If you received an invitation to join your organization and start using Essentials, you can accept the request or do nothing to decline. To accept the request, click the Join Now link in the email, then follow the steps.
Why join your team on Essentials?
Essentials provides these key features for improved productivity and collaboration:
- Secure video meetings from anywhere—Host and join video meetings on your computer or mobile device to stay connected with your team.
- Efficient chat collaboration—Communicate with your co-workers from anywhere with group and one-on-one chat messages.
- Easy document creation and sharing—Create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and forms and share them with your coworkers and others outside your organization (if your administrator allows outside sharing). View and add comments to files and easily track changes.
- Your files available any time, any place—Get to Drive files from any location on any computer or mobile device.
- Shared drives—Store files in secure, easy-to-manage shared spaces. Any files added to shared drives are owned collectively by the team, so everyone stays up to date.
Learn more about these features and more:
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What happens when you join
Your administrator manages your Google Meet, Drive, and Chat experienceYour team administrator can:
- Manage the video meeting features you can use
- Set document-sharing policies, such as allowing or preventing you from sharing with others outside the organization
- Access your files, even if they're not shared with anyone
- Delete your files or transfer ownership of your files to another user
- Set chat policies, such as allowing or preventing you from chatting with others outside the organization
- Remove your account from Essentials
When you accept the invitation to join Essentials, you’ll create a Google Account (if you don’t already have one). Here’s what you get with your account:
Key Google services
The following shows the key services available with your account and whether they're managed by your administrator. Note that other services might also be available with your account:
| Google service | Available? | Managed by admin? |
|---|---|---|
| Drive and Docs | ✔ | ✔ |
| Meet | ✔ | ✔ |
| Keep | ✔ | ✔ |
| Gmail | ||
| Contacts | ✔ | |
| Calendar | ✔ | ✔ |
| Groups* | ||
| Chat | ✔ | ✔ |
| Jamboard | ✔ | ✔ |
| Sites | ✔ | |
| Tasks | ||
| Blogger | ✔ | |
| Google Ads | ✔ | |
| Google Analytics | ✔ | |
| Google Domains | ✔ | |
| Google Earth | ✔ | |
| Google Maps | ✔ | |
| Google Pay | ✔ | |
| Google Photos | ✔ | |
| Google Play | ✔ | |
| Google Voice | ✔ | |
| Search and Assistant | ✔ | |
| YouTube | ✔ |
* Available if your administrator verifies your organization's domain name and turns on Groups for your organization.
Service and feature limitations
Some other Google features or services might not be available after you join Essentials. For example:
| Photos integration with Drive | Photos to Drive integration might have limited functionality, depending on your organization's Google Account. |
| Google Fi | Google Fi might not be available to all accounts. Learn more |
If you join Essentials with an address that already uses Google services, here’s what happens:
Your Drive data becomes managed
Your administrator can access, change ownership of, or delete any Drive data that's in your account (including recorded video meetings) when you join Essentials.
Some services and data become unavailable
- You'll lose access to a few services (and their data) that aren't included with Essentials.
- You'll keep access to dozens of other services, including YouTube, Google Ads, and Google Analytics.
See the list of available services
You can save your data before you join
If you want to continue to manage personal Drive data or data in services that aren't available with Essentials, do one of the following:
- Use Google Takeout to save a copy of your data.
- Change the email address for your account and continue to access all of your data. Then sign up for a new account using your work email address.
You get data back if your account is removed from Essentials
If your administrator later removes your Google Account from your Essentials organization, you can resume using any services that weren't available with Essentials. And their data becomes available again (it’s kept with your account). However, if your administrator chooses to keep your Drive or Chat data with the organization, you won't be able to access it.
If an administrator unlocks additional business features for Essentials or another Google service (by verifying your organization's domain name), your Google Account will be converted to a managed account.
You'll then have the opportunity to do one of the following, depending on which administrator converts your account:
- If your current administrator converts your account, you'll receive notification before the conversion. You can then either back up or delete personal data, or delete your account if you like.
- If a new administrator converts your account, you'll receive notification after the conversion. You can discuss options for handling your account and data with your administrator.
Learn more about managed accounts.
Problems joining?
If you have a conflicting accountIf you create a new Google Account when joining your organization on Essentials, make sure you haven't previously signed up to use Google services with the same business email address. If you have, you'll see this error message: "This email address is already taken."
To use your business email address for Essentials, you'll need to remove your address from the previously created account by changing your username in 1 of 2 ways.
- You can change your username to another email address that you own.
- You can add Gmail to your account, create a new Gmail username, and remove your business email address as the alternate address on the account.
Once you complete either option and your business email address is no longer associated with a Google Account, you can sign up for Essentials with that address.
If you'd like to move data in between your old Google Account and your new account for Essentials (on a per-product basis), see How to download your Google data.
