Create and Manage Request Collections in Postman (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 23 Jul, 2025

Postman is a popular tool worldwide for making API (Application Programming Interface) Requests to testing them, before releasing them to the public. CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) REST (REpresentational State Transfer) APIs of a simple application to manage the basic data of users of a company will be created. Then, on the basis of similarity to one another, they will be grouped into collections for convenient record-keeping. This article details how to create and manage API request collections on the free version of Postman.

How To Create request collections

**Step 1: Click "+" button at top-left to create a new request collection

**Step 2: Click "+" button inside collection to create and add a new API request.

**Step 3: (Optional) You can customize the API name by right-clicking and selecting _Rename.

**Step 4: Hit the API and save it for saving it to the collection.

How To Manage request collections

There are 21 things that can be done with an API request collection. All these options come in a menu, on right clicking the collection name.

**Rename collection

• Allows to rename the collection.
• Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl + E

Rename Collection

**Share

Allows a range of options to share the collection to other people and to external teams, with the added facility for custom setting of the environment, workspace or through a Postman-generated key (meaning a publicly accessible custom URL, on clicking which the viewer can gain read-only access to the collection).

Share Collection

**Move

Allows to move the collection from one workspace to another on Postman.

Move Collection

**Run Collection

Allows execution of the collection with the features of choosing:

• the order of execution of the API's in it.
• the mode of execution - manual, scheduled or automatic.
• execution configuration, custom setting the number of execution times and time delay (if any).
• simulate real-world traffic to test the collection practically.

Run Collection

**Generate Tests

Allows user to specify their requirements, for Postman to accordingly generate tests for hands-on testing of every single API in the collection before their cumulative execution. This is done by using _Postbot, the AI chatbot assistant of Postman.

Generate Tests

**Edit

Allows editing of the description, authorization type, pre-request and post-response scripts using JavaScript, variables to store reused values and for protecting sensitive data, and for performance, functional & scheduled runs.

Edit Collection

**Add Request

Allows to add multiple new API requests to the collection, one at a time. By default, the request type is set to GET, which can be changed, along with everything else.

Add Request

**Add Folder

Allows to create a new empty folder to store API requests. Helps to streamline and organize the APIs in the collection, particularly if the collection has 20+ API's. Also, reduces the need for documentation while sharing the collection to external teams.

Add Folder

**Monitor Collection

Creates a supervisory facility for the collection by setting the environment, optionally providing data files in JSON/CSV format for more efficiency, setting the frequency of running the monitor to periodically check the health of the collection.

Monitor Collection

**Mock Collection

Sets up a mock server for the collection, by configuring the environment, simulated fixed network delay time duration, public / private accessibility.

Mock Server

**View changelog

Shows the local version history of all the changes made in the collection.

View Changelog

**View Documentation

Shows the description of the collection, each API request's URL and response in XML format.

View Documentation

**Duplicate

• Creates a copy of the current instance of the collection. Helpful for making changes to a non-important branch of the collection, testing if it satisfies all the requirements, and then finally integrating those changes into the main collection. This concept is similar to the main and local branches of a repository on GitHub.
• Keyboard Shortcut: Ctrl + D

Duplicate

**Export

Postman allows custom-exports of the collection to outside the application.

**Delete

Deletes the collection from Postman.

Delete

**External Version Control integration features

On integrating Postman with an external version control system, say GitHub, Postman can create a fork or a pull request, merge changes, pull changes.

Version Control Integration Features