API Access in Quip: Admin API, Automation API, and Live Apps API

What Is Quip API Admin Access?

Quip API Admin Access allows authorized users or integrations to perform site-level administrative operations through the Quip Admin API. This includes retrieving audit logs, managing users, exporting site content, and configuring site settings. Admin API access is separate from standard user API access and requires explicit approval from a Quip site administrator.

Example: A company using a cloud access security broker (CASB) — a security tool that monitors and controls access to cloud applications — can use the Admin API to retrieve Quip event logs and feed them into the CASB platform for security monitoring and compliance reporting.

Overview of Quip API Types

• Admin API: Site-level access for administrators. Supports user management, event log retrieval, site configuration, and bulk content export. Requires a site administrator to generate and approve an API key.
• Automation API: Document-level access for integrations and automations. Supports creating, reading, editing, and deleting Quip documents and spreadsheets. Used for Salesforce Flow integrations and other document automation workflows.
• Live Apps API: Used by developers to build Live App components that embed interactive elements inside Quip documents, such as embedded Salesforce records or custom data visualizations.

How to Get an API Key

API keys are created and managed in the Quip Admin Console. See the Create an API Key for Quip article linked in the Additional Resources section for step-by-step instructions.

How to Grant a User Quip Admin API Access

1. In the Quip Admin Console, navigate to Users.
2. Find the user and open their profile.
3. Under API Access, toggle Admin API Access to enabled.
4. The user can now generate their own Admin API key from their Quip account settings.

Note: Only grant Admin API access to users who require it for their role. Admin API access provides broad site-level permissions and should follow the principle of least privilege.

Permitted Scopes

When creating an API key, you select scopes that define which operations the key can perform. Scopes are additive — a key with read and write scopes can perform both operations. See the Create an API Key for Quip article for a full list of available scopes.