Before you begin using API 2.0

Before you can do anything, you’ll need to have an active Common Controls Hub account as well as API access.

Get started with a Common Controls Hub account here.

Setting up API Access

In order to get moving, the first thing you’ll need to do is to sign in to your Common Controls Hub account and either create a new API key, or use one of the existing API keys that you’ve already created.

To find your API key,

  1. Navigate to the Settings page by clicking the cog icon on the left navigation.
  2. Once there, click the API MANAGER tab at the top to take you to the appropriate area.
  3. Click API Keys to see any existing keys you might have. Or, just click HERE and we’ll take you directly there.

Copy your API key to the clipboard and then click the Requests tab here to enter your API key.

Once you’ve entered your API key, you can proceed to the next step, running the my-account endpoint.

The three key START HERE examples in this API 2.0 documentation: Account, Content Tagging & Matching, Glossary

This START HERE guide covers three aspects of the Unified Compliance Framework that you’ll want to integrate with in order to fully take advantage of API 2.0. If you don’t plan on matching your clients’ tagged text to the Common Controls found within an Authority Document list they’ve saved, you can skip integration step 1.

  1. Gathering Account Information - In this section we walk you through the data structures and API calls you’ll need to pull account information from your clients’ Common Controls Hub account. This is where their Authority Document lists live. We’ve learned that you’ll also want to know which groups, initiatives, and users they might have as those can lend focus to the Authority Document lists that are chosen to create the Common Controls used in matching their tagged text.
  2. Establishing a Glossary - The backbone of tagging text and matching it to Common Controls is the UCF’s dictionary. We have the world’s largest compliance-related dictionary, but we can’t know all of the terms being used out there. Your clients will create, or use, terms that we might not catch. And those terms are critical in tagging their own contents’ mandates. Therefore, you’ll want to establish a methodology for maintaining a robust organizational glossary of their tagged terms. If you are gathering account information you’ll also be able to bring in the glossary of all of the terms that have been tagged and defined within their Authority Document lists. That’s a great place to start!
  3. Tagging mandate content - This section covers the structures and methods you’ll need to interact with our MultiWord Express (MWE) tagging engine. It isn’t perfect. Far from it. While we have the most specific, targeted compliance-related MWE tagging engine in existence, it needs to learn from your clients’ data. The feedback loop between your applications and our corpus is what makes the MWE engine learn. Which means that not only will we show you how to use the MWE engine to tag your text, we’ll show you how to send back updates of new terms or better tagging you’ve found so that the engine can learn. You can accomplish this step without going through step 1, but not without going through step 2.

These three sections are what the START HERE is all about. Obviously if you don’t want to match content against known Common Controls you can ignore step 1. But you can’t ignore step 2.

About the documentation format in the subsections that follow

Our documentation follows a standard format while you are in this section. The format is as follows:

Short Description describes the JSON call(s) that you’ll need to deal with and what they’ll do for you.

JSON Calls documentation provides a URL reference to our API 1.0 and API 2.0 Swagger documentation found here at GitHub.

Simple object table provides a detailed description of each object returned by the call.

Use Cases provides detailed information on how to use the call(s) being discussed. This area will also document any ERDs and data flow diagrams as well.