Postbot: Postman AI-powered assistant
Who would not identify Postman as one of the most used API tools in the expanding world of IT? In this article, I want to focus on a relatively new functionality offered by Postman: AI-powered assistant — Postbot.
Postman is an API platform for building and using APIs. Postman simplifies each step of the API lifecycle and streamlines collaboration so you can create better APIs — faster. Over 25 million developers use Postman on a daily basis.
Source: https://www.postman.com/
Postbot is an artificial intelligence tool that continuously learns from user requests to complete API tasks. It is possible to ask Postbot direct questions or let it create all sorts of tests, debug API(s), visualize received responses, and automatically write API documentation in just a few clicks in the app.
This handy helper offers even more options. Its support saves time when working with Postman. In addition, daily use increases the output quality and speeds up API actions with conversational interactions and contextual suggestions. It has an ideal position to score and succeed in learning areas.
Postbot is available as an add-on to the Free, Basic, and Professional plans. Postbot isn’t currently available in Enterprise plans.
Source: https://learning.postman.com/docs/getting-started/basics/about-postbot/
There are several ways to open the Postbot dialog box and start typing your prompts or choosing from the list of pre-prepared options. Postman speaks about “Instant support” as it should be available everywhere we (users) need for our tasks. Postbot is trained on Postman’s documentation. It is simple to ask for help and provide all input details in sent prompts. This makes the experience with the Postman tool faster and even better than ever before.
In the following sections, I am going to point out four key Postbot features:
- Test scripts generation
- Smart suggestions
- Visualized responses
- Instant API documentation
Test scripts generation
Would you like to automatically build instant tests for your request or an entire collection? There is no longer a need to invent tests manually. Only one click or prompt and the goal is met. In addition, the assistant can add new API tests, correct existing ones, or design them for manual selection. The possibility of fixing broken tests on the fly is also worth remembering. As we can see, the time spent creating tests is thus reduced to a minimum.
Smart suggestions
From time to time, it is a time-consuming activity to come up with suitable behaviors that you can test for. For this reason, another valuable feature is the ability to suggest test names to add to a suite. A sample is shown in the image below. Based on my experience, there is still room for improvement.
Do you know Copilot? Not only in that case, but you will most likely admire an automatically generated code proposal for a specific test function based on its name/title, the up-to-date response, and all saved response examples. Everyone can save time as it suggests code completions as developers type.
Visualized responses
Postman Visualizer provides an intelligent programmable way to represent request responses visually. In this area, we can use Postbot to create a new visualization, change a type of visualization, fix already existing ones, and more. It is profitable to see data as a graph/table/chart instead of pure text. This feature produces advantages for cognitive and presentation purposes.
Instant API documentation
What can save hours of work? The possibility of automatically generating documentation for a request containing a description, request parameters, and response examples with a single click. An output is dynamic based on several variables, such as a specific user prompt, information provided for individual request parameters, a response body, and other relevant factors. For now, there is no way to send a prompt to edit/improve documentation.
Small question: Do you like fairy tales? What about Sleeping Beauty? 😃
Documentation: https://learning.postman.com/docs/publishing-your-api/authoring-your-documentation/#writing-documentation-with-postbot
This Medium article has been created as a part of my brief introduction to Postman Postbot. As you might have noticed, I did not include all possible options. Do you need to save a response field without the code knowledge? Would you like to generate FQL queries in Postman Flows? No problem…
From the Postman side, this AI assistant is one of the significant steps into the world of AI. As I pointed out in the previous paragraphs, Postbot offers useful functionalities helpful in using Postman and playing with APIs. I am already curious to reveal a future direction. So yeah, what is your opinion?
Did you know that Postman has been named to the Forbes Cloud 100 list of the world’s best private cloud companies (as high as #28 in 2022 and #42 in 2023)?
Source: https://www.forbes.com/lists/cloud100/
Official Postman links
- Product: Postbot
- Learning: About Postbot
- Blog: List of articles
- YouTube: Exploring Postbot
We are ACTUM Digital and this piece was written by Lukáš Cimpl, QA Automation Engineer of Apollo Division. Feel free to get in touch.
