Publishing a new Product

Publish a Product from within its containing Catalog in API Manager. [V5.0.5 or later]The syndication feature in IBM® API Connect means that you can also publish a Product from within its containing Space in a Catalog.

Before you begin

The Product that you are publishing must be in the Staged or Deprecated state.

To complete the Product management tasks that are described in this topic, you must either be the owner of the API provider organization, or be assigned Manage permission for Products in the Catalog that contains the Product. If you have View permission for Products, you have read-only access to the Product management page. For information on configuring Product management permissions for a Catalog, see Creating and configuring Catalogs.

The syndication feature in IBM API Connect means that Products can be contained within a Space in a Catalog. In this case, to complete the Product management tasks that are described in this topic, you must either be the owner of the API provider organization, or be assigned Manage permission for Products in the Space that contains the Product. For information on configuring Product management permissions for a Space, see Managing user access in a Space.

About this task

If you publish a Product to a non-development Catalog, the Product that is published is an independent and fixed copy of the version of the Product that you chose to stage. Editing the Product through the Products tab of API Designer or API Manager will not affect the published Product. For this reason, it is recommended that when you stage a Product, you then create a new version of the Product to edit in future, so as to avoid confusion regarding the properties of the published Product. For more information on creating new versions of your Product, see Creating a new version of your Product.

An exception is that if you publish a Product to a development Catalog, editing it through the Products tab of API Designer or API Manager will enable you to re-stage and publish the same version of the Product. For information on how to create a development Catalog, see Creating and configuring Catalogs.

Although you can publish to a development Catalog, the development Catalog should be used only for testing purposes. Similarly, a Developer Portal created from a development Catalog must be used for testing purposes only, and not for production use. For more information on Catalogs, see Working with Catalogs.

[V5.0.4 only] When you use the test tool in a development Catalog, any Product that you test is forced through and overwrites staged and published Products even if the APIs are being used in the Developer Portal.

Note:
  • When you publish, replace, or supersede a Product, there is a short delay before the APIs in the Product are available to be called through the API Connect gateway.
  • [V5.0.5 or later]All references in this topic to a Catalog can also be applied to a Space in a Catalog, unless specified otherwise. For more information about Spaces, see Using syndication in IBM API Connect.

Procedure

To publish a Product, complete the following steps:

  1. On the Dashboard of the API Manager UI, select the Catalog that you want to work with.
    The Products tab of the Catalog opens, and all of the Products available in that Catalog are displayed. You can select which states are shown by clicking the filter icon in the Search banner and selecting one or more of the State check boxes.
  2. [V5.0.5 or later] If the Product that you want to work with is contained within a Space, select the required Space by clicking the down arrow next to the Catalog name in the submenu navigation banner.
    The Products tab of the Space opens, and all of the Products available in that Space are displayed. You can select which states are shown by using the filter check boxes in the State bar.
  3. Alongside the Product version that you want to work with, click the Manage icon Product manage icon and then click Publish.
    The Edit visibility and subscribers dialog box is displayed.
  4. Specify the following options:
    • The users that the Product is visible to
      You can choose Public users, Authenticated users, or Custom.
      • Custom - You can use the Type to add... field to search for organizations or communities that you want your Product to be visible to.
    • Who can subscribe to the Product
      You can add or remove one or more developer organizations or communities.
      • Custom - You can use the Type to add... field to search for organizations or communities that you want to allow to subscribe to your Product.
  5. Click Publish (or, if your Product was in the Deprecated state, click Republish).
    If approval is required to publish Products in this Catalog, an approval request is sent, and the Product moves to the Pending state; the Product is published when the request is approved. If approval is not required, the Product version is published immediately, and moves to the Published state. For information on configuring Product lifecycle approvals for a Catalog, see Creating and configuring Catalogs. For information on approving requests, see Approving Product lifecycle and subscription requests.
    Note:
    • Approval for Product lifecycle state changes in a Catalog is disabled by default. You must explicitly enable the Product lifecycle state changes that you want to enforce.
    • [V5.0.5 or later]Product lifecycle approvals can be configured only at the Catalog level. This feature is not available at the Space level.

Results

Your Product is in the Published state.

Your Product is published to your Catalog and available to your specified organizations or communities. Application developers within the groups you selected can see and use the APIs within the Product.

Any application developer requests to use your Product are displayed on the Approvals tab in the containing Catalog, where you can decline or accept the request.