Collaborate with the Postman community using public workspaces

Anyone in the Postman community can access a public workspace. A public workspace can enhance a new user's onboarding experience with your API, inspire your existing users with new use cases and resources, increase your API's discovery in Postman search results, and enable you to work publicly with partners.

Making your team profile public

Before other Postman users can work with your team in a public workspace, your team needs to have a public team profile. A public team profile encourages other users to collaborate with you in a public workspace, enables you to ask for contributions and gather feedback, and increases your API's discovery in search results. A public team profile also shows up on the Postman API Network.

To make your team profile public, do the following:

1. In the upper-right corner of Postman next to your avatar, select Team > Team settings.
2. Select Team profile.
3. Select Make team profile public to set the profile to public.

For information on how to create a public profile, see Editing your team profile.

Creating a public workspace

You can create a public workspace to share your workspace and its elements with the Postman community on the Postman API Network.

Make sure to never expose secrets, such as API keys, in your public workspaces. The Postman Secret Scanner scans your public workspaces to detect any exposed secrets, and its visibility will be changed to team or personal if it detects any secrets. Learn how the Secret Scanner scans your public workspaces.

To create a public workspace, do the following:

1. From the header, select Workspaces > Create Workspace.

   

2. You can use workspace templates to help you set up a new workspace. Select a workspace template to populate the workspace with helpful information and sample collections, or select Blank workspace to create an empty workspace. Then select Next.

   

3. Specify a workspace Name and Summary.

   Within a team, you can't have two public workspaces with the same name.

4. Under Visibility, select Public.

5. Select Create.

   

Converting an existing workspace to a public workspace

As a Workspace Admin, you can convert an existing workspace to a public workspace. If you're on a Postman Professional or Enterprise plan, making a workspace public requires a Community Manager's approval. Once you make a workspace public, all elements within that workspace become publicly available on the Postman API Network.

Before you convert your workspace to a public workspace, make sure secrets aren't exposed in it. You can give your API consumers a placeholder variable or vault secret (recommended). The Secret Scanner scans your public workspaces to detect any exposed secrets, and its visibility will be changed to team or personal if it detects any secrets. Learn how the Secret Scanner scans your public workspaces.

Postman sends in-app and email notifications to all workspace members when the workspace is made public. To view your in-app notifications, select the notification icon in the Postman header.

To convert an existing workspace to a public workspace in a Postman Free or Basic plan, do the following:

1. Open the workspace. In the Overview tab, select Settings.
2. Under Who can access this workspace?, select Anyone on the internet from the dropdown list.
3. Select Update.

To convert an existing workspace to a public workspace in a Postman Professional or Enterprise plan, do the following:

1. In the Overview tab, select Settings.

2. Under Who can access this workspace?, select Anyone on the internet from the dropdown list.

3. Enter an optional note, then select Request Visibility Change.

   

   This sends a request to team members with the Community Manager role for their approval, and triggers the Secret Scanner. The workspace's visibility will be set to team until it's approved.

   While you're waiting for the request to be reviewed, you can take the following actions:

   • Select Check status to check the status of the secret scan. If exposed secrets are detected, you can select View results to open the Secret Scanner results and replace the secrets. Then you can select Scan again to trigger the Secret Scanner.
   • Select Cancel Request to cancel the request to convert the workspace.
   

Inviting collaboration on a public workspace

An informative and inviting public workspace can help increase adoption of your APIs. To invite collaboration from other users on your public workspace, you need to have:

• A complete public team profile.
• A complete workspace overview, including a name, summary, and description.
• Descriptive documentation for your APIs.

Signs of a public workspace that invites collaboration include:

• Active forks of your workspace - The number of people who fork your workspace and work on their forks shows strong collaborator engagement.
• People watching your workspace - The number of people who watch your workspace for activity can reflect interest from potential collaborators.
• Recent activity on the workspace - A workspace activity feed that shows ongoing work assures potential collaborators that your team updates and maintains the workspace.

For more information on using a public workspace to help increase adoption of your API, see Increasing adoption of an API with a public workspace on the Postman blog.

Sharing a public workspace

You can share a public workspace by giving collaborators its workspace URL directly.

