Ways to manage and assign licenses

Google Workspace for Education admins will need to assign licenses to users manually or automatically, ensuring each user has a license that reflects their status, whether they are a full or part-time student, alumni, faculty, or user that no longer requires access within a domain. Admins will need to monitor license usage to stay within their allocated limit and manage costs. They will also need to understand the different license types (Education Fundamentals, Gmail-Only, Archived) and when to apply them to users based on their roles and activity levels.

As a Google Workspace for Education administrator, you have several options for managing and assigning licenses to your users. The Google Workspace Admin console (admin.google.com) is your primary interface for managing users and licenses.

Using the Google Workspace Admin console

User-based automatic license assignment

You can turn on automatic license assignment at the organization or OU level to assign licenses automatically to your users. If you do, users in your account who don’t have a license (and any new users you add later) get a license for Google Workspace for Education. If you have multiple Google subscriptions, you can only turn on automatic licensing for one subscription per organization or OU.

Note:

• If you have organizational units under your top-level organization, you can set automatic licensing options for specific organizational units.
• If you choose to automatically assign licenses for a service to all users, you can’t remove an individual user’s license.
• It can take up to 24 hours for an automatically assigned license to take effect.
• Automatic license assignment will assign licenses to both active and suspended users in the organization / OU(s) that you enable. Before assigning licenses, we recommend that you move suspended users out of the OU(s) that you plan to license, in order to avoid giving those users licenses.

Automatically assign a license to every user in your organization

You can assign a license to every user in your organization automatically from the License settings page of the Admin console.

1. From the Admin console Home page, click Menu, and on the left, click Billing > License settings.
2. Click the subscription you want to assign licenses for.
3. Click Off > select On.
4. If you have multiple subscriptions of the same service, choose which subscription to use for automatic license assignment.
5. Click Save.

Set up automatic licensing for organizational units (OUs)

If you set up organizational units in the Google Admin console, all child organizations inherit the automatic licensing setting of their parent. You can, however, override a parent setting and set the automatic licensing option independently.

Important: To understand when you inherit or override a setting, or how automatic licensing affects existing users, please see this help center article.

Set an organization to override its parent setting

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Billing -> License settings.
2. Click on the OU for which you want to enable automatic licensing.
3. Select Google Workspace for Education on the right side and change Automatic licensing from OFF to ON.
4. If you have multiple subscriptions of the same service, choose which subscription to use for automatic license assignment.
5. Click Override.

User-based manual license assignment

You can manually assign licenses to individual users, an uploaded list of users, or an entire organizational unit.

If you manually assign licenses to an organization, only users in that organization get a license. Users in child organizations don’t automatically receive a license—you need to manually assign it to them as well.

Manually assign and remove licenses on the Users page

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Users.
2. Next to each user’s name where you want to assign or remove a license, check the box.
3. At the top, click More > Assign Licenses or Remove Licenses.
4. Click Google Workspace for Education > Assign or Remove. (Note: if you have multiple Google Workspace for Education license types, you can select the specific type by clicking the dropdown menu.)

Manually assign and remove licenses on an individual user's page

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Users.
2. Click the name of the user you want to manage.
3. Scroll down and click the user’s License section.
4. Click Google Workspace for Education to display the on/off switches in the Status column.
5. Next to Google Workspace for Education, in the Status column, click the switch to assign or remove a license.
6. Click Save. (Note: if you have multiple Google Workspace for Education license types, you can select the specific type by clicking the dropdown menu.)

Manually assign and remove licenses using bulk upload

Note: You assign a maximum of 200 licenses at one time using bulk upload. To assign more than 200 licenses, you can repeat the process as many times as needed.

Step 1: Download user information

1. From the Admin console Home page, go to Users.
2. At the top of the page, click Download users.
3. Under Select columns, select All user info columns and currently selected columns
4. Select your preferred format, and click Download

Step 2: Enter license information

1. In the spreadsheet, find the column labeled New Licenses [UPLOAD ONLY]. (If you want to see the currently assigned license(s) for a user, use the Licenses [READ ONLY] column.)
2. Enter the SKU ID for the license you want to assign:
   • a. For Google Workspace for Education - Fundamentals (accounts created before Nov 13, 2024): Google-Apps-For-Education
   • b. For Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals (accounts created on/after Nov 13, 2024): 1010070001
   • c. For Google Workspace for Education Plus - Legacy: 1010310002
   • d. For Google Workspace for Education - Legacy (Student): 1010310003
   • e. For Google Workspace for Education Plus: 1010310008
   • f. For Google Workspace for Education Plus (Staff): 1010310009
   • g. For Google Workspace for Education Standard: 1010310005
   • h. For Google Workspace for Education Standard (Staff): 1010310006
   • i. For Google Workspace for Education Teaching and Learning Upgrade: 1010370001
3. Enter SKU IDs for up to 200 users (see note above).
4. Save the file in CSV format (.csv).

Step 3: Upload the file

1. At the top of the Users page in the Admin console, click Bulk update users.
2. Click Attach CSV file.
3. Browse to the location on your computer and attach the CSV file.
4. Click Upload. If there's an error, enter the missing information in your spreadsheet and upload the file again. For more information, see common errors.

