API Documentation for Identity Protection Software

Payfone

Challenge

Payfone works with businesses to confirm their customers’ and employees’ identities for safer mobile interactions. Security is their business and mobile devices are their primary platform.

Payfone’s primary software products utilize APIs to connect their customers to their software. Payfone required immediate support updating and maintaining their outdated API documentation as well as publishing timely software release notes. The API documentation and release notes, available in PDF only, were not easily accessible online. Payfone needed a solution to give their customers access to the content online.

Payfone engaged Contiem to quickly and effectively provide accurate, professional API documentation to support its software products. Contiem also assisted in making this content available to its customers in an online format.

Payfone was focused on new product development and much of the recent documentation was not up-to-date. Thus the top priority for Contiem was to quickly edit and update the existing API guides to reflect the current software release of each API.

Solution

Contiem started the project by talking with Payfone’s engineering group and devised a solution including migration to a new tool, Madcap Flare, that would support both HTML and PDF output. With the engineering group, Contiem identified the required changes to ensure each of the API guides accurately reflected the most recent release. All of the developed API documentation was reviewed to ensure that it properly displays when published in both PDF and HTML formats.

Previously published only as PDFs, the API guides were difficult to search and update. To ensure the content could easily be found online, Contiem moved the existing API documentation to the MadCap Flare to provide searchable HTML formatting.

Contiem developed MadCap Flare templates for the API documentation that met Payfone’s branding and standards as well as improved access and usability for their clients.

Result

Contiem was able to quickly provide the updates to the API documentation bringing Payfone’s software documentation up-to-date.

The documentation provided by Contiem eliminated a major pain point for Payfone’s existing customers and gave the API documentation the level of professionalism Payfone desired. API users were provided tools and the access necessary to use the APIs more effectively.