To access a workspace's URL, do the following:

1. Go to the workspace Overview page.
2. Select the link icon next to the workspace name to copy the workspace's URL to your clipboard.

You can share this workspace URL with other users.

When you share a workspace with Postman users who aren't team members, its visibility must be public. If the workspace is restricted to a team or is a private or personal workspace, users who don't have access won't be able to open the workspace.

Managing a public workspace

When a user opens a public workspace, Postman shows an overview of its contents, activity, and members in an Overview tab. The user interacts with the contents of the public workspace, including the collections, APIs, environments, and other elements. As a team member with an Admin role on the workspace, you can manage the overview, the elements in the workspace, and the members of the workspace.

Editing public workspace details

Users with an Admin role for a workspace can edit workspace details, including updating the workspace's name, summary, description, and visibility. For more information, see Editing workspace details.

The Postman API Network displays your workspace's name and summary. Make your workspace name and summary informative to improve its visibility on the Postman API Network.

Moving elements to a public workspace

You can move Postman elements from your personal, private, or team workspace into a public workspace. You must have an Admin or Editor role for the public workspace to move elements to it.

To move an existing element to a public workspace, do the following:

1. Select the more actions icon next to the collection or environment name, then select Move.
2. Select the public workspace to which you want to move the collection or environment, then select Move Collection or Move Environment.

The Postman element that you move to the public workspace will no longer exist in the original workspace.

If there are monitors, mock servers, or integrations associated with the moved element, they remain in the original workspace.

The API's collections will move with the API to the new workspace.

Scanning for exposed secrets in a public workspace

The Secret Scanner scans your public workspaces to detect any exposed secrets, such as API keys. Team Admins, Super Admins, and Workspace Admins will receive an email if exposed secrets are detected in your public workspaces. If secrets are detected in your public workspace, its visibility will be changed to team for Postman teams or personal for individual users. Learn more about types of workspace.

It's important that you revoke the exposed secrets the Secret Scanner detects.

To protect your organization, never share sensitive data in your public workspaces. You can give your API consumers a placeholder variable or vault secret, such as {{vault:postman-api-key}}. A vault secret reference is recommended because your API consumers can add the vault secret to their Postman Vault with their own value, and only they can access it.

Use the link in the email to view the Secret Scanner results, and replace each exposed secret. You can convert the workspace to a public workspace once you replace all exposed secrets.

Deleting elements from a public workspace

You can delete Postman elements from a public workspace for which you have an Admin or Editor role.

1. Select the more actions icon next to the element's name, then select Delete.
2. Select Delete to confirm your choice.

You can retrieve the deleted element by selecting Trash from the footer.

Deleting a public workspace

To delete a public workspace, you must change its visibility first. You must have an Admin role for a workspace to be able to delete it.

1. On the workspace overview, select Settings.
2. Under Who can access this workspace?, select one of Team, Private, or Personal, then select Update.
3. After you update its visibility, select Delete Workspace.
4. Enter the workspace name to confirm that you want to delete it, then select Delete workspace.

Managing public workspace users and roles

If you're a Team Admin, you can manage collaborators and user roles in a public workspace:

• Invite team members, groups, and external users to collaborate in a public workspace. To learn more about inviting users to work with you in your public workspace, see Sharing workspaces.
• Assign access to elements within a workspace. Workspace roles control access to elements. You can assign workspace roles to an individual user or to a user group. To learn more about assigning workspace roles or removing a user from a workspace, see Managing workspace roles.

Team members will receive an email and in-app notification when they're added to a public workspace.

Collaborating in another user's public workspace

To collaborate with someone else in their public workspace, select Workspaces from the header, and then select the workspace you want to work in.

For collections and environments, create a fork and request to merge changes using a pull request.

For APIs, select the API and version. Select the Definition tab and then select Request Access to request an Editor role.

You can access public workspaces using the Postman Explore page's Workspaces category. You can also access the public workspaces that you own or are a member of using Workspaces in the header.

The list of avatars in the Postman header shows you who's active in your workspace. This list will include all active users with public profiles, and users who've chosen to remain anonymous by not enabling their public profile.

Next steps

Once you start working collaboratively in a public workspace, users can fork collections and create pull requests.

• To learn more about version control in Postman, visit Version control for Postman collections and environments.