Where G Suites/Google Workspace is lacking - management tools

[localzuk]

Why after all these years of it existing does G Suite/Google Workspace have such a poor set of admin tools?

 

A couple of examples.

 

Why is a huge amount of the admin limited to being done via GAM - a third party tool that hooks into their API?

Why isn't there a web interface for every feature? Google is a web company after all...

 

Why do I have to resort to GAM to edit a Google Classroom as an admin? Why can't I access all Classrooms via the admin panel, like I can do with Groups?

Why do I have to use GAM to delegate rights to an email account? Why can't I do this from the user page in the admin panel?

 

Sure, it is free for the G Suite Education package. But they still get a lot of money from us via all our use of Chromebooks. We are also considering paying for the paid Education offering for some staff so they can record Meets long term.

 

All of these things should be easy to use and in the admin panel. I shouldn't have to train someone how to use GAM to do basic admin tasks!

 

Come on Google, up your game. Especially as you've just announced a 58% increase in pricing for the Chromebook management licenses!

[nadeem]

Why isn't there a web interface for every feature? Google is a web company after all...

 

 

google/alphabet is an advertising company

[RLR]

Yep, I have to use GAM for everything. You can't administer google without it. I hate not having a gui overview of all classrooms. Get quite a lot of requests from staff to make changes to classrooms or add new or transfer ownership to someone else as the teacher has left. Would be much easier if I could see classrooms and make changes with a few button click. With gam you usually have to run a few commands to get the information you need before you can make changes.

 

One other thing I don't understand is why can't I search for all files with our domains google drive. You can only search files using the audit log/security tool which means they only show up if you've edited them in the past 6 months. If nothings changed in 6 months you can't see it. This then leads you to using GAM to run a command to get a list of all files from all users which takes forever and doesn't pickup users that are disabled.

 

Last thing, why no audit log on google classrooms? Would be nice to see if a student is telling the truth about "randomly losing access to a classroom".

[paulkerton]

The whole idea of Google Classroom was that it was supposed to be a teacher led and managed tool, not something that the admins had to get involved with.

 

However, what that has led to, is intrasigence on both the teacher side not expecting to manage their software, and Google insisting that it is a teacher tool and is something admins shouldn't get involved with.

[paulkerton]

One other thing I don't understand is why can't I search for all files with our domains google drive.

 

https://workspace.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/products/cloud-search/

[caffrey]

My favourite part about the admin panel is, you just get used to using something and they move the settings somewhere else 3 months later... I think the app management settings have moved 3 times that I know of...

[RLR]

My favourite part about the admin panel is, you just get used to using something and they move the settings somewhere else 3 months later... I think the app management settings have moved 3 times that I know of...

 

I just had this. Was looking at settings for google meet as a teacher was saying it's not working for year 2. The google meet settings where exactly the same as everyone else's but it wasn't working. Eventually found out the app was turned off for their OU.

[RLR]

https://workspace.google.co.uk/intl/en_uk/products/cloud-search/

This only searches your own google account and not everyone in the domain?

[localzuk]

The whole idea of Google Classroom was that it was supposed to be a teacher led and managed tool, not something that the admins had to get involved with.

 

However, what that has led to, is intrasigence on both the teacher side not expecting to manage their software, and Google insisting that it is a teacher tool and is something admins shouldn't get involved with.

 

All well and good, but that is them trying to force their way of thinking on schools. Not all schools have staff that want to spend time faffing configuring Classrooms. The reality of schools is that we sometimes need to get involved to help/fix things that the teacher doesn't know about.

 

Which brings me on to another thing - why can Classroom settings not be configured when they're created by the API? Eg. turning off posting on the feed? Why is this something every teacher has to do on every classroom they're the teacher of?

[dhicks]

Not all schools have staff that want to spend time faffing configuring Classrooms.

 

Absolutly - your average teacher should be able to just log in and find all their Classrooms set up ready for them, synced from their timetable, with pupils joined to appropriate Classrooms. I can understand Google's thinking here - they provide the basic facilities and an API, it's up to third-parties to produce solutions to provide integration with particular databases / school systems, etc. As you also point out, there's bits of functionality missing from the API - we lack the ability to turn on Guardian notifications for Classrooms via the API, for instance.

[Koldov]

Have to say I felt this way from the get-go...

 

I wouldn't say I struggled as such with setting up GSuite (or whatever it's called nowadays), but a lot of things weren't obvious to me.

 

Luckily I had teachers that got involved with the 'Classroom' side of things, so that all passed me by.

 

But everytime I would post 'how do I do this...?' all I got was 'download GAM, learn the command line interface, it's easy'...

