Joining New MAT (Google > Office 365)...

[TheHyperTechie]

Hi all,

 

So at some point this year, our small MAT will be joining a larger Trust. The Trust we are moving to, are heavily Microsoft, using sharepoint, office, intune etc. However, we are very heavy on Google with nearly 500 chromebooks, all drives/shared drives stored in Google Drive and we use all of the Google work apps.

 

Anyway... My current Trust do not want to move away from Google, as it just wouldn't be feasible considering we are so invested in it. I would like to know if any schools/Trusts have been in a similar situation before, and managed to still collaborate effectively with other schools and the MAT. If you have, what did you implement to allow this to happen?

 

Thanks!

[mavhc]

In terms of having both at once, that's easy.

 

Best solution would be to have the Trust sync all their users with google too, and then if you're collaborating you can either use MS or Google. If they're not going to do that (I'd offer to run the Google side for them), then at least Google added OneDrive support to Chromebooks recently

[TheHyperTechie]

In terms of having both at once, that's easy.

 

Best solution would be to have the Trust sync all their users with google too, and then if you're collaborating you can either use MS or Google. If they're not going to do that (I'd offer to run the Google side for them), then at least Google added OneDrive support to Chromebooks recently

 

Thanks for your reply. To be fair, this my initial response also, just add each domain to our Google console and then I can manage the Google Users for each school. The only issue I can see with this, is that the staff at the new MAT will now have two areas to access in order to collaborate. Although, they could setup federation for Google with O365 so they only need to know one set of details...?

[mavhc]

If you sync from AD for both then their details are the same for both, does require 1 password reset after installing Google Workspace Password Sync though

[TheHyperTechie]

If you sync from AD for both then their details are the same for both, does require 1 password reset after installing Google Workspace Password Sync though

 

Thanks, this is really helpful information. I will need to check with their current support provider (external MSP) to see what the setup is like at each new school. As I believe most of them have gone down the serveless route.

[simpsonj]

I've been battling this particular issue for 2 years now, so if you find a neat solution, I'd be very interested.

[simpsonj]

In terms of having both at once, that's easy.

 

Best solution would be to have the Trust sync all their users with google too, and then if you're collaborating you can either use MS or Google. If they're not going to do that (I'd offer to run the Google side for them), then at least Google added OneDrive support to Chromebooks recently

 

That is extremely useful!

 

Does anyone know a way of changing flags, or enabling OneDrive integration, using the Google Admin console, my Google-Fu fails me...

[mavhc]

the other option is to use M365 as the authentication provider for Google Workspace if they're using Entra and not AD

 

https://www.androidpolice.com/microsoft-onedrive-chromebooks-files-app/ it's in beta

[Primus]

This might not be what you want to hear but I expect the trust you are joining will expect you to move to M365 in time.

 

Speaking from experience - having different schools in the same trust on different platforms (in our case we standardised on Google Workspace and moved the M365 schools) is not a good experience.

[DDR5]

How did you get on with this, as I'm in the same boat? I have configured it so that Google is the idP, so with SSO/SAML their Google account signs them into their 365 account using A1 licensing. I am hoping that this will give them the best of both worlds.