Adding a user to a Google 'Group' automatically based on OU

[Koldov]

Not much to add here as it's all in the title, but basically once a user is created and added to an OU, is there anyway (through the 'Admin' console) to set something up that then adds them to a 'Group' for mailing list purposes?

 

Examples:

 

A user is created, added to the 'Teacher' OU and is automatically added to the 'Classroom Teacher' group and 'All Staff' group.

 

A user is created, added to the 'Admin Staff' OU and is automatically added to the 'Admin Staff' group, Reception Staff' group and 'All Staff' group.

 

I've seen things like 'Dynamic Groups' but it seems like overkill and I think removes some 'Group' management options and using the option when adding a user to go Advanced > Add all future users to... it's a bit nuclear, but something like this functionality only for a specific OU and a specific group?

 

I've also seen it may be possible to use Google Cloud Directory or GAM, but I'm not anywhere near this level/ability yet, so if it's not possible to automate it through the admin console, I'll carry on doing it manually as it's not a massive issue but more of a nice to have automation and one less thing to think about...

[jthompson]

Not much to add here as it's all in the title, but basically once a user is created and added to an OU, is there anyway (through the 'Admin' console) to set something up that then adds them to a 'Group' for mailing list purposes?

 

Examples:

 

A user is created, added to the 'Teacher' OU and is automatically added to the 'Classroom Teacher' group and 'All Staff' group.

 

A user is created, added to the 'Admin Staff' OU and is automatically added to the 'Admin Staff' group, Reception Staff' group and 'All Staff' group.

 

I've seen things like 'Dynamic Groups' but it seems like overkill and I think removes some 'Group' management options and using the option when adding a user to go Advanced > Add all future users to... it's a bit nuclear, but something like this functionality only for a specific OU and a specific group?

 

I've also seen it may be possible to use Google Cloud Directory or GAM, but I'm not anywhere near this level/ability yet, so if it's not possible to automate it through the admin console, I'll carry on doing it manually as it's not a massive issue but more of a nice to have automation and one less thing to think about...

 

Not that I'm aware of, no. I just do it using AD groups synced to Google Groups via GCDS. We maintain lots of groups, particularly for staff, so it's not really any extra work for us to also include those bigger groups which could otherwise potentially map to OUs.

 

If I was wanting to automate an OU > Group membership mapping, I'd definitely look to use Apps Script. I appreciate that you're not really wanting a scripting solution at the mo, though. I already have a function which fetches users' details for a particular OU (only about 20 lines), which would be the first step. Syncing that list to a Group's membership wouldn't be much more complicated.

[ThatBoringBloke]

I'm not aware of a way that you can automaticaly do it, but we used to use the OK Goldy workspace add-on to do groups / classes.

 

Its pretty straight forward (With the YouTube videos), but you have to manually update them.

[jthompson]

Looking again, why would a dynamic group not suit? The "Parent organisational unit" condition would likely give you what you want, and at a quick glance I can't see that the other available group properties differ from regular groups at all.

[mavhc]

You'll be wanting shadow sync, add users in an OU to a group of the same name

 

https://github.com/mavhc/powershell/blob/master/ShadowGroupsSync.ps1

[Koldov]

Looking again, why would a dynamic group not suit? The "Parent organisational unit" condition would likely give you what you want, and at a quick glance I can't see that the other available group properties differ from regular groups at all.

 

Honestly I only skim read and got to the part that said:

 

Understand dynamic group membership

 

Membership in dynamic groups differs from other groups in that:

 

You can’t add people to the group manually

 

You have limited options for assigning permissions

 

Only users can be members.

 

and wrote it off as a solution (I've snipped the full explanations, the above are just the bullet points)...