; we can’t wait to see what you create to extend the Redbooth platform and make it an even more useful enhancement to your workflows.

Get Started with the Developer Portal Today

Head over to the Developer Portal and walk through our Getting Started tab. Everything you need to create your app should be at your finger tips. Have questions about our new API or developer portal? Contact us at API@redbooth.com. We look forward to seeing your app — and possibly featuring it on our integrations page!