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1. First of all you can consult our complete technical documentation.
   The documentation is divided into several guides:
   
   • an API Management User's Guide
     You can search this documentation using the search box on the left, in top of the content tree.
   • INSTALLATION for all modules
2. If you can't solve your problem with help of the documentation, you can have a look into our Forum at http://forum.e2ebridge.com.
   Maybe, someone had a similar problem. Otherwise, you are invited to post a question there. API Management developers or fellow users will help you.

3. Last but not least, you can file a ticket to our support team at support@e2ebridge.com.
   All mails to our support mailbox will open a ticket in our service desk.
   Optionally, you may use our service desk portal. There, you can manage your tickets and raise new support requests. Using the portal requires you to register your email address, which will not take much time.

   To help you with your problem, our Support team needs some information on your software and environment. Please refer to What Information to Include into a Support Request for more details on this.

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Almost everything in the API Management data model exists in the context of an organization:

• An organization contains and manages all elements used by a company, department, etc. within API Management.
• An organization is a container of other elements: plans, APIs, and clients are defined in the organization.
• Every user must be associated with at least one organization to be able to manage elements in the application.
• Scheer PAS API Management implements role-based access control for users. The organization membership of a user defines the actions he is able to perform and the elements he can manage within the organization.
• Memberships for each organization can be easily managed in the Organization tab.

A plan is a set of policies that defines the level of service the API Management provides for an API.

• Plans enable users to define multiple different levels of service for their APIs.
• It is common to define different plans for the same API. The differences depend on configuration options.
  Example:
  An organization offers two plans for the same API: Plan A is more expensive than plan B, but it offers a higher level of API requests in a given (and configurable) time period.

APIs represent real back-end APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). An API is also known as a service, meaning anything that can be invoked remotely by some sort of client. API Management provides a way to turn unmanaged (raw) back-end APIs into managed APIs by attaching policies to them.

Every managed API can be published as Public API or Private API or both:

• Public APIs are available to consumers without a key. Only policies defined for the API apply.
• Private APIs are only accessible for known consumers called clients. Every client has an individual key to access the API. Policies from the client, the selected plan in the contract and API apply.

In API Management, users can create new APIs manually or easily import them from the API Catalog.

The client is the consumer of the API:

• The client needs to consume managed APIs offered through the API Management.
• Each client can consume multiple APIs within the API Management, therefore a contract is created between an API and a client over a plan.
• As with an API or a plan, you can also add policies to a client. If you created a contract, you will get an API-Key to invoke the API.

Policies are at the lowest level of the data model, but they are the most important concept: A policy is a rule or a set of rules Scheer PAS API Management uses to manage your APIs.

• Policies represent the unit of work done at runtime, when the API Management applies the policies to all API requests.
• Policies are applied through a policy chain: when a request to an API is made, API Management creates a chain of policies to be applied to that request.
• Policy chains define a specific sequence order in which the defined policies are applied to API requests.

API Contracts and API Keys

Only public APIs can be accessed by any consumer. The only way for a client to consume a private API is by using an API contract. An API contract is a link between a client and an API through a plan offered by that API.

API contracts can only be created between clients and published APIs which are offered through at least one plan. An API contract cannot be created between a client and a public API.

When an API contract is created, the system generates a unique API Key. This key is unique per client and the same for all contracts of this client. All requests made to the API by a client through the gateway must include this API Key. The API Key is used to create the runtime policy chain from the policies configured on the API, plan and client.