Developer Groups, Site Quotas, and Rate Limits

In This Document

Overview

The Blackboard Developer Portal allows you to manage use of Blackboard REST APIs and applications developed using the Blackboard REST APIs. Three features the Developer Portal manages for REST application integrations, described here, are:

1. Developer Groups: RESTful applications are associated with developer groups
2. Site Quotas: The number of sites which may register your RESTful application
3. Rate Limits: The number of REST API requests you may make against a single server during any 24-hour period

Each of these play a role in the development, management, and delivery of your RESTful applications.

We manage site quotas and rate limits so that we can understand usage, manage future default settings, and protect Learn systems from potential oversaturation. You must track the number of sites on which your REST application is installed to know when you are nearing the site-quota you've been given. As you approach your quota, you can request an increase.

Developer Groups

You manage access to registered application information using Developer & Production Groups. This approach allows you to manage applications from pre-release to production. Before moving to production, you must designate one group as the production group. The best practice is to name your production group after your organization. I.E. if Blackboard builds a REST Application, the production group name would likely be Blackboard. See the Group Naming Requirements in this document for further details.

Reference: https://community.blackboard.com/docs/DOC-3336-developer-portal-and-groups

Pay careful attention to the Group Naming Conventions.

When you register, the system automatically assigns you to a group of one. You can add registered team developers. As you move through the application development lifecycle from prototype through production, you may create additional groups with specific memberships for team developer access to application settings and information.

The initial registration settings provide for a very low site quota and rate limit. You will want to request an increase on your production group before deploying your application to production sites. For more information about site quotas and rate limits, continue reading.

Site Quotas

Site quotas apply to a group. Identifying a group as a ‘production group’, e.g., YourCompanyName, provides additional control to the production group. The production group name identifies your REST App to the Learn Admin when they install your application. You need to designate a production group to qualify for production-level site quotas and rate limits. To designate one of your groups as a production follow the steps provided at the end of this document.

Site quotas are group-specific. Site quotas are cumulative across the group regardless of number of applications

You are responsible for keeping track of the sites, and the number of sites, where your Learn REST Application is installed.

When a client attempts to install your REST Application and the site quota would be exceeded, they will see this message on the Learn Admin Create Integration page: Failure: Application developer has exceeded maximum number of client installations. Please contact the developer.

Rate Limits

Rate limits are required to maintain the stability of Learn systems and for the aforementioned planning. Rate limits are for a 24-hour period. Rate limits are site specific and shared across applications registered to your production group. If you have a 100K limit and three applications, each application will use a portion of that 100K limit.

For example:

Rate limit usage may be monitored at an application level via the x-headers provided in each request:

Increasing Site Quota and Rate Limits

If you are a Blackboard Partner or Licensed client when you need to increase the site quota and rate limit for your production group, please open a ticket on Behind the Blackboard. Provide the following in your request:

• Production Group name (Designate one of your groups as a production group if you haven’t. Tell us what it is here.)

• Developer email that 'owns' the production group

• Application description: What it does, and APIs used.

If you are an open-initiative developer please request by email to developers@blackboard.com. Provide the same information as indicated above in your request.