User Provisioning for Back to School

As you make back-to-school preparations, join us in a quick review of the various options for provisioning Users and Groups in your Google Workspace for Education domain. Whether you create Workspace users manually or already have automation, this article provides an overview of the most common and efficient ways to manage your accounts.

Provisioning Options

• Manual creation

• Challenges: Time consuming, no check for duplicates, no way to add to Groups, no password distribution workflow
• Minimum requirements for new users: First name, last name, email, and password

• CSV import

• Challenges: No check for duplicates, no way to add to Groups, no password distribution workflow
• Minimum requirements for new users: First name, last name, email, and password

• API based scripts or 3rd Party Tool

• Google Apps Manager (GAMADV-XT3)

• A command line tool that allows administrators to control their Google Apps and domain accounts. 
• Turn on/off services for users like POP and Forwarding
• Perform bulk operations or scheduled tasks
• Use Python scripting to work from any platform
• Create CSV outputs of users on the domain and more

• Google Cloud Directory Sync

• Performs a one-way sync from Active Directory (AD) to Google
• Creates, suspends, renames, and moves users
• Supports sophisticated rules from custom mapping
• Runs as a utility in your server environment
• Ability to test your sync before deployment
• Ability to sync groups

• Password Sync

• Installs on each domain controller in your environment
• Option to sync some user passwords and not others
• The user's mail attribute must be populated with the same email address used for the user’s Google account
• Listens for password change and immediately changes in Google
• *All passwords must be reset once installed before they will sync to Google

• Google School Directory Sync (GSDS)

• Lets you synchronize data from your school information management system to Classroom and Google Workspace for Education

• Gopher for Users

• Ability to slice-and-dice users based on specific requirements
• Insights into user attributes and key properties
• Manage domain group membership upon provisioning
• Update users from sheets

• Managed Sync Service

• For schools with Amplified Labs’ Managed Sync, our team creates all Google Workspace student user accounts, as well as Google Classroom classes, rosters, and guardian invitations. We then make sure these are synchronized daily, directly from your student information system data.

If you require additional support with provisioning users in your Google Workspace for Education domain to ensure your methods are optimized and working for you, contact a Google Customer Success Specialist.