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Testing, Deployment, and Support

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Testing Environment & Tools

• Dedicated sandbox API endpoint (e.g., https://api-sandbox.example.com)
• Pre-populated test customers, services, locations
• Sandbox credentials (API keys/OAuth clients)
• Ability to trigger webhook events manually
• Data reset capability to known state

• API client collections (Postman/Insomnia)
• Mock customer scenarios and documented test cases
• Load testing scripts (JMeter/K6)
• Automated integration test suite

• Webhook test endpoint provided
• Webhook inspector for real-time visibility
• Configurable responses for success/failure scenarios

• Happy-path booking flows
• Edge cases (double bookings, unavailable slots, invalid data)
• Error handling and recovery
• Rate limiting behavior
• Authentication failures and token expiration
• Webhook delivery and retry logic
• Timeout and latency scenarios
• Concurrent booking attempts

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Integration Timeline

• API specification review and finalization
• Authentication setup and credential provisioning
• Sandbox access
• Documentation review

• Initial API integration development
• Unit testing of individual endpoints
• Error handling implementation
• Webhook consumer development

• End-to-end flow testing in sandbox
• Performance and load testing
• Security testing and validation
• Edge case and error scenario testing

• User acceptance testing
• Bug fixes and optimization
• Documentation finalization
• Support team training

• Production credential provisioning
• Staged rollout (pilot customers first)
• Monitoring and alerting setup
• Go-live and post-deployment validation

• Bi-weekly sync meetings
• Shared Slack channel for real-time communication
• Shared documentation workspace (Confluence/Notion)
• Joint code reviews for critical integration points
• Paired debugging sessions as needed

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Monitoring & Metrics

GET /api/v1/metrics/integration/{integration_id}

{
  "integration_id": "avoca_prod",
  "time_period": "last_24h",
  "metrics": {
    "total_requests": 12500,
    "successful_requests": 12350,
    "failed_requests": 150,
    "average_response_time_ms": 185,
    "p95_response_time_ms": 320,
    "bookings_created": 450,
    "bookings_failed": 15,
    "availability_queries": 1200,
    "rate_limit_hits": 5
  },
  "errors_by_type": {
    "SLOT_UNAVAILABLE": 8,
    "VALIDATION_ERROR": 4,
    "TIMEOUT": 2,
    "INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR": 1
  }
}

• Real-time dashboard for integration health
• Alerts on error rate thresholds (>5%)
• Latency monitoring with alerts (>1 s response time)
• Success rate tracking for booking conversions
• Webhook delivery success rates

• Access to your API health status page
• Incident notification system
• Planned maintenance calendar
• Performance degradation alerts

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Ongoing Support & Maintenance

• Tier 1 (general issues): [email protected] (response: 4 business hours)
• Tier 2 (integration issues): Slack channel or [email protected] (response: 2 business hours)
• Tier 3 (critical outages): Phone hotline or PagerDuty escalation (response: 30 minutes)

• Critical (system down): 1-hour initial response, 4-hour resolution target
• High (major functionality impaired): 4-hour response, 24-hour resolution target
• Medium (minor issues): 24-hour response, 3-business-day resolution
• Low (questions, enhancements): 48-hour response, best-effort resolution

• Semantic versioning (Major.Minor.Patch)
• Backward-compatible changes: minor version increment
• Breaking changes: major version increment with deprecation notice

• Notice period: Minimum 90 days for deprecated endpoints
• Sunset header (e.g., Sunset: Sat, 31 Jan 2026 23:59:59 GMT)
• Migration guide provided for upgrades
• Dual-version support during migration

• Release notes with each deployment
• API changelog maintained at docs.example.com/changelog
• Breaking change notifications: email + dashboard notice (90 days advance)
• Partner newsletter: monthly API updates and roadmap

• OpenAPI/Swagger specification maintained
• Integration guides with step-by-step setup
• Code examples in multiple languages
• Troubleshooting guides for common issues
• Version history archived for older releases

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Azure-Specific Tools & Best Practices

• CI/CD pipeline compatibility
• Share API client SDKs via Azure Artifacts
• Link integration tasks to Azure Boards work items

• Correlation IDs for distributed tracing
• Custom events for integration monitoring
• Telemetry sharing for joint troubleshooting

• Support for subscription keys if required
• Work within APIM rate limiting and transformation policies
• Developer portal access for self-service

• Respect Retry-After headers in 429/503 responses
• Propagate correlation/trace context
• Emit structured (JSON) logs compatible with Azure Monitor
• Support Azure health probe formats for traffic management

• Do you use Azure Front Door or Traffic Manager for global distribution?
• Are your APIs behind Azure API Management?
• Do you use Azure AD B2C for customer identity?
• Should we integrate with Azure Service Bus for async operations?
• Do you expose metrics via Azure Monitor?