disable a google group

[Paul Anderson]

Does anyone know if it is possible to "disable" a Google Group? To prevent possible data from being lost, I don't want to delete it or remove the users, only disable it so it can't be accessed.  The purpose would be to disable a group for a period of time to see if anyone is actually still using it and if someone is using it turn it back on.

Thanks,

[Ian Crew]

A caveat that I mention each time this sort of thing comes up:

Groups can be used for a lot more than just email, specifically they can be used for sharing files and folders in Drive, meeting invites in Calendar, feature enablements in Admin Console, and so on. So just because a Group isn't getting email, doesn't necessarily mean that it's not getting used. 

That said, as a more direct answer to the question, here's an idea:

1) Back up a list of all the members of the group (like via gam info group <groupname> todrive)

2) Remove all the members of the group

3) Add an "archive" user to the group

4) If anyone screams, add the backed-up list of folks back into the group.

Hope that helps,

Ian

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Ian Crew

Architect, Communication and Collaboration Services
Productivity & Collaboration Services
Berkeley IT

University of California, Berkeley

On Thu, Dec 5, 2024 at 2:48 PM Paul Anderson <pa...@hayward.k12.wi.us> wrote:

Does anyone know if it is possible to "disable" a Google Group? To prevent possible data from being lost, I don't want to delete it or remove the users, only disable it so it can't be accessed.  The purpose would be to disable a group for a period of time to see if anyone is actually still using it and if someone is using it turn it back on.

Thanks,

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[Ross Scroggs]

Here's a way to backup the membership of a group named maingroup into a group named backupgroup

gam create group backu...@domain.com

gam update group backu...@domain.com add members group_users maingroup@domain.com members

gam update group backu...@domain.com add managers group_users maingroup@domain.com managers

gam update group backu...@domain.com add owners group_users maingroup@domain.com owners

Ross

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Ross Scroggs

Ross.S...@gmail.com

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[Jay Lee]

As Ian covered, there's really no Google concept of a disabled group so you need to define what it is you don't want to happen when you "disable" a group:

- should emails to the group bounce?

- should the group archive be inaccessible to users or members? Should it be purged?

- should Drive files shared to the group no longer be shared with group members?

- should Calendar no longer work for the group?

- Should Google Cloud resources and IAM permissions granted to the group no longer be accessible to members?

Ian's solution covers most of that behavior though it won't touch the email archive. I'm sure there's other Google group usage in not covering here also 

Jay

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[✉ Kevin Melillo]

As an additional note, you could also add a content compliance rule that would route messages to the group email to quarantine.  Then if there is backlash, you could deliver the messages from quarantine, then restore the group.

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[S. Steve]

Thank you for your response

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[Paul Anderson]

Thanks, everyone,

A lot of great suggestions and things to think about.  We used to allow anyone to create a group, so a lot of people created groups that I am pretty certain are not being used any longer.  I am trying to clean up the groups and get rid of the ones that are not needed.  If I am thinking correctly if I follow Ian's suggestion it should leave everything inaccessible to users without actually deleting anything.  The drawback of creating "backup" groups would be having 2 groups for each of them; I guess to avoid this, I could keep a spreadsheet with each group in a tab.  Gives me a lot of options to figure out.  Thanks a lot for all your help!!!!

[Paul Anderson]

A follow-up question: I see that the Groups Service can be turned on and off by OU; what happens if the service is turned off for an OU?  Does it make it so those users can't be in a group or can't access the group web?  Or is this the way to prevent students from being able to create groups while still allowing staff?  Thanks again for your great help and ideas!