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HBDI® Profile Search API - FAQ

For direct clients and Herrmann account teams 

This document answers the questions that come up most often about Herrmann's API offering in general, and about the HBDI® Profile Search API specifically. It's written to be shared as-is with a direct client, or used by an account or sales team member as a quick reference in conversation.

For full technical detail — request and response formats, field definitions, and error handling — see the companion HBDI® Profile Search API — Integration Reference document.

What API access does Herrmann offer to direct clients?

  • Today, the HBDI® Profile Search API is the only endpoint built for direct clients. It looks up a person's HBDI® profile, their thinking-preference scores, and related interpretive data by email address for people within your organization.

Are there other Herrmann APIs I can integrate with?

  • Not for integration today. Herrmann's platform has additional internal API endpoints, but those are for running our own platform and aren't offered as client integrations. If your use case needs something beyond profile search, raise it with your Herrmann account contact; we evaluate new integration needs on a case-by-case basis.
How does authentication work?

  • Your organization is issued a client ID and client key. You exchange those for a short-lived signed access token, then send that token as a bearer credential on every API call. The token encodes your organization and the specific access scope your integration was granted; you never pass either as a parameter yourself.

How do we set up API access?

  • We provision API access per organization as part of your Herrmann relationship. Your Herrmann account contact coordinates with our platform team to issue credentials and confirm the access scope for your integration.

What determines how much data our integration can see?

  • Two things: your organization boundary, and your access scope. You only ever see profiles belonging to people in your own organization (never another Herrmann client's), and the fields returned are determined by the access level granted to your token.

Is there a cost associated with API access?
  • Yes, it is available via WholeBrain Connect. To explore pricing options and packaging suited to your team, please contact your representative.
What uptime or SLA commitment does Herrmann make for the API?
  • Our API service maintains the identical uptime standards as the broader Herrmann platform, governed directly by your organization's contractual SLA. Please review your master agreement for specific performance guarantees and operational details.
What support can we expect if something goes wrong, and how fast?
  • We provide assistance through our standard support options. You can submit a ticket or contact your representative for help with data or access concerns. Resolution turnaround relies on ticket queue volume and the priority of your request.
Is Herrmann SOC 2 certified, or does it hold other security/compliance certifications?
  • Yes. Herrmann is SOC 2 certified and compliant.
What does the API actually return?
  • For each email address you send, if a completed HBDI® assessment exists within your organization, you get back that person's thinking-preference scores across the four Whole Brain® Thinking quadrants (A, B, C, D), along with interpretive fields — descriptors, work elements, energy level, and a key descriptor. It does not return raw assessment answers or free-text responses.
How many people can we look up in one call?
  • Up to 100 email addresses per call. For larger lists, split into batches of 100 and combine the results, as batching never changes any individual person's result.
What happens if we look up someone who hasn't completed their assessment yet?
  • They won't be returned. They show up in not_found, like an address with no profile on file, there's no way to distinguish "hasn't finished" from "no record" through this API, by design.
Can we use this API to check whether someone has shared their profile with their team?
  • No. Sharing and consent settings are managed in Thinker Portal, and this endpoint does not reliably reflect them today. Don't treat any field on this endpoint as a consent or sharing signal. If you need a thinker's actual sharing preference, that has to come from Thinker Portal, not this API.
If we query someone outside of our organization, will we know that's why we got no result?
  • No, and that's intentional. not_found means only "no result available to you". It never confirms or denies that a person exists elsewhere in Herrmann's systems. From the API's point of view, a wrong organization, no profile, and an incomplete assessment all look identical.
Is this real-time data?
  • Yes. Each call reflects the current state of a person's HBDI® profile at the time of the request, based on completed assessments on file; there's no caching delay or batch refresh to account for.

Are there any known limitations right now?

  • Two, and both are being tracked for future implementation. The work_elements field currently returns every scored work element rather than just the person's top preferences, and intro_extro_score currently always returns null regardless of the person's assessment. Neither affects the accuracy of the core quadrant scores, and we'll give advance notice before either changes shape.

Are there any known limitations right now?

 

 

Need help? Please submit a ticket.