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The Runa Insider is a monthly webinar series where we share updates and demo new products & features to ensure you make the most of Runa.
Our July 2023 webinar introduced Runa's API. Watch the show for:
- Overview of the difference between Runa's API and portal (00:57)
- A preview of Runa's new API functionality (03:22)
Related Links
► Read the full transcript of this webinar below.
► Runa Network Changelog: Stay up-to-date on new gift card brands and payout types to the Runa Network.
Transcript
0:01
Hi, everyone.
0:02
Thank you for joining the Runa Insider webinar.
0:07
This month, we're going to be talking about the API versus the portal and the different options that we offer you here at Runa
0:13
I'm Ellie Herman. I'm in the Product Marketing team here at Runa. And today we're joined by Florence Jump, who's a Senior Product Manager and she'll be doing a demo a little later on.
0:22
You will have the chance to ask questions.
0:23
You should see a little chat spot and you can look to your questions there and we'll get to them at the end and the session is being recorded and we'll send it to you after so you can forward it to anyone in your team who might be missing it.
0:36
So here's what we're going to cover in the next, just under 20 minutes.
0:40
So first of all, we'll just do a brief overview of the difference between an API and a portal. Talk about whether an API could be a good fit for your business. Tell you a little bit more about the new API that we're developing. Florence will show a demo and we'll talk about some next steps for you and answer any of your questions. So first of all.
0:57
what are the differences between an API and a portal?
1:01
So I'm sure every single one of us here has used some sort of portal solution. There's no code required. But there is more of a limited UI at the same time. That means there's no maintenance or manual work required since it would sit separately from your existing system with an API, there will be some development work required upfront.
1:21
But with that, it means it's easy to integrate and tailor to your exact requirements, you can rapidly iterate and improve your customer experience or make changes.
1:30
And when you want to enable new features, you can very quickly deliver them to market. It's also highly scalable. So if you're growing your business, you're expecting new users, new use cases, the API can adapt to suit your needs.
1:44
So in summary, we know that APIs can be hugely beneficial for your business as you grow and scale and change. It drives they drive time and cost efficiencies, they're very much more scalable and flexible.
1:57
You can more easily adapt and improve your user experience. And there are also kind of security control features that you can enable.
2:06
Here at we are currently building a new version of our API I think most of the people joining today will be familiar with our connect platform and our connect API and we will over the coming months be telling you more about the API we're adding new features and new capabilities all to kind of improve your experience.
2:27
So first of all, run balances enable you to more easily manage your funds within within your account and also to avoid any third party credit card fees with everything flowing through your arena balances.
2:40
We're enabling more flexible orders so you can have more diff more and more different products in the same order. And the same transaction with the API, we will help you get to market and get to value quicker.
2:55
It's easier to integrate and it will save your time, your teams a lot of time and effort. Additionally, we will be making more frequent improvements to the API and this is really important because it means we can we act very quickly to any feedback or requests that we have.
3:14
So I'll going to hand over to Florence now, who will talk us through what the new platform looks like?
3:22
Ok. Let me share my screen. I can everyone see that. Yeah. Awesome.
3:35
So I'll give you a demo of the platform and then show you what new functionality we have in the new API. So this is our new real platform. And you'll see there's kind of templates people can use. And we're adding features of functionality like that.
3:54
In order to allow you to get to market faster, you know, to get your payout links done. Add a template yourself is something that we're, we're gonna add in the future as well.
4:05
Balances as any is a new piece of functionality that we just added. So you can pay using a balance, you can top up and add funds or you can pay kind of using a credit card as well. So you can have your credit card saved here.
4:22
I have not added any credit cards because my demo is gonna be with the balance today. You can also see your order history in the platform here to manage your team at different numbers as well.
4:36
You won't see customers. I see that because I'm an admin makes you feel very important and didn't remove it for this demo. So of course, when you come to the platform, you want to place an order so you can do that and send individual payout types or a mass payout.
4:52
So we recommend if you're sending more than 10 links to use kind of the mass payout link, but I'll just send myself 11 link of $1. I will buy Amazon because you know there's Amazon confirm my selection super easy. You can search for different products.
5:14
In here you can scroll, scroll through the product catalog. To look for things that you want, this will be tailored to you as a company for what products are available to you. Again, just makes it super quick if there aren't products in there that aren't available to to your company.
5:34
So yeah, then I choose my quantity, you can download the payout links and send them in whatever format you want. But again, and for the sake of speed, you can just kind of send it by email.
5:45
So you can upload a list of email addresses. You don't have to type all of them in, but given it's just always right at, you know, every single time we are called, I hope you know that. So if I save them close, I can kind of carry on confirm and pay, do not close my browser.
6:10
I'll open my email when it has finished processing. So you'll get a confirmation, your order is complete, you can download your receipt. You can download the link as well if you need to resend it to a customer. And this order history will be contained in here as well.
6:30
So that's why I kind of just did. So I'll show you the Yeah, no, it's not here yet showing you my emails as well. Always very fun. Let me do the API I gotta go for you.
6:53
So there's the kind of 1 $1 payout link that I sent to myself. Customers can then redeem this and it will just go to whatever value they have. So for Amazon, just apply it to your account or copy the code. And so that's kind of the end to end process.
7:12
So for the API it's the redemption process is the same as I won't show my email at the end and do that part. But the difference is between having a portal and an API is just how tailored you can make that solution.
