What is an API? It’s the reason some of your apps chat like old friends while others haven’t spoken since 2017. If you copy customers from one tool to another by hand, it’s not a lack of courage. It’s usually a missing API.
What is an API, in one sentence?
An API (application programming interface) is an official door a piece of software opens to others: “you may ask me this, I will answer that, and please wipe your feet”.
The restaurant analogy (with a waiter who runs a lot)
In a restaurant, you don’t walk into the kitchen to cook your own steak. The chef would throw a ladle at you. You order from the waiter, who dashes off and comes back with your dish. The API is that waiter: it takes one app’s request to the other and brings back the answer without spilling the gravy.
- The menu: the documentation, listing what you can order. No sushi at the pizzeria.
- The order: the request, for example “create this customer”.
- The dish: the response, for example “customer created, number 4567, enjoy your meal”.
An API in a small business: the quote that turns itself into an invoice
A quote gets signed in your sales tool. Thanks to an API, the invoice appears in your invoicing software by itself. Nobody retypes anything, nobody types 1,000 instead of 10,000, and Janet from accounts finally gets her 10 am coffee.
The limits (this is where we stop joking)
- Not every app has an API, or not for everything: check before you pick a tool.
- An API gives access to your data: its keys are guarded like the keys to a safe.
- When a vendor changes its API, the connection can break: someone needs to keep an eye on it.
Getting sulking software to talk again is an Octopote speciality (we’re basically family therapists, for apps only). Tell us which ones stopped speaking. Still puzzled by the cloud? Start here.
