Google groups

[Sheridan]

Is there any way to restrict the users who can email a group in G Suite? For example if I have a group called 'Students' and only want to allow the members of 'Staff' group to email the whole group?

 

Obviously I would still want to allow individuals to email each other, but we've been asked to look into this. I used to do this fine with Exchange but can't seem to find a way with G Suite as the restrictions are quite basic (i.e Public, All Members of this Group, Whole Organisation etc)

[siuko]

In the G Suite admin console browse to groups

 

Choose the relevant group you want

 

Access setting

 

Permissions > Basic Permissions > Post

 

Set this so All organisation members and public are unticked (that should only allow the group members to post to the group email)

 

Also in the same area if you click Members > All members you can choose single users who can post or who receive emails from the group

 

We have an all staff email group that defaults to new members not having posting rights and we manually set who can post (so only the Head etc can post)

 

EDIT After reading your post properly!! - I just realised you mean stop students emailing the students group email - but allow the staff too?

Edited January 26, 2017 by siuko

[Sheridan]

I had a look at that, but I can't see a way to allow all members of a group to email another group (i.e just allow all of Staff to email all of students)

 

I didn't want to add individual permissions for every staff member if I could avoid it!

[siuko]

I've just looked and I'm guessing you could default set posting rules to not allow students to post to the group

 

You could then add the staff group to the student one and turn off receive email and just allow posting (I haven't tested this as I didn't want to mess up our groups)

[Sheridan]

Yeah its a bit difficult to add permissions to google groups, I can't see a way to fully do what I want. Its possible to block the Staff group from students as I can set the Staff group to only allow Members to Send/Receive email - but if I then say I want the group Year7 to be accessible from Staff only, it falls apart, as the above method would stop anyone other than members of Year7 emailing their own group!

[siuko]

Again I've not tested this as I'm too chicken to mess with our structure

 

But I think you could add a new role to the group and give it specific permissions related to being able to post but not adjust group settings/ add members etc

 

Add the staff group to this (this is the bit I don't know if it will work as does adding, for example, [email protected] mean that everyone from that group has the permissions or does it just mean that email address does?)

 

You could then set the group posting options to only allow owners and this new role (and untick 'members of the group')

 

When I have a bit more time tomorrow I will try it on one of our smaller groups

[Sheridan]

Again I've not tested this as I'm too chicken to mess with our structure

 

But I think you could add a new role to the group and give it specific permissions related to being able to post but not adjust group settings/ add members etc

 

Add the staff group to this (this is the bit I don't know if it will work as does adding, for example, [email protected] mean that everyone from that group has the permissions or does it just mean that email address does?)

 

You could then set the group posting options to only allow owners and this new role (and untick 'members of the group')

 

I think I'm too chicken as well - I might see what Mr Google has to say about it first!

[chinesewhispers]

How many groups do you want to restrict? I block our students being able to send to the whole year group groups, but not the classes. What format are your class email addresses in?

[Sheridan]

How many groups do you want to restrict? I block our students being able to send to the whole year group groups, but not the classes. What format are your class email addresses in?

 

Not many about a dozen in all - for example we have a group for every student year group 7-13. So naturally we want Staff to be able to email all of those groups. But we don't want students in any of the year groups to be able to any of the year groups, only individuals within them. Its been requested as its been abused a few times, or when someone uses someone elses account!

[chinesewhispers]

Here's what I've put in place.

 

- Optional: Create an admin quarantine for this purpose, called Student Group Sending (or similar) - this will allow you to track who is attempting to email groups and sanction them if you desire. Choose drop or reject (see end of instructions).

 

- In Admin console, go to Apps, G Suite, Gmail, Advanced.

I assume here you have an organisation or organisations that contain your student yeargroups.

- Click on the organisation(s) that contains your students (make sure it doesn't contain staff, or it will block them as well).

- In the right-pane, find 'Content Compliance' and click to Add.

- Give it a name (I use 'Deny Group Sending'), and in section 1, check the box for 'Internal - Sending'.

- In section 2, select from the dropdown 'If ANY of...'

- Click Add, leave the dropdown as Simple, and enter the email address of the recipient group you want to block students sending to.

- Repeat this until all the emails you want to block exist in the list.

- In section 3, choose 'Quarantine' and select the quarantine you created earlier.

- Save and apply it as required.

 

That should do it. Basically, now all students sending messages will be checked to see if the regex (regular expression) of the group email address exists anywhere in the message (including headers). If it does, it will quarantine it. It will not reach the destination, but you will see it in quarantine, and then advise the student it is naughty to do this. If you set the default action on this quarantine to Drop, they won't know it didn't get there as there'll be no bounce back.

 

This is also a way to monitor emails to see if they include any naughty words, or other such content.

 

This might not be the 'right' way to do it, but it has worked for me. Let me know how you get on, it's been a long Bett day and I hope this makes sense!

[Primus]

This is the method I have used and it works perfectly:

 

Gmail sending routing- Stopping your learners from emailing spam to your groups | realsmart support community

[Sheridan]

Cheers folks, looks like the regex route is the way to go! I'll have a go at this and see how it goes.