Supporting your community is not unique to the API space, but supporting API operations does have some unique needs, and approaches that are proven by leading platforms. Like other areas of my research, I'm pulling out API support into its own area, so I can start shining a light on successful patterns I find in the area of API support.
Two things pushed me to spin out this research area. One, I was tagging more blog posts, and other resources as support, and without a dedicated research area, this information would rarely float to the surface for me. Two, my partners over at Cloud Elements have an API hub dedicated to "Help Desk". While their aggregate API solution is targeting beyond the API community, it is API driven, and can also be applied to providing an aggregate support solution for API communities.
As with most of the areas of the API space, there are several dimensions to how APIs are being applied to support customers, and online communities. With my research, I will focus on tracking on approaches to community support for API providers, and API service providers. There will also be that layer of tracking on help desk and support platforms who employ APIs, as well as API aggregate and API interoperability solutions from leaders (and my partners) in the space like Cloud Elements.
You can visit my API support research via its Github repository, and I will try to make sure and continue linking to it from my API management research, where it was born out of.
