#API Roadmap and Planned Management Features

API Discussion
1

Hi everyone,

what does the current planning look like for the API going forward?

I’d be interested to know whether any major expansions or additional features are planned in the near future, or whether the current state is largely final for now.

I’m particularly interested in the following points:

  • Will it be possible in the future to set up control centers completely via the API?
    If not: Will there at least be endpoints available to edit general settings of a control center?

  • Will there be options to create, edit, or delete areas, measures, etc. via API?
    Are further administrative or configuration functions planned at the API level?

For external tools, automation, or community projects, such features would be extremely helpful.

It would be great if you could give a brief assessment or outlook on this.

Cheers
Pat

4 Answers

4
5

For my current project, the following endpoints and functional areas would be particularly important from an API perspective, as I would need direct access to them:

Dispatch Management

  • CRUD for general dispatch center settings
  • CRUD for areas
  • CRUD for measures

Regarding the areas in particular, I’d be interested in how these are technically implemented on your end.

I’m currently assuming that these are not just simple admin levels from OSM, but rather proprietary data sets within SIM Dispatcher.

If that’s the case, it would be important to be able to retrieve the areas via API. However, I’m not looking to create new areas myself, but rather to be able to retrieve and set the existing area responsibilities including administrative level (tier 1) as well as incident volume via API.

2

Basically, almost everything should become more or less public use via the API. Given the scope, we’re glad when there are projects that use the interfaces of SIM Dispatcher to improve the experience for all users. It will also be permitted to distribute extensions or third-party apps commercially without us wanting to be financially involved. However, licensing agreements have not yet been finalized that would allow this conclusively.

3

Thanks for the open response :+1:

The approach sounds exciting, and I particularly appreciate the openness towards third-party tools. That’s exactly the direction I think SIM Dispatcher should be heading in the long term.

What I’m currently missing, though, is a bit of a sense of the timeframe. I’ve invested quite a bit of time into my own projects around the API and increasingly notice that certain architectural decisions depend quite heavily on what gets added to the API in the near future.

In the past, statements on this have often been fairly general. That eventually leads to a point where you start building things yourself or cobbling together workarounds, and a short time later an official endpoint comes along that you’ve essentially developed past.

That’s why a somewhat more concrete assessment would be really helpful:
Should we expect more endpoints to be actively added in the coming weeks or months, or is that more of a longer-term topic?

Particularly areas like:

  • Dispatch center management
  • General settings
  • Areas / measures
  • User and role management

are actually pretty central building blocks for external tools.

I’m not looking for fixed deadlines or pressure, just a way to plan my own projects technically cleanly and not develop into dead ends.

4

Feel free to let me know which endpoints you’d need next. I’ll take it into consideration for 4.9.