Your Tasks list opens automatically and shows the progress of the upload. Once processing is complete, you'll receive an email report. If there's a processing error, download the log file from your Tasks list. For more information, see common errors.

Using Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS)

You can use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) to automatically synchronize users, groups, and contacts so that the data in your Google Account matches the data in your LDAP server, such as Microsoft Active Directory. You can also use GCDS to sync licenses by user, OU, or group.

Assigning Licenses

1. Follow these instructions to understand how GCDS works and to get started
2. Set up your sync with Configuration Manager
3. On the Licenses page of Configuration Manager, set up the GCDS license synchronization for users in your Google Account.
4. Assign the email address attribute: Under Email address attribute, specify what attribute GCDS uses as the email address mapping between the LDAP user account and the Google Account user.
5. To assign licenses, click Add Rule.
6. In the LDAP Query field, using LDAP query notation, specify the users on your LDAP directory that should be assigned the license.

   Important: You can only configure one license rule for each license SKU.

7. Select Assign licenses to Google domain users.
8. Click the License list and select the license SKU.
9. (Optional) Check the Remove this license from Google domain users that don’t match this rule box to remove licenses from Google users that don’t match the rule.

   Note: Checking the box might result in removing licenses for a large set of users in your account if your LDAP configuration isn’t correctly defined. Check your configuration before using this feature.

10. Select one of the following options:
    • OK—Adds the rule and returns to the LDAP license rules screen
    • Apply—Adds the rule and begins another LDAP license rule
    • Cancel—Cancels the rule
    • Test LDAP query—Tests the validity of the LDAP license query

Using a third-party command line tool (e.g. GAM)

For quick, large-scale account provisioning, you can use third-party solutions. For example, the free, downloadable, open-source Google Apps Manager (GAM) uses the Admin SDK Directory API to create and manage Google Workspace users and groups.

GAM interacts with many Google APIs, which you can use to also manage other account features and resources.

Important: Google Cloud Support doesn’t support GAM or other third-party solutions. We support the Admin SDK Directory API those tools use. GAM is subject Apache 2.0 to the which provides the terms and conditions for your use, reproduction, and distribution of GAM.

If you decide to GAM, follow these recommended steps:

Assigning Licenses

1. From the GAM website, download GAM. .
2. Configiure the tool..
3. During setup, when asked if you’re “ready to authorize GAM to manage Google Workspace user data and settings,” answer N (no) to skip Domain-Wide Delegation.
4. This command helps you confirm that GAM is associated with the right Google Workspace account: gam info domain
5. You can add licenses. by username, organizational unit, or group. The syntax to add licenses is:

   gam user username|group groupname|ou ouname|all users add license sku

   For example, to give all members of the “Teachers” group Google Workspace for Education Plus - Legacy licenses:

   gam group teachers add license 1010310002

Syncing Licenses

You can also add and remove licenses from users based on their inclusion in a specified user list.

• The inclusion list could be a Google Group, OU or local text file.
• Users who are not included in the user list and who have the license applied will have the given license type removed from their account.
• Users included in the user list and who do not have the license will have it added to their account.
• You can use “group_ns” to remove licenses from suspended users

The syntax to sync licenses is:

gam user username|group groupname|ou ouname|all users sync license sku

Example

The following example will create two Google Groups named e4e and e4es, add currently licensed users to the groups and finally sync the license to the group. Because we use group_ns (group no suspended) in the last step, suspended users will have the license removed. Rerunning the final two commands on a recurring basis will keep the licenses aligned with the non-suspended group members.

gam create group e4e "Google Workspace for Education users"
gam create group e4es "Google Workspace for Education Student users"
gam update group e4e add members license 1010310002
gam update group e4es add members license 1010310003
gam group_ns e4e sync license 1010310002
gam group_ns e4es sync license 1010310003

Deleting Licenses

The syntax to delete licenses is:

gam user |group |ou |all users delete license

For example, to remove licenses from the “Staff” OU:

gam ou staff delete license 1010310002

Using the Google Sheets-based License Management Tool

The Google Sheets-based License Management Tool allows administrators to manage and automate license assignments in bulk. The tool is offered by AppsEdu, a Google for Education partner, at no charge to global educational institutions who use Google Workspace for Education.

Download the tool here, and review the instructions and best practices document. Also, please note the following:

• The License Management Tool is designed primarily for small to medium-sized institutions (fewer than 20,000 active users). For larger institutions, we recommend using GAM, GCDS, or the License Manager API.
• For help using the License Management Tool, please email [e-mail].

Using the Enterprise License Manager API

You can use the Enterprise License Manager API to assign and remove licenses.

Get started here, or follow the instructions in:

• Prerequisites — Get an account, learn about the product, and create a project in the Google APIs Console.
• Install a client library — Download a client library for your programming language, and import the classes you need.
• Set up your application authorization — Set up your client's authorization.
• To understand how to manage licenses, begin with the API's Concepts.
• To understand how to pull all of this together and to manage your client's requests and API service responses, see the How to guides.