Using the Tap Inspect API

An API is what lets another piece of software talk directly to your Tap Inspect account — creating jobs, pulling finished reports, syncing contacts — instead of someone re-entering the same information by hand. Here's what it is, what you need to use it, and where to find the full technical documentation.

What the API does

The Tap Inspect API gives a third-party application full read/write access to your account data: jobs, contacts, services, invoices, reports, and more. It's the same interface our own mobile apps use, so anything you can do in the app, a properly authorized integration can do too.

This is a developer-facing tool. Using it means someone, you, an in-house developer, or the engineering team at the other company, is going to write code against it. Tap Inspect doesn't build or maintain custom integrations on your behalf.

The API is pull and push: your application asks Tap Inspect for what it needs, and Tap Inspect answers. If you need to react to something the moment it happens instead of asking repeatedly — a report getting published, a job's schedule changing — pair it with Webhooks, which push data to you automatically.

Before you go this route, check your Integrations page for a ready-made connection (Mailchimp, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Webhooks, etc). The API is for cases those don't cover.

What you need: two separate credentials

Every API request needs both of these. They aren't interchangeable, and one without the other won't work.

Generating your API Authentication Token

1. Log into Tap Inspect at app.tapinspect.com.
2. Go to Integrations (under your account menu).
3. Find the API Authentication Tokens card and click Change Settings.
4. Click Generate a New Token, then copy it right away.

Treat this token like your password, it gives full access to your account. We recommend generating a separate token for each service you connect, and deleting a token as soon as you stop using that service.

Requesting an API Key

Because the API key identifies the application itself rather than any one account, we issue these directly. Contact Tap Inspect support with the email address of your Tap Inspect account and a short description of what you're building or connecting to. We'll get you a key. If you want to test without touching live data first, see Testing in the development sandbox below.

Testing in the development sandbox

Tap Inspect runs a separate environment at dev.tapinspect.com for testing your integration without touching live data. It's a fully separate account from your production Tap Inspect account, so nothing you do there affects real jobs, reports, or clients.

1. Create a new account directly at dev.tapinspect.com — this is separate from your production login and won't work with your production credentials.
2. Generate an API Authentication Token the same way you did for production: Integrations > API Authentication Tokens > Generate a New Token.
3. Contact Tap Inspect support to request a development API key, just like you would for the production key.

Once you have both, point your requests at dev.tapinspect.com instead of app.tapinspect.com. Everything else works the same as production.

Full technical documentation

The complete API reference, authentication, request headers, data structure, and example requests in several languages, is at apidocs.tapinspect.com.

A couple of things worth knowing going in:

• Every request needs a device UUID identifying the system or app making the call.
• Records use transaction keys to prevent one device's update from silently overwriting another's, the docs cover how to handle that.