Getting Started with Web Services

Before using web services there are a few areas you should become familiar with.

Permissions

For new users of web services, this is the area where most mistakes are made. Often developers don't have a full understanding of Projector's permission structure. If you are a developer you should work with your Projector administrator to ensure you have the correct permissions. To do this you should spec out what you want to accomplish via web services. Then work with your administrator to find out which permissions are required to perform each action. At a minimum you will need the following:

• Web services module enabled (there may be a cost associated with this).
• A user account. In general you should try and create a special user account named 'web services' for this rather than use your own. This is because Projector keeps logs of who changed what in the system. You would want to know whether something was changed via web services or via manual entry.
• The web services global permission set to View or Update. This gives you permission to access the web services, but not necessarily to do anything.
• The export data global permission. This gives you permission to retrieve data out of Projector. You probably want this turned on.
• Other permissions. Using web services grants you no greater permissions than your normal user settings. So if you cannot create projects logged in as the user, then you will not be able to create projects via web services. You will need appropriate global permissions and cost center permissions for everything you want to do via web services. Please discuss your development objectives with your Projector administrator to determine what permissions you will need. 

Sandboxes

Sandboxes are test environments of your production installation. I cannot stress enough that using sandboxes during implementation and testing of your web services is extremely important. If mistakes are made that mess up your production environment then you will be responsible for cleaning it up. You can read more about sandboxes and how to obtain one here.

Web Services 2.0

There is a new set of web services available. The Web Services 1.0 will eventually be supplanted by these newer web services. You should also review that documentation to find which services best solve your web services needs. The web services 1.0 will continue to be supported by Projector.

RESTful Web Services

Projector offers some RESTful web services. Please see the Report Web Services for more information.

Authentication

Please see the authentication documentation for important information on how to properly connect to web services.

WSDL

The web services descriptor can be found at this url https://secure.projectorpsa.com/OpsProjectorWebSvc/OpsProjectorSvc.asmx?wsdl

Support

You can send in questions to the support desk. However the support desk does not consist of software developers. So the team may not be able to answer all of your software development questions. If you need more in depth help than the support desk can provide then you may be referred to our consulting team discussed below. When submitting support tickets please:

1. Check that your permissions are correct
2. Include which user account is connecting. Typically this is an email address.
3. Include which installation you are connecting to. Typically production or a sandbox.
4. Request XML
5. Response XML

If you don't know how to get the request and response XML out of your development environment then you can install a program called Fiddler. This program allows you to decrypt https traffic and inspect the requests and responses from Projector.

Consulting

New users to web services are highly advised to obtain consulting from our development staff. This ensures that what you want to accomplish is possible, you understand how to implement it properly, and you understand all the ramifications of your implementation. In addition, if you need assistance in how to develop your web services beyond what the support desk can provide, our team of software development professionals with decades of experience can assist you. If you would like consulting services please ask your Projector administrator to contact the sales department.