7:28
So when you come to our platform, you have to use the platform that we, the way that we have designed it, the menu, the UI the like where it goes into your work flow.
7:39
But if you kind of use the API, you can plug it in anywhere you want. You can put it on your site, you can put it on your kind of, you can put products on your customer site, you can limit things, you can add them into different workflows.
7:54
It's just a lot a lot more customizable. And actually our API is easy to integrate. We have like a dedicated public Slack channel where if you're having issues integrating, you can kind of let us know and we can support you with that.
8:12
In terms of industry standard, it's kind of the same amount of time to integrate any API just kind of one engineer a couple of days and it should be all sorted. So yeah, let me show you creating, creating an order.
8:26
And this again is just a very light sandbox to testing the little shell. But all of this will be automated in your system so that you are able to whatever you are whatever buttons you might have on top of it so that you are able to do that.
8:43
So this is our new API that will be released next week. Very exciting times. You are the first people in the world to see it outside our company.
8:53
So you can choose how you're going to pay. And I'm gonna pay with a balance. Again, it will automatically know what the balance is. So you won't have to like in the portal, choose to pay by account balance or pay by card.
9:09
You could integrate it so that like it knows I've topped up my balance and I could put in money from here there or anywhere. So that's a great piece of customization you can have there.
9:20
Some kind of U I somewhere will give, allow the customers to add in your customer or your end user, your business person to add in that value. Again, they can distribute the links by downloading one of them or you can add in email. And that's much, much easier to automate.
9:43
And also the number of links that you can send in an order is increasing to 500. It was 10, it is 10 currently, but will be 500 for next week as well. So much easier to place large orders for people who are doing that.
9:58
The other thing that's awesome is that for multiple product links, this is way easier to do. So you can just type in the you can just type in the different products that you want to buy. Previously, this process was actually quite cumbersome and difficult.
10:17
So now you literally just keep typing them in Amazon, one of my engineers on the corner is gonna shout at me because you're not allowed to do this, you can't actually mix different currencies, but Amazon is the only one I know off by heart, but you don't have to know it off by heart because we have a list product endpoint as well.
10:35
Everything I wrote is just going to be gone from that page. But anyway, and this is a list product endpoint which you can use type and this will be automated, of course, type in the the country code and then see a list of all our products.
10:49
So you don't actually have to remember the codes that will all be done in the system for you. So if I kind of carry on a fixed account balance, face value of one, put my email in or I thought I was afraid to, I'm not, I'm not afraid.
11:11
So we'll go for a single product just to make things easy. As I say, the only one I ever remember is Amazon. So we'll, we'll use that. And then I FJ Sweet.
11:25
I think we're on and then the version just need to so again, all of this will be automated. It's just the effort to kind of set it up. The first time. Exactly other guy. And that should be all good.
11:57
So when you are setting up the when you are setting this up, you will be able to use this page to do some testing and to see how the API works so your developers can see kind of what responses they'll get in this documentation.
12:14
We're also building a sandbox environment that is gonna give you kind of more testing functionality too. So that's coming soon. Watch out for that.
12:24
I will show my emails again because like, I mean, why not again? Take a second, keep refreshing when you see that change to two.
12:37
That means I've got another email. There you go.
12:39
Here's another gift for me, another gift for myself, how kind I am to me and that was two hours ago. It's not that one. This one.
12:51
Yeah. So yeah, it's super easy. So you integrate that API and you give your customers fields.
12:59
So face value email. Just like we've done, just like we've done here, we've just like created a field for you to add in the amount like you can make this whatever you want wherever you want in your system, anywhere.
13:13
And it would just be pulling in the same information that we just saw that the API response returned. So as Ellie said, really scalable, really customizable and a great way to move forward, don't be like I'm not a technical person and I don't have an engineering background at all and it's actually not that complicated to integrate with an API and it is just once you do the work up front and then you get kind of all the benefits that we talked about.
13:40
So, yeah, we really encourage you to try it. I will stop speaking and hand over to the professional person.
13:47
Can I share my screen? I will, how do I stop?
13:55
Yeah, great.
13:57
So I think you should be able to see my screen.
14:06
Yes.
14:08
Can you see blank?
14:12
OK.
14:13
No need.
14:14
What we want to cover now is just talk about some next steps. So rest assured there is no action required for you yet. However, we are currently developing the API the API we have a release next week.
14:28
So if you would like early access, if you want to try it out, please let us know either through your account manager or we'll send details when we send out this webinar recording.
14:40
So yeah, as we say, we encourage you to try it out and most importantly, share your feedback.
14:44
So if there is a certain feature or functionality you after we'd love to hear about it, You know, the API is, is designed to be easy to integrate and also easy to iterate.
14:55
So we'd, we'd love to make sure that we're building it in line with your requirements.
14:59
In the meantime, you know, business as usual for the existing system that you're using over the coming months, we'll be sharing a lot more information about the API telling you more about what we're building.
15:11
So, whenever you want to try it out, please just let us know.
15:15
So thank you very much Florence for the demo and thank you everyone for joining.
15:19
If you do have any questions, you can pop them in the chat.
15:22
Now, alternatively, we'll, as I said, we'll be sending this out along with a number of other resources.
15:28
And if you have any questions or feedback, let us know.
