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Partner Integration Guide Template

Four documents and two sheets, including the pitfalls list built from support tickets partners have actually filed.

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What you get

Pack of 6 files: 4 documents, 2 spreadsheets

Partner Integration Guide Template
  • Integration GuideDocument
  • Testing GuidanceDocument
  • Common PitfallsDocument
  • Go-live ChecklistDocument
  • Support Question LogSpreadsheet
  • Integration RegisterSpreadsheet

Search this and the results split into two piles. One is a checklist: confirm partner fit, issue sandbox credentials, run a compliance review, approve go-live. The other is a generic AI-support blog post about deflecting tickets with a knowledge base. Neither reads your own support history. Postman's 2022 State of the API Report surveyed developers on what actually blocks them from consuming an API and found lack of documentation the number-one obstacle, chosen by 55 percent, ahead of discoverability and lack of knowledge combined.

The sharper problem is not that nothing got written down. A fact can be true in your API reference and still cause a ticket, because a first-time partner reading the Integration Guide has no reason to have read the reference page where it lives. Stripe's webhook documentation states plainly that event order is not guaranteed, and tells implementers to track event IDs rather than timestamps to catch duplicates. That is standard across API providers, not a Stripe quirk, which is why a partner guide has to restate it rather than assume the reference already did.

Portway, the illustrative shipping-rate API in the worked example, sorted 412 pre-go-live tickets from 64 partners by root cause. The largest category, 142 tickets and 34.5 percent, was that same assumption about webhook order. Across all seven categories, 188 tickets, 45.6 percent of everything filed, needed no new documentation, only a fact that already existed moved into the guide. The API documentation pack is the reference this list gets checked against, and the deprecation and versioning pack covers a partner's integration once the version they built against is retired.

The pitfall that was already documented, just not where a partner was looking

The Support Question Log sheet and the Integration Register it is checked against.

Partner Integration Guide Template
RiverSupport Question Log

Support Question Log

412 pre-go-live support tickets from 64 partners integrating with a fictional shipping-rate API, Portway. Sorted by root cause.

Root causeCount% of 412Preventable?Already true elsewhere?
Assumed webhook order / no event-ID dedupe14234.5%YesYes, in the API reference
Auth token not refreshed before expiry7117.2%YesNo, genuinely new
Rate limit backoff missing or wrong5814.1%YesNo, genuinely new
Sandbox/production credentials mixed up4611.2%YesYes, in the auth reference
Test data edge case not handled389.2%YesNo, genuinely new
Field not in partner's pinned spec version338.0%PartiallyYes, in the changelog
Genuine platform defect245.8%NoNot applicable

188 of the 412 tickets, 45.6 percent, needed no new writing at all. The fact behind them already existed in the API reference or the changelog; the only work was moving it into the guide a first-time partner actually reads.

The event-ordering row alone is 34.5 percent of every ticket filed, more than the next two categories combined.

RiverIntegration Register

Integration Register

Per-partner tracking, split by whether they integrated before or after the event-ordering pitfall was added to the guide.

PartnerCohortSandbox to first callHit the pitfall?
Nimbus CartBefore5 daysYes
Ridgeway MarketplaceBefore9 daysYes
Blockline FulfillmentBefore4 daysNo
Milltown Supply CoAfter2 daysNo
Basecamp FulfillmentAfter3 daysYes
Amberlane GoodsAfter1 dayNo
ALL 40 PARTNERS BEFOREBefore6.4 avg33 of 40, 82.5%
ALL 24 PARTNERS AFTERAfter2.1 avg2 of 24, 8.3%

82.5 percent of partners who integrated before the fix hit the pitfall. 8.3 percent after. The register is what makes that a checked result rather than an assumption that the fix worked.

Sandbox-to-first-call time fell from 6.4 days to 2.1 as the guide absorbed what the tickets were actually about.

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What's in the pack

01

Integration Guide

Environment setup, authentication, the core call sequence and webhooks, ordered by what actually stalls an integration rather than by the reference's own table of contents.

02

Testing Guidance

One concrete sandbox scenario per pitfall category, including the out-of-order and duplicate webhook delivery test that catches the single largest cause of tickets.

03

Common Pitfalls

Every entry sourced from real support tickets and marked by whether the underlying fact was genuinely new or already true somewhere a partner had not read yet.

04

Go-live Checklist

Launch gated on the same categories the ticket log tracks, with the highest-volume pitfall written so there is no partial credit for mostly handling it.

05

Support Question Log

Every pre-go-live ticket in the trailing window sorted by root cause and marked preventable, partially addressable, or a genuine defect no document prevents.

06

Integration Register

One row per partner tracking sandbox-to-live time and whether they hit the pitfall that mattered most, split by whether they integrated before or after it was documented.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Send what exists

    Your API specification and changelog, plus as much partner support ticket history as you can gather from before partners went live.

  2. 2

    Sort the tickets

    River sorts every pre-go-live ticket into a root cause, then checks whether the underlying fact already existed somewhere you had not restated it.

  3. 3

    Write the pitfalls that repeat

    A root cause earns a numbered entry once it has hit more than one partner, cross-linked to wherever the fact already lived if it did.

  4. 4

    Check whether it worked

    The register splits partners by before and after a pitfall was added, so a promoted fix is a checked result instead of an assumption.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes, and the download needs no account and no card. Edit with AI is the optional half: it reads your API specification and support ticket history and sorts the tickets into the categories this pack is built around. Every other pack sits in the template library.

What format are the downloaded files?

Four documents as Word files and two sheets as CSVs, in one zip. The sheets arrive with the Portway rows in place as a worked example, so the categories and the before-and-after comparison are visible before you replace them with your own history.

We already have an integration guide. What does this add?

A reason to trust which pitfalls actually matter. Most integration guides are written once from the API spec and never revisited. This pack sorts your own support tickets first, so the Common Pitfalls section reflects what partners have actually hit rather than what seemed worth warning about.

How do you tell a genuinely undocumented pitfall from one that was hiding in the reference?

Check the API reference and changelog before writing anything new. If the fact is already there, the fix is a cross-link into the partner-facing guide, not a rewrite. In the worked example, 45.6 percent of all tickets traced to facts that already existed and only needed relocating.

What if we don't have six months of support ticket history?

A shorter window still finds a real pattern once a root cause repeats across more than one partner. A single partner's one-off mistake is left out rather than promoted into the guide on one data point, since the method depends on repetition being the signal.

How does this differ from documenting our own API?

Audience and direction. The API documentation pack is the reference a developer integrates against. This pack is what a partner reads before and during that integration, built from where partners have actually gotten stuck rather than from the endpoint list.

What happens when we retire the version a partner integrated against?

That is a different pack's job. The deprecation and versioning pack targets retirement notices at whichever callers are still actually on the old version, using real usage data rather than announcing the change to every partner and hoping the right ones read it.

Sources

  1. voyager.postman.com2022 State of the API Report (opens in a new tab)
  2. StripeReceive Stripe events in your webhook endpoint (opens in a new tab)

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent the last six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies. In 2025, he co-founded River to build a new kind of operating system for AI agents.

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Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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Find out which pitfall is actually costing you support hours

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and send it your support ticket history.

Edit with AI