Welcome

[Neal Culiner]

This forum will be used to discuss use of our upcoming Logbook Pro API allowing other logbook products to work with Logbook Pro. This forum is primarily for developer discussion and questions on the use of the API, how to implement, etc. At this time the API is not yet available but we encourage interested parties to subscribe to this forum to be notified of new activity for when we release the beta API soon and shortly thereafter move the API to production.

 

[diedrichg]

What possible uses do you anticipate for integration?

 

[Neal Culiner]

What possible uses do you anticipate for integration?

Diedrich,

Let's take for example there is a mobile logbook app "Acme Logbook" or even a web logbook "Acme Web Logbook". We have users that use other logbook products but want to use the power of Logbook Pro such as the Analyzer, Reports, or other features they may need not available in a product they use. With the Logbook Pro API the vendor of that app can build an integration where the user could tap a button such as our "Sync" button in our Logbook Pro apps and that mobile data can be sent to the cloud via our service where Logbook Pro Desktop can pick it up.

Before we had our Logbook Pro iOS app we recommended our users check out a nice little app called Flogger which had a Logbook Pro integration via google documents and other export methods. Other mobile apps that are standalone have an export or e-mail CSV option and then the user can import that data into Logbook Pro Desktop, their Windows logbook of choice. Again in this scenario any logbook vendor can port their data to Logbook Pro via our service oriented architecture. This is not just mobile, it could be any other logbook product on any platform: Windows, Mac, Web, Mobile. Another case is we don't have BlackBerry support nor intend to produce one. Maybe someone else does, or Windows Phone 7 as an example. We can empower the developer community by allowing all of those other apps out there work with our growing services.

We have the most advanced schedule importer ever. It's an extremely complex and expensive system to create and maintain. Any user can use our schedule importer to parse their trips and store to their cloud account. Other apps can leverage our system to then bring that data to their apps over the cloud. We already make export options available such as to TAB and CSV but the cloud system is far less effort and more seamless.

We'll start off small and go from there. We have a fantastic infrastructure and architecture we built over the recent years and now it's time to really start to put it to use among other things we have in the works that this was designed for.

Does that make sense?

 

[diedrichg]

Makes perfect sense. I knew the power of APIs but I didn't have your vision for how you wanted to see it used.

 

[Ivan]

I am the creator of HogBook. I have Logbook pro and actually created HogBook Android app because you all didn't have an android app at the time. It is basically built for only ExpressJet, ASA and Skywest pilots in mind. I have built and designed my exported CSV files around Logbook pro and many of my users use HogBook to import their schedules into Logbook pro.

I am interested to learn more about the upcoming API services. What you described above sounds good.

When is the expected release date? Is there any chance of beta testing if you are a few months away from releasing API service? Do you have FAQs? Samples (preferably c#)? Any material related to your API service, I am interested in reading.

I am going to be working on updating HogBook by the end of the year and would like to implement your API service if it is something that would fit with HogBook.

Ivan

 

[Neal Culiner]

Hi Ivan,

We should have the initial release (beta) in 2-3 weeks, if not sooner and we'll continue to work on documentation. The concept is to keep it as simple as possible. It's all created in C# so I'll gladly provide a C# example.

Congrats on your app and thank you for offering the port to Logbook Pro and your interest in the API as we release it. And we look forward to any feedback and suggestions and will continue to mature and expand the API as time goes on. We enjoy the bringing together many different developers to arrive at the same goal of great logbook solutions for our users.

 

[Ivan]

Hi. I was wondering if there was an update as to when the API is scheduled to be released.

 

[Neal Culiner]

I apologize, we are delayed due to 1-1/2 weeks taken out of our schedule unexpectedly for iOS and Android updates. We had some iOS 6 issues that needed to be addressed and Barnes & Noble needed us to tweak a few things for their new NOOK HD tablets. That was completed last Wednesday, we are back on the API work this week. We are also in the process of moving to our new office mid-November in downtown Richmond, VA so our time hasn't been as available as we had initially projected.

We will have an "early release" beta cycle (soon) and then we will go final based on any feedback and necessary refinements.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

 

[Neal Culiner]

For those still awaiting our public API's I am very sorry for the delay. We are working hard on a priority effort at the moment (APDL for iOS) and have deferred this task a while longer. We will notify everyone via the newsletter once we have completed this API and it is ready for testing and later production.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.