Google Workspace Hacks: Free email addresses and user management

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This week OnEBoard was joined by certified Google Workspace Administrator and Google Product Expert Priya Chandra. She shared tips for adding email addresses to your Workspace account without having to pay for additional user licenses, using Aliases or Google Groups. You can also use inbox delegation to manage other email accounts.

OnEBoard's Nina Trankova shared additional tips for using free Cloud Identity accounts.
 
This week OnEBoard used a custom background generated in Meet depicting the Perseid meteor  showers.

Topics

Get Free Email Addresses in Google Workspace: Aliases & Groups

Priya shared three methods you can use to add email addresses to your Google Workspace organization at no additional cost: 

Aliases: Create an alternative email address that points to an existing user account. 

How Alias are used: You can set up an info@ address that delivers those messages in your own email inbox. You can use Gmail's labels and filters to keep track of those messages, and configure Gmail to let you respond with that email address.

Google Groups: Set up collaborative shared mailboxes or distribution lists. 

How Google Groups are used for email: A Groups address can be used to sign up for newsletters, websites and applications, but cannot be used for single sign-on (SSO). It can also be used to set up a collaborative inbox that can be accessed by all team members. 

Disadvantages of Google Groups: Groups uses a completely different (and outdated) interface than Gmail, and those messages aren't automatically delivered in your inbox. It also isn't supported on mobile devices.

Delegated Inboxes

A third option is a Delegated Inbox that is a stand-alone email account that multiple users can access via their Gmail settings. She notes, "It isn't free, but it is a good option for small teams."

For example you can set up an account form sales@ your domain, and grant access to the 5 or 10 people who need to see those messages. Google says you can grant access for up to a thousand people, but Priya notes "that is not the best way to do it."

Users with access can see drafts, and use Gmail filters and labels. And it recently became available on mobile devices.

Note that delegating email access only gives access to the email inbox. It does not grant access to that account's Calendar or Google Meet settings. Instead access can be granted within the Google Calendar settings, and people can be added as Meet meeting hosts or co-hosts. 

Cloud Identity for Collaborative Tasks & Contractors

Nina shared an Enterprise architecture strategy that uses Google Groups along with Cloud Identity to collaborate on tasks without purchasing unnecessary user licenses. Cloud Identity has both free and premium paid options.

Google Workspace administrators can set up address mapping in the admin console, so that if an email is sent to a Cloud Identity free email address, you can have it forwarded to any email of your choice.

Priya noted that Cloud Identity can be used to give contractors or freelances system access, as long as they don't need features like Gmail, Calendar or Google meet. It can also be used for super administrator roles.

Takeaways

Priya explained how Google Groups are useful for team security:

"Setting up a group and adding people to that group and then giving the group access to the shared drive is very good for security purposes because everyone's in the one spot and you can just remove people from the group and they no longer have access. You don't have to hunt them down across the system." 

Priya suggests using a delegated inbox with a Group: 

"... you can delegate an inbox not just to individual users but to a Group. So then anyone within that Group who has a user account in the domain can act, can access the delegated inbox. So again, it's a quick and easy way to give a lot of people access to an inbox and then control who has access by just removing them from the Group or adding them to the Group, rather than individually adding and removing people within the account."

Nina shared how OnEBoard uses Cloud Identity with Google Groups:  

"So we don't need to buy licenses in order to use mail because each of us has our own accounts that are mine and Bob's business accounts or a standard Google account, but with Groups and Cloud Identity we can collaborate on any application, specifically the recent notebooks, shared notebooks. This is fantastic and I highly recommend using Groups also keeps us in synchronization. Each email with Groups, we know that it's for a collaborative task. So, each email has its own label."

Priya recommended using Cloud Identity for Super Admin Workspace accounts: 

"...  if an email is sent to that email address, the Cloud Identity free email address, you can have it forwarded on to any email of your choice. Now, that can get tricky and I actually do recommend that for the Super Administrative account or Super Administrator account. So you're not paying for a standalone Super Admin account in Google Workspace. It's Cloud Identity free. But you are still getting emails that are sent to that account. They're forwarded on to, in my case, my own personal main user account, but you could forward them on to a Google group or to any other account."

For users with a free Google Account and Gmail, Priya recommends using a Group to sign up for newsletters, rather than an alias:  

".. the place [an alias] falls down in a free Gmail account is you can't reply as "Bob at the newsletter". It's going to be "Bob at Bob+News". It's going to be "Bob at". So, they're going to know your new email address then or your real one. And you can't always unsubscribe because they don't the unsubscribe architecture doesn't actually recognize "Bob+newsletter". That's why, if you're using a free Gmail account, I would highly recommend using a Google group. Just set it up at groups.google.com. Call it newsletters, and you can sign up uh to receive new newsletters to that email address."

Related Resources

Additional Google Workspace Admin Tips
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