Manage Group Membership Automatically through Dynamic Groups
Dynamic groups in Google Workspace automatically manage memberships based on user attributes via queries. Admins control access, exclude users, and adjust membership through the Admin Console or Directory API. Only individual users, not groups, can be members.
Google Workspace as we all know is our all in one solution with all our productivity needs. With regards to that the Workspace Admin can do a lot of changes in a granular way. Which in terms gives the admin a lot of flexibility and controllability against its users.
One of the topics that we are going to discuss today is “Dynamic Groups”. It’s a Google Group whose memberships are automatically managed using a membership query or a query on employee attributes.
In the group's definition, you supply the query and Google systems ensure that all matching users in your organization are members of the group.
Dynamic groups are created and maintained differently than Google Groups but they are used for the same purposes. They are used as email groups (to send email to a specific set of people) and for managing Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Google Workspace policies.
HOW CAN YOU ADD USERS IN DYNAMIC GROUPS?
To add users in any dynamic group that you want you can edit an user's account information so that it can match the query conditions that you have set as an administrator. You can edit the details by using Directory API, you can also edit them from the Admin Console user’s part.
Exclude users from dynamic group
If you want to add only users who do not meet a condition, create a condition for the dynamic group and then click Exclude. For example, to create a group containing only users who don’t live in the U.S., you create the condition “Country code equals INDIA” and then click Exclude. For that query, you will get an exclamation point (!) for the exclusion.
Understanding Dynamic Group Membership:
- You can’t manually add people to the group manually—To change members, change the membership query based on the description.
- The options are limited for assigning permissions—In Google Groups, you can assign permissions for dynamic groups, such as message moderation, only to group members, the entire organization, or anyone on the web, if available. Group admins always have all the permissions to manage dynamic groups and change membership queries.
- Only users can be members—Groups can’t meet membership conditions, so you can’t add a group to a dynamic group.
- Dynamic groups can’t be real members—You can’t add a dynamic group to any other group.
- You can add as many as 500 members and it can be increased once you reach the limit by reaching out to the concerned google team.
Plans Available: Google Workspace Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, and Cloud Identity premium accounts.
