Troubleshooting integrated authoring in App Connect Designer or IBM API Connect

If you are using App Connect Designer in an IBM® Cloud Pak for Integration deployment, and integrated authoring (previously termed co-authoring) is enabled to allow a started API flow to be automatically published to a Product in IBM API Connect, you might encounter an error when you try to start or stop an API in App Connect Designer.

For more information about the conditions for integrated authoring and details of how to enable this feature for API flows that are created in App Connect Designer, see IBM Cloud Pak for Integration only: Creating flows for an API from scratch.


Resolving errors encountered while starting an API in App Connect Designer

When you try to start an API flow in your App Connect Designer instance, the API might fail to start with an error indicating that the API couldn't be published to API Connect.

Examples:

Example of a 'Your API wasn't started' error
Example of a 'Your API wasn't started' error

Possible causes are as follows:

  • There might be issues with one or more of the target applications in the flow in App Connect Designer.
  • The API couldn't be published to API Connect because one or more of your specified publishing targets were not discovered.

Complete the following steps to try to resolve the issue:

  1. As an initial step, try to restart the API from your App Connect Designer instance.
  2. If the problem persists, complete one or more of these steps:
    • Check whether any error messages have been written to the pod logs, and try to resolve those errors. To access your logs, see Viewing cluster logs in Red Hat OpenShift.
    • Verify that your API Connect instance is still available and running. If the instance is no longer running, restart it and then restart the API flow. If the API Connect instance no longer exists, you can choose to publish to a Product in another API Connect instance (which meets the conditions for integrated authoring) by updating the API gateway settings for the flow and then restarting the flow.
    • Verify that your preferences for a Catalog, Space, Gateway service, Product, Plan, and application, which you selected in the API gateway settings panel in Designer, are still available in your API Connect instance. If necessary, update the API gateway settings for the flow and then restart it.
    • Verify that you have the permissions required to publish APIs to the selected Catalog in the provider organization of which you are the owner or a member. If you're a member, verify that you have been assigned the Developer role at the provider organization level. For more information, see Creating a provider organization and API Connect user roles.

Resolving errors encountered while stopping an API in App Connect Designer

When you try to stop an API flow in your App Connect Designer instance, you might see a message indicating that although the API was stopped in Designer, other errors might have occurred. Or the message might indicate that the API couldn't be stopped.

Example:

Example of a message indicating that an API was stopped with errors

Possible causes are as follows:

  • Your login session might have expired.
  • The API couldn't be unpublished (deleted) from your API Connect instance because one or more of your specified publishing targets were not discovered.

Complete the following steps to try to resolve the issue:

  1. As an initial step, try to stop the API again from your App Connect Designer instance. Refresh the browser window or tab to verify that your login session has not expired.
  2. If the problem persists, complete one or more of these steps:
    • Check whether any error messages have been written to the pod logs, and try to resolve those errors. To access your logs, see Viewing cluster logs in Red Hat OpenShift.
    • Check whether your API Connect instance is still available and running.
      If the instance is no longer running, restart it and then check for the published API, which can then be manually deleted from the API Manager UI as follows:
      1. From the navigation pane, click the Manage icon Manage icon.
      2. Open the Catalog and locate the published Product that contains the API. On the Products tab, the Product title should either be shown as API_flow_name (Created by App Connect Designer) or Product name - API_flow_name (Created by App Connect Designer).
      3. Click the options icon Options icon that is associated with the Product, and then use the Retire and Delete menu options to remove the Product and API from the Catalog (and Developer Portal).

      If the API Connect instance no longer exists, no further action is required.

    • Verify that you have the permissions required to retire and delete APIs in the selected Catalog in the provider organization. For more information, see API Connect user roles.
    • Check whether your preferences for a Catalog, Space, Gateway service, Product, Plan, and application, which you selected in the API gateway settings panel in Designer, are still available in your API Connect instance. For example, the Product or Catalog in which the API was published might have been independently deleted from API Connect.

      If you would like to subsequently restart the API in Designer, ensure that you check and update the API gateway settings for the flow before you restart it. For example, if the previously selected Product (or Product version) in the API gateway settings panel is no longer available, you can choose another available version of the Product, or choose a different Product.