3 Tricks to Scaling Onboarding with Google Admin
Here’s how to do it:

(1) Automatically update all@ by nesting your Google Groups

A Group can be added to another Group a member, just like an email address.

For example:

Create your team groups, say team-a@ and team-b@

Chose “Team” access level: “Only managers can invite new members, but anyone in your domain can post messages, view the members list, and read the archives.”

Do NOT check the box “allow anyone on the internet to post messages”

Add each team member to their correct group

1 team member per team group

Create your company-wide group, say all@

Add team groups to all@

It looks like this:

Now, if you add a new team member to team-a@, their email address will automatically be reflected in all@ and receive emails sent to all@!

(2) Automatically update Calendar events by adding Groups to events as guests

A Google Group can be added to a Calendar event as a guest, just like an email address.

Here’s what your all-hands Calendar event could look like:

Here’s what your team meeting events could look like:

Now, if you add a new team member to team-a@, their email address will automatically become a guest of your All-Hands Weekly Meeting and the Team A Meeting. Easy.

(3) Automatically update Drive folder viewing and editing permissions with Groups

Last, but not least, a Google Group can be added to a Drive folder to set the level of viewing and editing access for that folder, also just like an email address.

For example, the structure could look like this:

Company Drive Folder : all@ view only access, yourname@ edit access

Team A Drive Folder : team-a@ view and edit access

Team B Drive Folder : team-b@ view and edit access

This translates to:

Everyone in all@ can VIEW what’s in the Company Drive Folder, including what’s in:

Team A Drive Folder

Team B Drive Folder

Only you can EDIT what’s in the Company Drive Folder, including what’s in:

Team A Drive Folder

Team B Drive Folder

Only team members in team-a@ can EDIT what’s in the Team A Drive Folder

Only team members in team-b@ can EDIT what’s in the Team B Drive Folder

Here’s what your company drive folder could look like:

This means that if you add a new team member to team-a@, they will automatically have viewing permissions to everything in the Company Drive Folder AND editing permissions to everything in the Team A Drive Folder. Neat.

As a bonus, this structure gives all and only the right team members editing access to folders. When a company hits 100 employees, you start to see files and folders go missing because it’s too easy to move things around in Drive without training… and who has time to spend on that?!
['Leia Rollag']
['Startup', 'People Operations', 'Google Calendar', 'Google Drive', 'Onboarding']