Warning 'You're about to link an app that will consume your team's available upload API quota'

[Josh D.15]

A customer is connecting to our app and they get this warning.

'You're about to link an app that will consume your team's available upload API quota. For more information, please visit our Help Center.'

Image link here - https://imgur.com/a/PnYBT 

What is this? 

We didn't write this, and we don't see it when we connect to our app. 

Is this a limitation on their account? Something we can control? 

[chirstius]

Hey @Josh D.15, I would like to refer you to this response which I hope will clarify this a bit:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/API-support/25K-Dropbox-Business-API-Call-Limit-on-Data-Transport/m-...

Depending on your current plan you may or may not see a warning, but unless you have migrated (or are still grandfathered) to a Business plan that includes unlimited API calls for the specific endpoints mentioned, you will see this warning so that it is clear the app you are linking will be consuming your monthly API quota.

Hope that helps,

-Chuck

[Josh D.15]

Thanks @chirstius 

So what you are saying is every one of our customers who connects to our app, that does not have unlimited API calls, will see this warning. 

The reason for this is so that the customers are aware that the app they are authing uses upload APIs.

Is there a Dropbox help article that we can direct our users to? They are getting nervous when they see this warning, they think our app is doing something wrong, or using too many API calls, and they are blaming us. 🙂 

[Josh D.15]

Also, do personal Dropbox users see this warning? Or only Business Accounts that do not have unlimited API calls? 

Is there an Dropbox API we can hit to tell us which type of plan our users are trying to connect? We could then warn them about this warning, and that is is not a problem etc. 

[Greg-DB]

Only Business accounts without unlimited upload API calls are subject to the limit. Personal accounts are not affected.

If you're using the Dropbox Business API, you can check if the team has a limit via the 'upload_api_rate_limit ' feature returned by /2/team/features/get_values:

https://www.dropbox.com/developers/documentation/http/teams#team-features-get_values

[Josh D.15]

Thank you, great info. Last question, is the Dropbox Business API different from the standard Dropbox API? Or is it just a section set of calls we can use in the normal Dropbox API? 

[Greg-DB]

The "Dropbox API" is the set of user-endpoints, and the "Dropbox Business API" is the set of team-endpoints. While they share many conventions, they cover different pieces of functionality.

Also, the Dropbox API can only be used by apps with a Dropbox API app permission, and the Dropbox Business API can only be used by apps with a Dropbox Business API permission. (The exception being the Dropbox Business API "Team member file access" permission, which can call both sets of endpoints.)

[thelwang]

@Greg

Just to jump in here...it seems this developer has a regular "Dropbox API" app that'll be contributing to a business user's team's overall API upload limit.

But from your post, it sounds like only "Dropbox Business API" apps, which can only be added by a team's admin, can get information regarding that team's API upload limit.

Is this right? So for "regular" Dropbox API apps that individual users use, these apps have no way to know if the user's team has an upload limit and what that limit is?

Also, even if an app can access that API, it only tells the developer what that team's max monthly quota is. It won't tell the developer how many API calls are left for that month, correct?

If true, this is quite a frustrating limitation. To be nice to users, it'd be better if apps could have as much information as possible about the API limits. They can use the information to inform the user and perhaps even change their behavior (disable autosaving). Limiting this information from apps might be a great way to ensure that apps quickly go over this limit, which might be better for Dropbox sales if it encourages teams to upgrade, but is bad for developers and could hurt the Dropbox app ecosystem overall.

Would love to be corrected if I'm wrong on this. Thanks!

[thelwang]

Also, Josh, this contains the most detailed information on the Dropbox API upload rate limit I can find: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qyeu6wxxf3sy391/Dropbox_Business_Plans_Sales_Guide.pdf?dl=0

(edit: the above link used to point to digital.leadmagz.com but its since been removed, so hosting a copy)

Information elsewhere is very sparse.  It's barely mentioned anywhere on the Dropbox developers part of the website outside of that one API call. It really only appears in business plan information on Dropbox's website. 

Using Google, you can see that besides that PDF doc, Greg's comment on a forum post is the only other place that describes which API calls contribute to the API upload limit.

(this seems a bit like a half-finished "feature" created by business people that was launched before Dropbox APIs/SDKs team could really catch up)

[Josh D.15]

Great info thank you. Yeah seems like the feature is not really done or supported well at the moment.