Accessing Pronouns via Google API?

[paul_lees]

User-defined pronouns

Google recently announced and added user-defined pronouns, but these values don't appear to be stored in the Google Directory. Does anyone know where this data is sorted and if there is an API to access it?

[NickB]

We want users to update their pronouns in a single location (Workday), then update all the other downstream apps (Google, Slack, etc.).  We initially planned to use a custom attribute but would prefer the new pronoun feature if we can update via API. 

[icrew]

100% agreed. Google’s implementation of pronouns is half-hearted at best. For example, they have excluded all of their education editions from the feature with zero good reason. (See https://www.linkedin.com/posts/icrew_google-workspace-updates-weekly-recap-january-activity-70233305... for a longer piece on my thoughts about this.)

It honestly feels like Google introduced the feature so they said they had done so, without actually understanding how important it is. 

With that rant over, you might want to post your API idea to the Feature Ideas section here. Doing so will allow it to be upvoted by others and possibly considered as a future feature enhancement.

If you do not already have access, you need to request it first. See https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/custom/page/page-id/Workspace-Feature-Ideas-FAQ for how to do that.

Once you have access, go to https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/gh-p/workspace-ideas-group . There, you can upvote and comment on any similar idea, or post a new idea.

If you are submitting a feature idea, be sure to explain the problem that you're trying to solve with the feature idea, not just the idea itself. For example, saying "when my users are trying to do 'A', they often get confused by the fact that the buttons to do 'X' and to do 'Y' look quite similar to each other, which leads to this unintended consequence" is far more likely to get fixed than a feature idea that just says "change the color of the button 'Y'".

Cheers,

Ian

[rscott3]

Potentially ditto. 

[Julian_Kleine]

Same. Please prioritize.

[SergioAlvarez]

Hi Paul, 

There is a bit of a setup first. In order to display

* Pronouns you need to allow it in the admin console.  // Directory settings > Profile editing > Checkmark on Pronouns. 

* The user has to decide if they want to display or not their pronouns / https://myaccount.google.com/u/1/profile/pronouns?hl=en  

I am not sure if the question was meant if you as an administrator are able to edit the pronouns for users? 

[Julian_Kleine]

Hi Sergio,

thanks for the hint. To my understanding the question is how to access the user stored pronouns via API. This is not possible even with activated and public pronouns.
Example use case: Display the pronouns in a third party app via Google Directory API

[SergioAlvarez]

Hi Team, verified, that this is locked from the admin access. It is deemed as part of personal information that you do not have access to it. I guess that as a workaround if you really wanted to set that information for a user you can implement a custom field but I guess that it makes complete sense that the way someone identifies is not set to what you feel like but let the end user decide. 

[icrew · Accepted solution]

That actually doesn’t make sense: We allow our folks to keep their directory information (name, address, phone number, pronouns, etc.) up to date in our central directory systems. By Google blocking API access to those fields, they’re just making it harder, by way of forcing people to update things not just centrally, but also in Google specifically. 

You may think that that’s not a big deal, but what if every vendor did the same thing as Google? That’d require our folks to go make updates in many, many systems; and probably forget about a few; which is pretty unacceptable. It’s also in violation of the University of California’s Gender Recognition and Lived Name policy, so problematic for that reason as well. 

[christiannewman]

It's been a while... I don't think there's an API yet, is there?

[icrew]

Nope, nada, sigh.