What is an API & How Does it Work?

Most of us have heard of an API but may not necessarily understand exactly what it is and how it works. Read on to find out the answer to what is an API and how does it work?

What Is An API?

An API allows companies to open up access to the data from their applications to third parties. This could include customers or partners. They allow services, like The Happiness Index, to communicate with other applications automatically and share data and functionality.

How Does An API Work?

APIs work by making ‘calls’ to the interface for data. The data is returned in a universally understandable format for other developers to work with. They can then integrate this into their systems.

Why Are APIs Important?

APIs are useful for making isolated applications talk to each other. This cuts down on manual work. For example, an API could allow The Happiness Index to receive data from a customer’s HR system, removing the need for CSV file uploads. Similarly, a customer could use our API to extract their results from our employee surveys to feed into an internal business intelligence tool like Tableau.

How Can Customers Use Our API?

All our customers are assigned a unique API ID and API key upon creation. These are used with our API documentation to integrate our data into their systems. Most of the functionality of our employee engagement AND happiness platform uses our API. If it’s shown in the platform, it’s something that customers can get access to. Bear in mind that some aggregated metrics, such as survey averages, may require processing and calculation on the customer-side, as we do not handle this within the API.

Platforms We Integrate With

The list of platforms we integrate with is continuously growing. Here’s who we currently have on the list:

• AFAS Software

• BambooHR

• Gusto

• Hibob

• Humaans

• Loket.nl

• Officient

• Paylocity

• Personio

• Rippling

• Sage HR

• SAP SuccessFactors

• Visma Nmbrs

• Workday

We’ve reviewed a number of employee engagement platforms to get to our top 10 solutions for all your HR needs – Check them out and find out if they integrate with current software.