Like every good Silicon Valley, or, Silicon Valley-style startup, we have created an API for our online platform. Our API is based on the REST model and allows you to perform all of the necessary actions you need to leverage Buy a Feature online. Specifically, you can:
- Create, edit, and delete projects
- Create, edit, and delete Buy a Feature game definitions
- Retrieve the results of playing Buy a Feature as parties or galas
To use our API, you must first request an API Key. To request an API key, you must be a registered user of our online games and logged into our system. Once you have an API key you can use the Innovation Games® Online REST APIs to access our platform from your Web application. You can request an API key by clicking on the phrase “API” in the lower right hand corner of our online system.
Why Do I Want To Use Your API?
You want to use our API to help people who use your system solve problems using our games.
Let’s pick one of our favorites: prioritization. Joe is an admittedly fictitious portfolio manager. Joe’s the Director of Portfolio Management at his company, and he uses your cleverly named software system – the “Portfolio-Management-System (PMS, in honor of the the iPad)” to help him manage his portfolio.
Unfortunately, Joe has too many projects in his portfolio. He needs to make some cuts. He’d like to do this by involving his internal and external stakeholders. Here is how an integration between PMS and IGO (Innovation Games® online, of course) could help Joe.
- Joe is logs into PMS and selects up to 20 projects from his backlog for prioritization.
- Joe selects something in the PMS system that enables him to create a Buy a Feature Innovation Game® using the selected work items. For example, Joe could:
- Drag and drop projects into a container that would form the game;
- Select / multi-select the items to be included in the game.
- The projects Joe selected would then be transferred into IGO from PMS through our API.
At this point, Joe has created a game definition. He hasn’t played games. But, he’s ready to play games. And, we make the steps above really easy, because once you’re a trusted API partner we’ll let you provision users and make it easy to use our system. Of course, if you violate our trust, we’ll revoke your API key. But, you’re not going to do something like that. So, keep reading.
- Joe logs into Innovation Games online and reviews the game.
- Since your PMS system probably doesn’t manage the price of items, Joe will probably price items in our system.
- Joe then plans and plays Parties and Galas with his internal and external stakeholders. These process creates a set of game results. The results include such things as the the ranked project list, the chat logs, and the sequence of bids from each player to each item.
- The game result is returned to PMS when the game completes
Joe now has the original work items and the results of playing the games in our system. We make it easy for you to correlate items in your system with the items in our system, so that you can display the results of the games to Joe in a sensible way.
And because you did such a great job helping Joe accomplish his goals, we both enjoy the benefits of Joe renewing his license to both PMS and IGO.
We’re happy to explore other ways in which we can integrate your system with our system for mutual fun and profit.
