New Google Drive metrics now accessible from Reports API



You might have read that we launched new metrics in the Admin SDK Reports API to help you gain reliable, easily-validated perspectives about users within your domain. Today, we're building on these features by giving administrators and developers even greater visibility into how files are shared both inside and outside of domain. These changes include:
  1. New metrics to supplement the set of metrics we launched last year 
  2. New visibility information for audit events 
  3. Deprecation of existing metrics from the Reports API

New Metrics

We’ve created a new set of metrics to complete the set we launched last year. With these new metrics you can:
  • Gain insight into the visibility of files and their sharing state, which is useful for security and reporting. This will replace these older metrics:
    num_docs_internally_visible, num_docs_externally_visible, num_docs_shared_outside_domain.
  • Report on product adoption within your domain with summary statistics about groups of users (collaborators, viewers, creators and sharers). Take advantage of key adoption metrics such as 1-, 7-, and 30-day active users for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Drawings and more. 
  • Simplify your calculation of “what has changed” in your domain using delta metrics which pre-calculate changes in visibility and items owned.

New Visibility Information 

Now, new visibility information is attached to every audit event which helps you quickly identify the permission change events that lead to files being shared differently both within and outside your domain. Learn more.

Deprecating Existing Metrics 

While we’re aware of the need to have reliable and timely data about your domain’s users and files on Google Drive, Drive’s data and infrastructure has grown considerably, requiring us to make some difficult technical tradeoffs regarding metrics. As a result, today marks the beginning of a 12-month deprecation timeline that will retire these existing metrics from the Reports API and eventually the Admin Console. These metrics will no longer be available starting May 14, 2018.

To get started using the Reports API and see all the different types of metrics you can report on for your domain, check out the official documentation. We hope you find these features useful in your reporting.