Add an email (GMail) only domain to a Google Workspace

[Koldov]

At the beginning of this school year, we had a very brief discussion (20 minutes tops) with a 3rd party 'consultant' (who was only there as far as I knew to help deliver the computing curriculum apparently), during which time they had convinced my Headteacher that we should 'go Google' ^TM

 

Email, Drive, Classroom for homework etc. Regardless of my concerns, the Headteacher didn't need much convincing and pushed to get it implemented as soon as possible ("so is next week ok?!)...

 

I had set-up from home (pretty much overnight) a Google Workspace just at the beginning of the first Covid lockdown to enable distance learning and it was a fairly rough default set-up, after that it was pretty much forgotten about and remained dormant/unused.

 

It was decided we would use that as it was already mostly set-up, however certain things are coming to light and there have been quite a few teething problems and a snagging list growing by the day...

 

One of these issues is the choice of Domain name... It has the name of our school, but not the actual school type (as in 'schoolname.co.uk' and not schoolnameprimaryschool.co.uk').

 

Personally I like it, it's a lot less to type or explain over the phone, but the Headteacher isn't happy and wants a domain name like all his friends... apparently it has been commented on by other headteachers and an infant school we were joined to many years ago (who we parted ways with us ages ago to go off and be an academy, but still uses the same name)...

 

In my defence it was never intended to be a public facing domain and as there has been no change management/risk assessment/training done on our move to Google, I am pretty much close to shrugging my shoulders and saying 'tough'....

 

However, it's not in my nature and I think it's possible (even though we are currently on Education Fundamentals) for me to buy a new domain and add it to our original domain as an email alias (if only for our Headteacher).

 

Thoughts?

Edited October 5, 2023 by Koldov

[mavhc]

Does the school own the domain they want to use?

[Koldov]

Not at the moment, but I've checked and it's available for a couple of dollars, so we could buy it quite quickly.

 

I guess school name domains are pretty random and rarely sought after?

[mavhc]

Having a long domain name is pretty annoying, just say you can't do it. a) everyone has to type more b) changing it means the old one is still in use, c) when your email address form has a length limit you'll hit it more often, d) changing all your accounts for every website for no reason is an expensive waste of time.

 

Is the google domain the same as the school's current email? What's the current domain for email? What's the domain for the website?

[Koldov]

Yes, all good points and pretty much my thoughts exactly tbh... I seem to remember a few posts on here bemoaning the fact that they've got ridiculously long domain names... in fact our previous one was schoolname.schooltype.town.co.uk

 

The Google domain is the email domain as we have now moved all email to the Google Workspace GMail offering.

 

The website is on a completely different domain that we've had for years, so no real complication there (and actually is schoolname.org.uk so no 'school-type' in the domain there either).

 

I just think if it's only going to cost a couple of £s and a couple of mouse clicks, why not? It might be worth it for the sake of not getting branded the unhelpful, grumpy IT tech blocker that is making things difficult and not helping the school's brand/image...

 

Oh and to stop other headteachers poking fun and laughing behind my headteacher's back... although to be fair they deserve it for being so rash in the first place...

Edited October 5, 2023 by Koldov

[jthompson]

It should be simple enough to purchase your new domain name and then add it to your Google Workspace tenancy as a user alias domain. That would mean that all of your users have a primary address (and therefore Google username) of [email protected] as they currently do, but they would automatically also have [email protected] as an email alias.

 

By default, any email they send would be 'from' [email protected], but they could elect on a per message basis to use their [email protected] address as the sender address, should they need/wish to.

 

https://admin.google.com/ac/domains/manage

 

That's what we've done here from the outset, as we have a legacy domain name that is there are a user alias domain.

Edited October 5, 2023 by jthompson

[jthompson]

BTW, if you do add a user alias domain, you'll want to configure it with DMARC, etc just as you would with your primary domain name, since you'll want to protect it against spoofing and all that just the same.

[jthompson]

Go me thinking now.

 

A user can set one of their aliases to be their default sending address in Gmail.

 

Gmail > Settings > Accounts > Send mail as. They add their alias address there and then set it as their default.

 

That would allow your Head, for instance, to be using the longer domain name as their default, whilst others just carry on with the shorter one.

[mavhc]

Meanwhile I get email to my personal domain intended for a school who have the same domain except with ij at the end for infants and junior, which many appear to forget about