Kantata API Overview – Kantata Knowledge Base

Default Account Permissions: Account Administrator

Overview

API is an abbreviation for Application Programming Interface. In Kantata OX, it is one of the two layers of the application that enables you to view, create, update, and delete the data in your account. The user interface (UI) is the other layer that allows you to interact in the application and is largely built on top of our API layer.

For example, when you update an account member's name in the UI, the underlying API request made to accomplish that is the updating an existing user endpoint. To make the same change via the API yourself, you can hit the endpoint https://api.mavenlink.com/api/v1/users/{id} and replace {id} with the ID number of the user whose name you want to update.

To learn more about Kantata's RESTful API based on HTTPS requests and JSON responses, see our API documentation.

API Permission Requirements

You must be an Account Administrator in order to use the Kantata OX API and register applications to interact with your Kantata account. Registering an application means you are approving an application to communicate with your Kantata account. You are required to register applications in order to generate OAuth2 tokens, which authenticate requests to the Kantata OX API. You can think of OAuth2 tokens as the credentials that enable external applications to securely communicate with Kantata OX.

Because our API provides access to the majority of our data model, you can do just about anything in the Kantata OX application with it. It is a very powerful tool, and the OAuth 2 protocol enables application developers to request permissions and interact with your Kantata OX data in a secure way.

Our vast API means three things for our clients, developers, and partners:

You can completely customize your own Kantata environment.
You can automate actions and workflows in Kantata itself, or between Kantata and third-party applications via your own scripts.

TIP

If you aren't comfortable with writing your own scripts but are still interested in automating workflows, you can use build customized workflows in Kantata Connect with the assistance of the Customer Success team.
Kantata functions can easily be integrated into other applications in a countless number of ways.

Common Use Cases

Let's take a look at some common use cases you might have as a client, partner, or developer.

Client—Organizations and teams continually choose Kantata as their platform for all their core planning, project accounting, analysis, collaboration, and project management functions. Clients can customize everything from fields to the branding of their Kantata OX environments from within the UI, but the possibilities for customization of environments are almost endless with the API. Everything you see in the default user interface can be completely rebuilt and redesigned as needed or wanted, including the addition or removal of functions (as permitted by the API).
Developer—Developers and their organizations often have diverse and evolving needs when it comes to creating and maintaining automated business process workflows, out-of-the-box integrations, and completely custom-built integrations with HRIS applications, CRMs, ERPs, and more. Kantata aims to facilitate as smooth and scalable an integration experience as possible.
Partner—Organizations can make the use of Kantata OX functions a seamless option from within their own applications.

Viewing and Managing Your Tokens

You can view and manage your personal authorized tokens in Password & Authorizations, accessible via the User Settings menu.

You can view and manage all the registered applications and tokens for your account in Settings > API.

API Rate Limits

Kantata uses rate limits to ensure the performance of our API. If you make too many requests in a given amount of time, the API will return a 429 response status. For more information, see the Kantata OX API Rate Limits article.

OpenAPI Specification

The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, language-agnostic interface to HTTP APIs, allows consumers to quickly identify and understand service capabilities, and can be used for various development use cases.

Kantata’s OpenAPI specification can be downloaded through the following link:

https://app.mavenlink.com/oas/specification