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Today, we are launching our first blog in the Meet the Experts series, which allows you to get to know some of the product experts inside and outside Google a little bit better. The first product expert that we are highlighting is Jay Lee (@jayhlee), Strategic Cloud Engineer for Workspace and creator of Google Apps Manager (GAM).
GAM is a third-party solution that interacts with many Google APIs, which you can use to also manage other account features and resources. It allows Google Workspace Administrators to manage domain and user settings.
How did you get started working in IT?
I interned for my university’s IT department and was hired after graduation. I spent about ten years there doing desktop, server and network admin jobs. We were a small outfit which gave me plenty of opportunities to use and learn technologies like Active Directory, Exchange and Linux. I had very little programming experience but started getting better with scripting languages like DOS shell, Bash and PHP doing “glue work” to get our systems to talk to each other.
You are known for creating one of the most popular command line tools for Workspace. What inspired you to create an open source project and GAM specifically?
After a few years of managing an open source mail server I heard Google had launched “Gmail for your domain” and decided to give it a try. I started testing the service in 2007 and had migrated all students to it by 2008. GAM came about when I started wanting to automate student account creation. I was always a classic IT lazy IT admin who’d prefer to spend hours trying to automate a process rather than follow the process more than once. When it came to releasing what I’d created with GAM it honestly never occurred to me to charge for it (maybe it should have). I’ve gotten where I am in my career today with the help of many other IT admins and developers and just felt like open sourcing GAM was the way to go.
What’s one of the scenarios in which GAM really shines?
As customers approach go live and are working through deployment there are a thousand little things that need to be done. Mailboxes and Calendars to delegate, migration data to fix or cleanup, users to move between OrgUnits, you name it. GAM is a quick way to get these tasks accomplished at scale.
What’s your favorite Google API to connect GAM to?
The Admin SDK Directory API has always been a favorite. It’s the primary way to manage users, groups, resource calendars, and most objects in Google Workspace. The API launched back in 2013 at Google I/O and as a trusted tester for the API, I had a chance to meet a number of the developers who worked on it. They knew about GAM and were excited to see it support their work so it was a neat moment.
How has GAM evolved or provided capabilities that you may not have been aware of or planned for, when first working on it?
Wherever possible, I add support for new Workspace APIs to GAM without needing to fully understand the use case. I just want to make it possible for admins to make the API call when they need to. It’s not always obvious which GAM commands and API calls will be the most useful. When I first added support for email delegation to GAM I hadn’t done much with delegation myself and didn’t think it would be used much. It remains one of the most popular GAM commands as far as I can tell.
What’s really amazing to me is the community of Google Workspace IT admins that have grown up around GAM. It’s been awesome to connect with fellow admins and even receive contributions to GAM from guys like Ross Scroggs.
Do you have any tips to share for using GAM that users may not be aware of?
I recently added Google Chat bot support to GAM. That means you can run a single GAM command on your servers or as a part of your own scripts and your message will appear as a direct message or better in a Chat room. So you can send a message to the IT chat room when some event or error occurs and have the chance to immediately collaborate with your team on the issue.
How did you get started working at Google and what is your current role?
I started as a contract employee during the Postini migration. I advised large customers as they migrated off Postini and on to Google Vault and the new Gmail security and filtering tools. Migrations are never easy but it was a great team to work with and I enjoyed leaving customers in a better state in terms of their mail setup than when I started. In 2015 I came on full time and was an engineer on the Chrome Enterprise Support team. That meant working with education customers which I’ve always loved doing. Now I’m in the Professional Services Organization as a Strategic Cloud Engineer. I get to work with some of Google’s biggest and most important customers as they onboard with Workspace. Like I said before, migrations always present unique challenges but I like finding solutions and it’s so rewarding to visit the customer at go live and watch as employees get excited about their new, collaborative environment.
Anything else you would like to share with the Workspace community?
It’s honestly been a pleasure and an honor to work with such a great community of IT admins as what Google Workspace has. I’m looking forward to catching up with all of you here on the forum!
What are some of the questions that you have for Jay? Do you have any GAM tips to share? Discuss below.