March 2016 Summaries

Postman 4.0 introduces non-linear workflow capabilities through its collaboration with Newman, enhancing the ability to create and execute API workflows beyond traditional linear approaches. A key feature of this release is the postman.setNextRequest function, which allows users to specify the subsequent request in their workflow, thereby enabling more dynamic and reactive execution paths. This function can be set within pre-request or test scripts, and in the absence of postman.setNextRequest, the workflow defaults to linear execution. An example use case is demonstrated through generating a randomized weekly meal plan for Cooper, Postman’s Chief Happiness Officer, by accessing a database of approved food items and ensuring no repetition of meals on the same day. This advancement marks the beginning of a series aimed at further enhancing complex workflow creation within Postman, with future updates anticipated to expand API capabilities.

Postman has introduced auto-updating documentation for APIs to streamline collaboration and ensure up-to-date information across teams, a feature that the Postman team found essential due to the challenges they faced. This functionality is integrated into Postman Cloud, now known as Postman Pro, allowing all collections to be automatically documented and accessible to team members. Users can access documentation through a 'View Docs' button in the team library or Postman's sidebar, with all data instantly updated to reflect any changes. Additionally, the documentation offers a control-panel that seamlessly integrates environment variables into API requests, and Postman plans to enhance this feature with the ability to publish documentation publicly, complete with environment information, for wider accessibility.

The announcement highlights the implementation of the "Run in Postman" button across more than ten public APIs, aiming to simplify API testing for developers by allowing one-click testing and integration into their workflows. This feature, linked to a collection and optionally an environment, imports directly into Postman, enabling developers to experiment with various API permutations and product flows through a code snippet generator. Partners such as Apigee, Auth0, Best Buy, CoreLogic, GoSquared, Hotelbeds, Postmates, Sails.js, SparkPost, Tallyfy, and Transport for London have integrated the Run button to facilitate efficient testing and integration of their respective APIs, enhancing the developer experience by streamlining the workflow process. The announcement encourages more publishers to adopt the button and provides a YouTube tutorial to assist developers in generating their own Run in Postman buttons, indicating that this initiative is just the beginning of broader adoption.

Postman's latest update introduces Environment Sharing, a highly anticipated feature for Cloud users that simplifies the process of sharing environments within a team, akin to how collections are shared. This feature is exclusive to Cloud team members, but a 30-day free trial is available for others to explore. Users can manage environments by selecting the 'Manage Environments' option, sharing specific environments such as 'Mockable,' and controlling which values are shared, safeguarding sensitive information by hiding tokens or passwords if necessary. Shared environments can be accessed through the Environment Templates section in the Team Library, allowing team members to add them and create local environments with predefined values. However, updates to shared environments are not automatically synced due to security concerns, requiring users to manually update templates by deleting old ones and re-sharing the environment.