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Consumer Requests

Consumers will have questions, new requests for enhancements, or experience problems. The API team must provide a way to be contacted, support the requests, and communicate support expectations.

Requirement

  • API teams must have a documented point of contact for your API.
  • API teams must actively monitor the point of contact location.
  • API teams must communicate the support hours (including timezone) for your API.

Guidance

  • API teams should have documented expectations for consumer requests.
  • API teams should track consumer requests and practice effective prioritization.

Point of contact

Your API must have a clear point of contact as specified in the General Guidelines documentation example OAS under info.contact and it must be actively monitored.

The API team should determine how to handle different types of consumer questions and requests—either automatically or manually—through this monitored location to meet support expectations.

Support expectations

API teams should have support that covers the needs of your consumers. This could mean 24x7 or VA business hours support, depending on criticality and business needs.

API teams should meet the following consumer support Service Level Objectives:

Guidance

  • Acknowledge receipt of consumer questions or requests for enhancements within 24 hours of the inquiry.
  • Acknowledge the consumer's report of an outage or performance degradation within 60 minutes of receipt.
  • Disable API keys or client credentials within 15 minutes of the consumer's report of a security incident.
  • Provide an answer or update to a consumer's inquiry within 3 business days.

Issue resolution timeframe

Critical issues causing outages for the API consumer must be solved, tested, and released as quickly as possible. Releasing a critical fix promptly, as described in the Production Management bug fixes section, is important to build confidence with your consumers. Visit the Production Management section for more details on best practices for managing the API in production.

Team resources

API teams should have the necessary expertise and resources to continue developing business features, maintaining the API, and answering consumer inquiries. They should track consumer requests for changes and plan resources to ensure business continuity.