Limits and quotas protect the Google infrastructure from an automated process that uses the Enterprise License Manager API in an inappropriate way. Excessive requests from an API might result from a harmless typo, or may result from an inefficiently designed system that makes needless API calls. Regardless of the cause, blocking traffic from a specific source once it reaches a certain level is necessary for the overall health of the Google Workspace system. It ensures that one developer's actions cannot negatively impact the larger community.
In the unlikely event that your API request fails, you'll receive an HTTP status code response. A status code of 403 has error information about incorrect input, and an HTTP status code of 503 has error information indicating which API quotas have been exceeded. These responses allow your custom application to detect these errors and take appropriate action.
If your requests need to be completed in a fixed period of time, send your requests batched together. Depending upon your API's purpose and if the number of requests gets too high, quota errors will occur.
If you are not able to use the recommended API batched requests feature, use the exponential backoff algorithm. For all errors that are time based (maximum of N things for X seconds per thread), especially the 503 status code errors, we recommend your code catch the exception and, using an exponential backoff algorithm, wait for a small delay before retrying the failed call. A Enterprise License Manager API example for one thread is to wait 5 seconds and retry the failed call. If the request is successful, repeat this pattern for the other threads. If the second request is not successful, your application should scale back on the frequency of the request until a call is successful. For example, increase the initial 5 second delay to 10 seconds and retry your failed call again. Also, decide on a retry limit. For example retry a request 5 to 7 times with different delay times before your application returns an error to the user.
| API Quota Categories | Quotas |
|---|---|
| Queries per second (QPS) | The QPS quota is 1. |
| API Limit Categories | Limits |
|---|---|
| maxResults query string | The maximum size of a maxResults is 100. |
| Other Types of Limits | Limitations and Guidelines |
|---|---|
| Batch requests |
The API supports sending batch requests. |
| Data format in API responses | The response's data format is Javascript Object Notation (JSON). |
| Enabling the Enterprise License Manager API | The Provisioning API has to be enabled before making calls to the Enterprise License Manager API. In your control panel, go to the Users and groups tab's Settings page and enable the Provisioning API. Save your changes. In addition, the Google Groups service must be enabled and activated. |
| Unauthorized requests | The API does not accept any unauthorized requests. A request is considered unauthorized if no authorization token is provided. For more information, see Authorizing Requests. |