Set up and use the Canva Admin API

You can use the Canva Admin API to automate organisation management from your own systems. Manage users, teams, groups, and memberships, and retrieve audit log events without completing these tasks manually in Canva.

• Available to Canva Enterprise, Canva Districts, and Canva Campus.
• Accessible by organisation admins.
• Available to single-team and multi-team organisations.

Before you set up the Admin API, make sure your organisation meets these requirements:

• Organisation layer: Admin API is org-scoped. It is available to single-team and multi-team orgs on Canva Enterprise, Canva Districts, and Canva Campus plans.
• Organisation admin account: Only organisation admins can create and manage Admin API clients in Canva settings.
• In-house or outsourced engineering: Your organisation needs engineering resources to build and maintain the integration. Canva does not provide implementation support.
  • If your team is unable to build against an API, SCIM provisioning is a better fit for automating user management in your organisation.
• Familiarity with your Canva structure: Have a clear understanding of how your organisation, teams, and groups are set up in Canva before building your integration.
• Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) or Single Sign-On (SSO)-managed account: The organisation admin configuring the Admin API must have either MFA enabled or an SSO-managed account. The account must be managed or owned by the organisation they’re acting on behalf of.

The Admin API provides endpoints for:

• Users, Teams, and Groups: Create, read, update, and delete.
• Memberships: Add or remove people from teams and groups, and set their roles.
• Audit logs: Retrieve audit log events on a schedule.
• Team invitations: Invite people to a team (including people outside your organisation), view pending invitations, retrieve an existing invitation link by exact email, and cancel invitations.

An organisation admin creates an Admin API client and uses it to call the API.

Follow the Canva Admin API documentation to exchange your client credentials for an access token and start making API requests.

For technical details on authenticating API requests and using OAuth 2.0 bearer tokens, share the Canva Admin API Authentication documentation with your engineering team.

Actions performed through the Admin API are recorded against the Admin API client rather than the individual admin who invoked the client.

In audit logs, the Actor field displays the Admin API client name and client ID. This helps you identify which integration performed an action.

You can also identify the organisation admin who created, updated, or deleted a specific API client.

For more information, see About Canva audit logs.

Organisation admins can use the Admin API to invite people to a team, including external collaborators outside your organisation.

Things to know

• Each invitation you create is for one team and one email address.
• You can use each invitation once, and it expires after 30 days.
• Depending on your setup, Canva may not email the invitee automatically. If needed, share the invitation link with the invitee directly.
• Keep invitation links private. An invitation link only works for the email address it was created for.
• Your team's existing invitation and domain settings still apply to people you invite.
• If a pending invitation already exists for the invitee, creating a new invitation returns the same invite record, with the expiry reset to 30 days from the request and the invite’s role updated to the requested role.

For endpoint details, see the Canva Admin API documentation.

Both Admin API and SCIM can support user provisioning.

The Admin API supports Canva organisation management beyond user provisioning. This includes teams, groups, memberships, and audit logs.

SCIM supports standard provisioning and deprovisioning. If you only need standard user provisioning or your team is unable to build a custom API integration, SCIM is a better fit for your needs.

Does my organisation need a developer to use Admin API?

Yes. Admin API requires your organisation to have in-house or outsourced engineering resources to build and maintain the integration. Canva does not provide implementation support. If your team is unable to build against an API, SCIM provisioning is a better fit for automating user management in your organisation.

Does everyone in my organisation need MFA or SSO to use the Admin API?

No. Only the organisation admin configuring the Admin API must have either MFA enabled or an SSO-managed account. The account must be managed or owned by the organisation they’re acting on behalf of. Other members of the organisation do not need MFA or SSO specifically for the Admin API to work.

Can my organisation invite external collaborators using the Admin API?

Yes. Organisation admins can use the Admin API to invite people to teams, including external collaborators. Your team’s existing invitation and domain settings still apply to people you invite.

Can we retrieve an existing invitation link again without creating a new invitation?

Yes. You can retrieve an existing invitation link using the invitee’s exact email address, without generating a new invitation.