What happens to existing collections when scratchpad is deprecated?

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My question:
If I do not want to sign in or move my data to a workspace, what will happen to my existing collections, examples, environments etc. when scratchpad becomes API Lightweight client? Will export (bulk or individual) still be available should a user wish to extract their data without signing in? Will newman commands requiring a collection or environment variable still run?

Please be as specific as you can with what will be lost if a user chooses to remain in offline mode.

Details (like screenshots):
N/A

How I found the problem:

I’ve already tried: reading the learning page on API lightweight client and the recent blog post outlining the change.

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Hi - I posted this query 10 days ago please can someone at Postman send me a response?

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Apologies for the late response.
Can you help us understand why you don’t want to sign in to Postman?

We are deprecating Scratchpad soon, and Lightweight API Client will be available moving forward for non-signed in users.

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I may consider upgrading, but I want to fully understand the implications involved should I not do so first - this may help additional stakeholders to properly review the impact.

Please can you respond to my original question and outline exactly what will go so I can make an informed decision well in advance of the change to use another vendor?

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Hi, I created an account in Postman (as I was no longer able to use Postman), after this, I successfully migrated my scratch pad to my workspace with environments and collections. Everything is ok.

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I’m still no closer to an answer here - please can somone at Postman respond to the points in my original question, or if they can’t, say why?

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I’m also waiting for an answer about it.

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Hey! These are some great questions. I’ll do my best to answer :slight_smile:

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If I do not want to sign in or move my data to a workspace, what will happen to my existing collections, examples, environments etc. when scratchpad becomes API Lightweight client?

Without signing into the cloud, you won’t be able to create collections or environments in the Postman API Client. Scratch Pad will not be supported by Postman after it reaches end of life, so there is no guarantee that things will work as they should over time. We recommend moving to the cloud to ensure the best possible experience.

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Will export (bulk or individual) still be available should a user wish to extract their data without signing in? Will Newman commands requiring a collection or environment variable still run?

Since collections and environment won’t exist in the context of the lightweight client, there won’t be any concept of exporting data or anything like that for Newman after September 15th. Postman collections will still support running on Postman CLI and Newman, so you will be able to export the data to run these tests.

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We recommend migrating to workspaces through our migration tool here. We understand that you might have questions about the migration process, so feel free to email us at [email protected].

You can choose to migrate when you sign up for Postman. You can also choose to migrate after signing up by selecting “keep in Scratch Pad” on the prompt to migrate — it’s up to you. To migrate, use the migration tool, and select “Move data to workspace” on the migration prompt.

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Thanks for the clear explanation. I found the announcement page more confusing than enlightening. I think it’s a problem that continued use will require logging in. It is a security consideration for my company.

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The announcement on their blog is intentionally confusing.

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Same. What is the contingency plan for those of us that can’t use the workspace/cloud storage for these reasons?

@kevinc-postman

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I think their lack of actual answers here to these questions speaks volumes.

Your choice is to create a cloud account, upload everything you use to test your API to their servers, and then run all your tests, pulling your data out of their servers, for each test you want to run, every time you want to run them, with all the network overhead that brings with it.

I created a cloud account a couple years ago and when I moved just a small portion of my collection of API tests into their cloud, the Postman UI choked so bad and became unresponsive because it was constantly pulling my data out of their cloud.

I had to scrap that usage very quickly and was thankful they left the original functionality in the Scratch Pad for offline use. Now apparently that is no longer an option. It seems they are not even going to allow you to use the current version with the Scratch Pad in it and just not upgrade the software.

For our team, and I’m sure a lot of other teams as well, using Postman offline with Newman in the CI process was clean and fast because our large body of API tests could be run locally on our development PC’s or on the build server.

The alternative is to now pull all that data from the cloud, so forget running tests locally offline on a laptop. Watch your API tests in your CI process take significantly longer because you have to pull data out of their cloud to run your tests, instead of having those tests included in a folder in your code repository.

I am not even sure how their cloud offering handles versioning tests. We version our tests along with each version of our code and it’s all saved in the git repo. So, if I have to pull an old version of the application down and fix something, I have the tests that version was tested with included with that version of the code. No way you can do that with Postman cloud offering I am sure.

It’s really sad in my opinion that Postman is trying to force everyone to move to the cloud offering. My company would gladly pay for the offline version of postman for a reasonable annual subscription service like we do with other tools we use.

So really, our option is move to the cloud or find a different tool to test our API’s with.

Even if my company would be okay with storing internal API test requests in someone else’s cloud (which our security team is not), I am pretty confident that their online version will continue to choke up with the large volume of tests we currently have in our offline Postman collections.

RIP Postman… now to find a different product to test with…

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@bryan : I’m on the same situation as yours… But our company doesn’t want to store our API in the cloud. I would be very interested if you find a good free alternative that can be used locally. Thanks in advance

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I’ve forwarded these concerns to the appropriate teams internally so that I can give you a more complete and helpful response. The short of it is that we have had a number of performance and security improvements but give me a day or so to let the proper teams respond to my questions and I’ll update.

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Thank you @kevinc-postman!

Agree with 100% of what @bryan said. I am in the exact same situation.

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Also, is there an option with any versions of your software that support a workspace functionality that is hosted on premise and not on the cloud? That way we can share in an organization, but it never leaves the organization. We have been looking for that functionality for years rather than import/export collections all the time.

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Unfortunately we don’t have any kind of on-prem offering at this time. Please feel free to raise this concern on GitHub though.

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Actually you do. It’s the product you’re discontinuing.

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Kevin: Unfortunately we don’t have any kind of on-prem offering at this time. Please feel free to raise this concern on GitHub though.

research-pilot-64030: Actually you do. It’s the product you’re discontinuing.

That pretty much sums it up. I have found an open source alternative that I am going to look into that is The Industry’s #1 API Testing Tool from what I have heard. The same provider of that open source tool also seems to provide a more robust paid product. It’s a different scale of product vs Postman but the open source tool might just be what I need.

It is a real shame Postman is shafting all of it’s clients who have supported them since they were a Chrome extension. The total lack of respect for people who need to keep things on premises for security and compliance reasons is truly disappointing.

It’s an API test harness, not rocket science (regardless of what their logo might suggest). What I’ve done in Postman has been the same for the last 5 years.

@kevinc-postman Why can’t I just be able to download the older version with the scratchpad and choose not to upgrade to your newer version that has it stripped out? That is all most of us want.

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I hope offline/scratchpad mode is available even if you have to pay.
Help the postman community!

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