Get started managing groups for an organization

This page is for administrators who manage groups for an organization. To manage groups for your own account, visit Google Groups help.

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With Google Workspace, your organization can use groups to easily communicate and collaborate across teams. As an administrator, you can also use groups to configure features and services for different groups of users.

Here's how to get started using groups in your organization.

Set up communication & collaboration groups

	Create email & distribution lists Get started by creating groups for teams, departments, or other groups of people in your organization. With a group, users can: Send email to all group members Invite group members to meetings Share content with members, including documents, sites, videos, and calendars Get started Create a group
	Set up the Google Groups app for users If you turn on the Groups for Business service in your Google Admin console, users can access your organization's groups at their Google Groups app—available in their App launcher  and at groups.google.com. Google Groups provides additional features for groups (see below). And based on policies you set in your Admin console, users can be allowed to create, manage, and work in groups in a variety of ways.  Get started What you get with Groups for Business
	Add features to a group using Google Groups Collaborative Inbox After creating a group, group owners and managers (including admins) can use the Google Groups app to make the group a Collaborative Inbox. Here, members with permissions can assign conversations to each other, then track the status of a response. Make a group a Collaborative Inbox Additional member and conversation management You can also use Google Groups to add features to a group such as a welcome message, message moderation, auto-replies to group messages, and more: Add features and manage conversations using Google Groups

Configuration groups for use by admins

As an admin, you can use groups to customize settings for different users, without changing your organizational structure. You typically customize settings using organizational units. But a larger organization might need to make further customizations using groups.

Administrators can use groups to:

• Turn a service on for a group

  For example, you might want to turn on YouTube only for a subset of your support team.

• Customize service settings for a group

  For example, you might allow only a subset of your PR department to share calendars publicly.

Options for large organizations

Here are options for organizations with large groups or a lot of groups.

• Create recommended groups for sharing (target audience)

  Help users share items with appropriate teams rather than your entire organization. For example, add a target audience to users’ sharing settings, such as their “Get link” sharing option in Drive.

• Manage membership automatically with dynamic groups

  Create a group that adds and removes members automatically based on a membership query you create. This is useful if people in your organization change roles or locations frequently and you need an automated way to keep group membership up to date.

• Sync groups with your LDAP or Active Directory server

  (Requires developer skills.) Synchronize your legacy groups with Google Workspace, using tools that use the Admin SDK’s Directory API. These tools include Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) and tools you create yourself.

• Create and manage groups using API's

  (Requires developer skills.) You can manage many group settings and features in bulk, using a related API.