Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google for Work and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

Over the years, we’ve been updating our APIs with new versions across Drive and Calendar, as well as those used for managing Google Apps for Work domains. These new services offer developers improvements over previous functionality and introduces new features that help Apps administrators better manage their domains.

To deliver even more granular control, today we are announcing the new Calendar Resource API as part of the Admin SDK’s Directory API that enables Google for Work customers to manage their physical resources, like conference rooms, printers, nap pods, tennis courts, walkstations, etc. These physical resources can be added to meetings by end users as needed. The API released today replaces the GDATA Calendar Resource API, so we encourage developers to begin moving their applications and tools to the new API. Please note that we will begin deprecation in January 2016 and sunset the existing API in January 2017. Stay tuned for a formal deprecation announcement with details.

Posted by Rishi Dhand, Product Manager, Google Apps Admin SDK and Wesley Chun, Developer Advocate, Google Apps

In a Google Apps domain, Admin role management (i.e. create, assign, and update admin roles) is a critical function for super admins that helps them distribute admin responsibilities in a more secure manner. Until now, this functionality was only available via the Admin console UI.


This is what Role management looks like in the Admin console, but now you can also do this programmatically with the Roles API.


Today’s launch of the Roles API (one of the Admin SDK Directory APIs) enables developers to build admin tools that can perform role management programmatically.

This new API will be useful to admins who have either built internal admin tools using the Admin SDK, or developers of third-party admin tools. Both can now use the Roles API to provide selective access to Delegated Admins (DAs) to specific admin capabilities within third-party applications.

Here are some examples of use cases where the Roles API can be leveraged:

  • A third-party user management app that relies on the Admin SDK to perform various user related operations can now use the Roles API to selectively show the capabilities of User management DAs, such as creating/deleting users or resetting passwords.
  • A mobile device management (MDM) app developer looking to build a tool for access by Mobile Management DAs can use the Roles API to determine the privileges of the logged-in DA and selectively display MDM related admin functionality.
  • Admins (or admin tools) can now programmatically create reports on admin role assignments which can help super admins better manage access to DAs.

For more information and to get started, please check out the Roles API documentation. We look forward to helping more admins manage their domains in a more programmatic way so they can focus on more critical aspects of managing their corporate IT infrastructure.

Every day, millions of businesses, schools and government agencies rely on Google Apps to get their work done. And each of these organizations has an administrator (or a team of admins) responsible for tasks like creating new accounts, managing mobile devices, and specifying exactly which products and features their employees can use.

Today, we're announcing the Admin SDK, which enables developers to build customized administrative tools for organizations that use Google Apps. The new Admin SDK consolidates many of the existing domain APIs into a new uniform structure and introduces new functionality with the Directory API and Reports API. We’re starting to pilot Google+ Domains API.

Directory API

The new Directory API provides a simple, RESTful interface to support all basic operations required to query & manage users, groups, organizational units, Chromebooks and mobile devices.

Reports API

The new Reports API gives developers a consolidated view of reporting and auditing for domains. Developers can build applications that can monitor and search across usage statistics and activities within a domain.

Google+ Domains API

Businesses are using Google+ to help employees collaborate more easily and get things done. Developers will soon be able to auto-provision Circles, read/write posts, and more from the new APIs. Let us know if you're interested in learning more about this API when it's available.

To begin using the Admin SDK follow the instructions in the API documentation. You will need to sign in to the Google APIs Console and activate the Admin SDK. If you have any questions, join the conversation at Stack Overflow.

Note about API deprecation:
With the introduction of the Directory and Reporting APIs in the new Admin SDK the following APIs will be deprecated per their standard deprecation policy: Google Apps Profiles, Provisioning, Admin Audit, Reporting, Reporting Visualization.

Ajay Guwalani  

Ajay Guwalani is Product Manager on Google Apps Admin APIs. His current focus is to build next generation admin APIs to make enterprise developers and admins happy.