 

Honestly, it put me off getting as involved as I should be - a lot of things just got done manually and a lot of things were ignored

 

For all its useful features to enable remote learning etc. (and for free), it still felt like there should be easier GUI ways of doing what was needed.

 

But isn't this true of a lot of software supposedly 'made for education' that is made by people who don't have a clue about what people in education actually want (Windows 10 Edu - I'm looking at you).... Or that teachers don't have a lot of time (or the technical ability) to understand how these things work and the implications of their actions (and still rely on an admin enabling or disabling certain features).

 

Also, although I know it is true of other 'cloud based' applications, but the whole 'use this other 3rd party software to manage users' thing or integrate with your AD always puts me off. There's only so much a school can afford to pay for to manage another application and only so much 'download my APPZ and install them on your server' that I'm willing to do.

Edited November 20, 2020 by Koldov

[PrimaryNetMan]

Why after all these years of it existing does G Suite/Google Workspace have such a poor set of admin tools?

 

A couple of examples.

 

Why is a huge amount of the admin limited to being done via GAM - a third party tool that hooks into their API?

Why isn't there a web interface for every feature? Google is a web company after all...

 

Why do I have to resort to GAM to edit a Google Classroom as an admin? Why can't I access all Classrooms via the admin panel, like I can do with Groups?

Why do I have to use GAM to delegate rights to an email account? Why can't I do this from the user page in the admin panel?

 

Sure, it is free for the G Suite Education package. But they still get a lot of money from us via all our use of Chromebooks. We are also considering paying for the paid Education offering for some staff so they can record Meets long term.

 

All of these things should be easy to use and in the admin panel. I shouldn't have to train someone how to use GAM to do basic admin tasks!

 

Come on Google, up your game. Especially as you've just announced a 58% increase in pricing for the Chromebook management licenses!

 

Hi localzuk

 

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Agree admin management is poor. Case in point there is still no inbuilt way to add external contacts to the Global Address Book have to use the API

 

Thanks to Googles user first methodology, Admins are just power users really.

 

And £30.00 for a device license it just the start. Come Workspace for Education you just know the standard free version is going to be a storage limited. Want more? Go Enterprise

[danielghares]

I moved from an O365 school to a Google school recently, and at first found the G-Suite admin console horrible. Found the UI difficult to navigate, needed to do most things in GAM, cant change certain settings for all users, etc..

After a while I got used to it, but in hindsight 365 had a similar set of issues. A lot of their 'modern' UI's were missing settings from the classic ones, needed to PS into 365 online to change advanced settings, etc..

 

Overall I do prefer Google now I'm used to things, but it's a long way from perfect. We'd love our users to be 'self sufficient' in managing their own classes, shared drives, settings, etc.. but at the moment they just aren't ready for it, so the unnecessary difficulty Google adds in administering these systems is a PITA.

[DavidYoung]

I do think that G Suite's management is much better than Microsoft 365 (as of about 4 years ago when I last used it).

 

The thing that really put me off with Office 365 management was they originally had no concept of OUs (though I think they might do now) and I had to write a very comprehensive Powershell onboarding script to get new users who had been provisioned with AD assigned the right settings. So much more was missing from the Microsoft console compared with the G Suite console. The audit logging in G Suite is also much better than in Microsoft's standard package, it is great to be able to see every view and action on every document.

 

The big exception, however, is Google Classroom which does have abysmal admin tools as mentioned. Google really need to build a Classroom admin area to allow admins to see all classes, members, transfer ownership, archive/unarchive, etc. Thank goodness for Salamander. They also need Classroom audit logs though I think that has been mentioned.

[TwistedHelixis]

One other thing I don't understand is why can't I search for all files with our domains google drive.

 

On reddit there was a search command you could put into the drive search box (it was in a security forum on Reddit as employees where using it) that would return domain based file searches. Sorry I don't have a link to the post but it is possible.

[Steve21]

On reddit there was a search command you could put into the drive search box (it was in a security forum on Reddit as employees where using it) that would return domain based file searches. Sorry I don't have a link to the post but it is possible.

 

Do you mean that source:domain command? Was reading about that a little while back on reddit too

 

Steve

[jthompson]

I find the Admin pages have always been quite slow, too, so that even if I know exactly which advanced Gmail option it is that I need to adjust, and where it is, it's always a string of click-wait-click-wait.

 

Classroom sticks out somewhat with it's paucity of admin controls. It's an app which really needs them, too. I'd add to that that the guardian access needs to move from mere weekly/daily email digests to being visible in real-time via the web app. Parents with their own Google account ought to be able to go to the site and see that same information live.