PAPI concepts

This section provides a road map of all the conceptual objects you deal with when interacting with PAPI and provides pointers to where you can learn more.

  • Accounts. Akamai customers access all their services with an account key. While administrators may have access to more than one account, in general they provision all their web assets under a single account within Control Center. PAPI responses often return details about the account a client's authorization token is assigned to.

  • Groups. Each account features a hierarchy of groups, which control access to properties and help consolidate reporting functions, typically mapping to an organizational hierarchy. Using either Control Center or the Identity Management: User Administration API, account administrators can assign properties to specific groups, each with its own set of users and accompanying roles. Your access to any given property depends on the role set for you in its group. Along with information about the contract, you need the group identifier to access virtually all of PAPI's resources.

  • Contracts. Each account features one or more contracts, each of which has a fixed term of service during which specified Akamai products and modules are active. Along with information about the group, you need the contract identifier to access virtually all of PAPI's resources.

  • Products. Each contract enables one or more products, each of which allows you to deploy web properties on the Akamai edge network and receive associated support from Akamai Professional Services. Products allow you to create new properties, CP codes, and edge hostnames. They also determine the baseline set of a property's rule behaviors.

  • Modules. Modules are add-ons to products that may enable additional rule behaviors. Different products support different sets of modules. Your ability to specify any given rule behavior depends on the currently active product and associated modules. PAPI doesn't provide information directly about your selected modules, but it does allow you to determine the currently available behaviors and criteria they enable.