[Announcement] Announcing CiviForm API v1.0 and our next steps for integrations!

[Austin Valeske]

Hi all,

Over the past few months we've been planning and executing on work to improve CiviForm's ability to integrate with other government IT infrastructure, enabling CiviForm to be a key part of a larger service delivery strategy.

Now, Delivery Phase 1 of our API and Integrations work is complete!

This means that:

• Core functionality of the JSON API is complete. Complete applications can be pulled from CiviForm into a destination case management system.
• There is API documentation that updates automatically when a draft program is created, so technical staff can see exactly what the API response for a program will look like before publishing the changes.
• We are done making backwards-incompatible changes to the response schema. New features will be added, but they won't break existing API consumers.

Upcoming work for Q4 includes:

• Additional stability improvements, such as ensuring adding or removing questions from a program doesn't break API consumers and adding to our suite of regression tests.
• Writing "getting started" guides for integrating with CiviForm.
• Expanded filtering functionality. Consuming systems will be able to request applications matching specific criteria, such as the most recent application for an applicant or a time window smaller than a day.
• Auto-generated Swagger and OpenAPI spec files, which simplifies integrating with Microsoft Power Automate, custom Power Platform connectors, and anything that supports OpenAPI.
• Aligning the CSV export semantics with the JSON API, so that either option returns everything about an application.

Beyond Q4, planned features include:

• The ability to fetch files via the API.
• Case management systems can push status updates back into CiviForm.

A lot of folks have helped us get here, including:

• Google: Bion Johnson, Reema Al-Marzoog, Michael Zetune, Tom Smith, Austin Valeske
  
• Exygy: Isabel Shaw, Melanie Barker
• Seattle: Gwen Goetz, Swathi Murthi, Elise Kalstad
• Arkansas: Matthew Sparks
  
• Plus everyone else who's provided feedback, reviewed PRs, and reviewed TDDs!

You can find out more about our Integrations work and the next delivery phases in our CiviForm Integrations Requirements and Work Plan doc and the Github board.

Thank you!

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Austin Valeskehe/him Senior Software Engineer Google.org Works • NYC