IT Lesson

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, were 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 youre interested in learning more about this API when its 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.

We launched the Admin SDK in May as a new way for developers to build customized administrative tools for organizations that use Google Apps. A top priority for most administrators is keeping their users safe. Today, were adding new security management features to the Directory API to help administrators manage:

• Access granted by domain users to third-party applications
• Application specific passwords created by users
• Backup verification codes for users using 2-step verification.

These new utilities allow Google Apps administrators to programmatically manage end-user access to third party applications, and enable third party developers to build new security management features in their applications.

As an example, FlashPanel, a popular tool used by Google Apps administrators, is using these new features to allow domain admins to review installed applications and manage or revoke access to them. The Apps Explorer in FlashPanel allows admins to see which are the most installed apps in his domain or use a filter to review applications by type of permissions (Drive, GMail, etc). It also allows admins to review the number of users who have granted access to a particular application.

The screenshot below shows an example of FlashPanel’s customized view of third-party application installs.

In FlashPanel’s integration, admins have the power to whitelist or blacklist apps, as shown below.

The Directory API now also provides the ability to manage admin notifications that are delivered to the Admin Console. Currently, admins receive notifications for events that affect their domains such as users approaching their storage limits or monthly bills that are due. Now you can use the API to list notifications, update their read status, or pull them into custom tools.

If you are interested in using these new endpoints, please refer to the Directory API documentation.

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.