Precisions on Email Audit API by Google

Question

I want to monitor employees interactions inside companies. In the case the company is using Gmail, I was thinking about using https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/email-audit/.

But i still have some questions regarding the "lawful" purpose and I'm wondering if Email Audit is the right API if my purpose is to monitor in real-time emails knowing there will be at least 10 000 emails/day to monitor.

Answer 1

If you check the Usage Limits and Quotas:

Limits and quotas protect the Google infrastructure from an automated process that uses the Email Audit 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 Apps system. It ensures that one developer's actions cannot negatively impact the larger community.

To answer you question, if your goals falls under this description - Google Apps Email Audit API Developer's Guide:

The Google Apps Email Audit API allows Google Apps administrators to audit a user's email, email drafts, and archived chats. In addition, a domain administrator can retrieve account login information and download a user's mailbox. This API can be used only for lawful purposes in accordance with your Customer Agreement.

Then the answer would be yes, it is the appropriate API to use. If you are thinking about the 10000 emails/day, you might want to check if it is reasonable to ask for quota increase.

Hope this helps!