Deploying Google Group

• The Google Groups service provides mailing list functionality. Optionally, you can enable the Google Groups for Business service to provide collaboration features, such as forums, a company groups directory, as well as the ability for users to create and manage their own groups.

• You can deploy admin-managed groups alone or have user-managed groups in addition.

• To deploy admin-managed groups, you can use either the standard Google Groups service or the Google Groups for Business service. However, to deploy user-managed groups, you must enable the Google Groups for Business service.

• Use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) to create and synchronize admin-managed groups in G Suite from your LDAP source. Additionally, use the Google Groups Settings API to centrally manage group settings.

• Google Groups can coexist with your legacy email system.

Google Groups Overview

What is the Google Groups service?

The Google Groups service provides your domain with mailing (distribution) list functionality. As a G Suite administrator, you have nearly all of the capabilities available in your legacy email system for creating and managing distribution lists as well as access control lists.

The standard Google Groups is enabled for your domain by default. Optionally, you can enable the Google Groups for Business service, which provides additional features that can enhance communication and collaboration in your organization. For example, this service can allow users to create and manage their own groups. You can manage the Google Groups for Business service in the G Suite menu on the Apps Admin console dashboard.

Note: G Suite provides a separate, non-core service named “Google Groups,” which you’ll find under Other Google Services in your Admin console. With this service, your users can create groups and/or post to public forums using their G Suite account for your domain. This service does not interact with or affect your standard Google Groups (mailing list) service or the Google Groups for Business service for your domain.

About Google Groups for Business

Google Groups for Business provides the following features:

Roles: Users can have different roles in a group: owner, manager, and member.

Management interface: Users can choose from many sharing, notification, permission, and listing options for their groups.

Forums: Internal users, and optionally external users, can read emails sent to a group in a forum format and post messages to the group using a web interface.

Groups directory: Users can view a directory of all groups in your organization.

Administrator controls: Administrators have controls for enabling, managing, and securing user-managed groups. For example, you can let users manage only their group memberships, or you also can let them create their own groups, without the need for administrator assistance.

Typical Uses For Google Groups for Business

Google Groups for Business provides additional features that support the following uses:

Mailing lists: Provides options for controlling group membership and message posting.

Access control: Allows users to manage personal membership in groups, as well as the ability to create their own groups, without the need for administrator assistance.

Q&A forum: Creates question-and-answer forums for internal or external users, with the option to moderate posts.

Collaborative inbox: Mailboxes for email addresses that multiple users will manage. An example might be a group named customerservice@altostrat.com for a customer service department.

Groups configurations & best practices

The following are the two primary configurations for the Google Groups and Google Groups for Business service:

Admin-managed: Administrators provision and manage all groups, using either the Admin console or Google Cloud Directory Sync. To support users’ needs for groups, administrators would establish an IT process for group creation requests. In this configuration, Google Groups for Business can be either enabled or disabled in the Admin console.

User and admin-managed: Both users and administrators can provision and manage groups. In this configuration, Google Groups for Business must be enabled.

Only admin-managed Groups

In this configuration, administrators control all group provisioning, membership, and settings. They also establish a process by which users can request groups, and develop tools or processes to systematically configure settings. This configuration is appropriate for organizations that require a more tightly managed environment.

You can use the admin-managed groups configuration with the Google Groups for Business service either enabled or disabled.

When Google Groups for Business is enabled

You can enable the Google Groups for Business service for admin-managed groups, even if you don’t want to let users use this service to manage their group subscriptions or create their own groups.

For example, you might want to enable the Google Groups for Business service to take advantage of features such as web forums or archival of group messages.

To use this configuration, you need to set up the Google Groups for Business sharing settings to allow only domain administrators to create groups. This setting forces users to request the addition or removal of groups through administrators, using a process you define.

You’ll also need to ensure that users can’t add themselves to groups using the Google Groups for Business interface, by requiring them to either request to join a group or receive an invitation to join a group. These settings are available in the Google Groups for Business interface. Note that users can’t remove themselves from any admin-managed groups.

When Google Groups for Business is disabled

If the Google Groups for Business service is disabled, administrators can use only the basic Google Groups service to create and manage mailing lists and access control lists for sharing Google documents, sites, and calendars.

Note: Although users can’t create their own Google groups in this configuration, they can still create personal mailing lists and access control lists using Google Contacts. These lists, however, can’t be shared with other users.

Considerations

Provisioning groups: For enterprises, Google recommends using Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) for provisioning admin-managed groups and managing their membership. If you’re using Google Groups for Business, GCDS will apply default group settings. For more information, see “Provisioning groups” below.

Configuring group settings: After provisioning groups, you can programmatically configure settings for groups using the G Suite Groups Settings API, which includes most of the key settings available in the Admin console interface. For example, an enterprise can use the API to create a script that automates the configuration of standard settings that comply with organizational policies or best practices. For more information, see “Provisioning groups” below.

Best practices

Establish request procedures: IT administrators need to establish and manage procedures by which users can request new groups or changes to groups.

Establish provisioning policies: Google also recommends that IT administrators establish provisioning policies to ensure their processes comply with organizational policies and that groups are consistent across the organization. Here are a few examples of such provisioning policies:

• Ensure that group owners receive training on group management and maintenance.
  
  

• Enforce an audit of legacy groups to ensure that new groups aren’t created indiscriminately to avoid duplication.
  
  

• Establish a nomenclature to ensure that the Groups Directory hierarchy contains logical sub-groups.

User-managed groups

In this configuration, users can provision and manage their own groups using a self-service model, without the need for IT administrator involvement. However, administrators can still provision and manage groups. For example, admins might manage the “all users” groups for a regional office, and users might manage groups for their sales projects. This configuration is appropriate for organizations that want to allow more open collaboration among employees.

Considerations

Benefits to users and administrators: User-managed groups can enhance user collaboration and prevent IT administrators from being a barrier to collaboration.

List maintenance: List maintenance is the responsibility of the users who create these groups.  Decide if you want your users to take on this responsibility.

Administrator control: G Suite administrators can enable or disable the Google Groups for Business service at any time. If it’s enabled, granular controls still allow admins to retain full control of group creation/deletion, membership, and many other functions of the service.

Best practices

Monitor for over-proliferation of groups: Monitor and limit the proliferation of sibling groups by establishing rules for creating groups for every project, team, and activity in the organization.

Establish a process for decommissioning groups: Often, group owners avoid removing groups they no longer need because they don’t want to delete the emails or they want the forum (archive) available for reference. Your IT department should establish a process to help users decommission groups and potentially preserve their content.