November 19, 2024

Say hello to our new AI-assisted developer experience

Winona Rajamohan

Content Marketing Manager

At Smartcar, we’re always looking for ways to improve the development experience. Rooted in the very challenges that led to us being a company today, we drive our roadmap forward with a firm understanding of the bottlenecks companies face today when building applications for drivers across brands.

That’s why Smartcar is more than just API endpoints; it’s a platform for developers to build mobility apps faster while working more efficiently with stakeholders that drive product innovation — from founders to product and data teams and business development.

We know that speed-to-market, resourcefulness, and collaboration are at the top of most of our customers' minds today. So, we’re introducing a new phase of Smartcar features to help mobility businesses achieve precisely that. 

✨ Meet Smartcar Automotive Intelligence (AI), our range of AI-powered enhancements embedded into our developer experience to make it easier for businesses to build and scale their connected car products!

Pushing the boundaries of the automotive developer experience

Over the past year, the Smartcar Dashboard has become a more comprehensive hub for developers to manage and monitor all aspects of their Smartcar integration. On top of interactive reports recapping all active vehicles, status codes, and API requests, teams also log into the dashboard for actions like removing dormant vehicles, providing role-based access controls, and even analyzing Smartcar Connect conversion funnels. 

With all these tools at your disposal, we wanted to ensure they’re easy to access when customers need them most. Building a responsive and intelligent navigation experience was crucial in enabling this. 

So, our first rollout of Smartcar AI enhancements aims to help customers maximize all the resources we’ve put in place for customers to build their next Smartcar-powered solution faster!

Here’s what that means for mobility businesses: 

  • Faster implementation: Reduce implementation time and accelerate your time to market by quickly locating documentation, surfacing Smartcar platform capabilities, and answering questions about our endpoints, use cases, and account information.
  • Reduced engineering effort: Minimize reliance on developer resources, allowing your team to focus on core product development and achieve more with less.
  • Self-service capabilities: Empower developers to work independently, troubleshoot issues, and implement solutions with minimal support.

Now let’s take a look at these new features in action!

AI Search: Easy navigation across the Smartcar docs and dashboard

AI Search is a navigation assistant that helps you quickly access Smartcar docs or any section of the dashboard! You can find this in the magnifying glass icon at the top of your dashboard or use the shortcut Control + K (Windows) or Command + K on Mac.

Here’s what you can do with AI Search: 

  • Find dashboard features instantly: Type in a feature in the search bar — like “Vehicle Simulator” or “Webhooks” — to navigate to it directly. 
  • Contact support quickly: Type in a support action like “Chat with support” or “Email support” to initiate contact options from right within the dashboard. 
  • Redirect to AI chat with ease: AI Chat capabilities are embedded into AI Search. So you can type in a question — like “How do I connect a vehicle?” — right into the search bar for AI Chat assistance.

AI Chat: Instant answers to your developer’s questions 

AI Chat is a powerful assistant that scours Smartcar’s extensive library of documentation and support content to bring you technical guidance and account-specific insights. It empowers you to resolve queries instantly when you need it most while reducing reliance on customer support representatives for simple asks or administrative assistance.

You can use Chat to answer questions like these!

  • Get technical guidance: You can ask, 'How do I instantiate a Smartcar object with the Node SDK?' and get a ready-to-use code snippet!
  • Access account information: You can set up an application on Smartcar faster by asking, 'What's my application info??' to retrieve your unique client identifier.
  • Retrieve billing details: You can ask 'What's my billing info?' and AI Chat will share that information after a confirmation step to ensure secure access

AI Hub: Powerful self-service resources

The AI Hub is your go-to location for essential Smartcar resources. You can access it by navigating to the book icon in the top right corner of your dashboard. Opening the AI Hub will quickly surface the most critical documentation and content for getting started with your integration journey or getting up to speed with new product updates. You’ll find: 

  • Onboarding documentation: Access guides like 'Planning Your Integration' and “Launching Connect,” and more!
  • Product changelog: Stay informed about the latest platform updates and new features.
  • Smartcar blogs and events: Keep up with the world of connected cars by exploring our industry content for actionable tips, discussions with experts, and our analysis of the state of mobility innovation. 

Automation for better productivity: What’s to come at Smartcar

Smartcar is more than just an API. We're a platform committed to empowering developers to build faster and smarter. This commitment drives us to continually evolve our platform, providing you with:

  • Peace of mind about backend integrations
  • Enhanced expertise in vehicle API management
  • A space to learn, innovate, and test new ways to use vehicle data

By giving teams a comprehensive suite of tools, intuitive dashboards, and AI-powered features, we're streamlining the development process and enabling the mobility industry to focus on what truly matters: thoughtful and secure connected car innovation.

As we continue to push the boundaries of automotive development, we're excited to introduce a new era of automotive software development. You can expect even more AI-powered features to be rolled out in the coming months to equip developers with better workflows and more context for effectively using Smartcar!

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