Connecting the Industry: Inside PromoStandards
PromoStandards committees meet with one goal: to standardize the flow of crucial information that makes your business run.
Want to have a say in the future of promotional products technology? We encourage all members to participate in the committees or workgroups that align with their expertise. It is the best way to collaborate with industry leaders, gain early access to new tech, and elevate your company’s profile.
Read on to discover how this month’s committee updates translate into direct benefits for your team!
Best Practices Committee:
The goal of Best Practices is simple: reduce the friction of adopting standards so your development team can work faster and smarter.
- Improving Data Consistency: In May, the Best Practices Committee continued to build momentum across supplier adoption, documentation, and member engagement initiatives. Progress on the Self‑Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) remained a key focus, with updates to the template based on feedback and responses. Read more about the SAQ here!
- What this means for you: As more people complete the SAQ, and it’s contents become more refined, it will be much easier to find partners in the industry with great data.
- More Efforts to Further Validation:
The committee also advanced efforts around data validation and compliance, exploring next steps for a validation framework and potential cross‑committee collaboration to support a proof of concept. Foundational documentation work continues, including updates to rate limiting and credential security guidance, as well as ongoing enhancement updates across OSN 2.1 scenarios, XML examples, and core specifications such as Inventory and Invoice best practices.
- A Better Jumping-Off Point:
Looking ahead, the committee made progress on longer‑term initiatives focused on improving the overall member experience. Early work has begun on a centralized FAQ/knowledge base and onboarding materials, to make best practices more accessible and easier to implement.
- Want to get involved? New workgroups are being discussed, such as early planning for an AI/Automation initiative for Best Practice resources! Please keep an eye out for future updates.
Standards Committee:
The goal of Standards is simple: Develop, maintain, and continuously improve PromoStandards technical integration specifications that enable accurate, consistent, and efficient data exchange across the promotional products industry.
The Standards Committee is preparing for an in-person meeting in June, which will be hosted by HALO. This upcoming session will provide an opportunity for the team to work together in a focused environment and we intend to wrap up several work items during this time.
- Event Subscription Services:
Testing remains in progress for the Event Subscription service. As additional company endpoints and services are tested, the team is working through changes and expanding documentation to address issues and questions as they arise. Once finalized, this will be published to Advisory level members for review and feedback.
- JSON Web Token Authentication:
The committee has finalized its approach for JWT authentication. Supporting documentation and sample source projects have also been created and are planned for inclusion in the release. The change to authorization procedures will be included in the Event Subscription release as well as the new Product Data service.
- RESTful Standards and Product Data 3.0:
Work continues on standard enumerations and how they can be incorporated into an OpenAPI specification while still preserving extensibility. The goal is to create a specification that can be updated easily without disrupting current implementations. Final reviews are underway and the team expects to begin the testing phase soon.
- What this means for you: Advisory members will soon be able to participate in beta-testing for new Standards. We’re one step closer to 3.0!
Membership & Marketing Committee:
The Membership & Marketing Committee is focused on growing the PromoStandards network and ensuring our members get the latest tech industry updates.
- Continued Collaboration with PPAI: PromoStandards will appear as a sponsor in the June edition of PPAI’s Promotional Products Work! magazine. Just like our prsence at the expo, we hope to open up a dialogue with members of the industry who have heard of PromoStandards, but haven’t had the opportunity to research how integrating could make their business processes easier.
- What this means for you: The PromoStandards community is growing! Stay active in our community channels and keep up with our resources to see if new members might be a good fit for partnership.
- ASI Chicago Interest form: Still Open! If you missed it last month, please take 30 seconds to Fill Out Our Attendance Form so we can coordinate networking opportunities.
- Member Spotlights: We are expanding our blog content, starting with a member spotlight of commonsku! We hope to add additional value to PromoStandards membership and foster a stronger community within the industry by increasing the visibility of our members. We will spotlight more members in the future, so if you’re an advisory or adopting member, please keep an eye on your inbox.Â
Ready to Have a Seat at the Table?
Help us shape the future of the industry!
View the Full List of Committees & Workgroups Here
Get Involved: Email admin@promostandards.org to let us know which committee best suits your skills. We would love to have you on board!