Google Classroom add-on development account

[pol_at_wiris]

Hi,

I am a technical lead at a company trying to offer compatibility between one of our education products and Google Classroom Add-ons. We have been following the walkthrough, but when our application is listed in the marketplace as a draft, no one from our company can install it even in a development environment because our company does not have access to a Google Workspace for Education’ license.

While it seems a bit weird to me that we need to purchase such a license for app development, when we contacted Google Sales team they have indicated that we cannot acquire that license since we are not an educational institution. On the other hand, we need access to that application in order to properly verify it is working before showing it to actual customers which are educational institutions.

Are we missing something? Is there any configuration that would allow us to install the application? It is marked as public but unlisted in the Marketplace (as per the developer walkthrough) and the associated Google Cloud project is "external" but "in testing".

Thanks for your help! Best regards

[paulraun]

It sounds like a limitation due to the Google Workspace for Education license requirements. You might try adding test accounts from an educational institution that does have access or exploring Google's developer sandbox options. Additionally, checking if there's a way to request temporary development access through Google's support channels could help.

[DavidEduDevRel]

Hey pol_at_wris, thanks for sharing this feedback. We provide developers a few Google Workspace for Education licenses specifically for these cases. The process and application are here: https://developers.google.com/classroom/guides/onboarding/prerequisites 

The TLDR is that developers are expected to make a test domain and Workspace account to essentially act as a mock school/Edu account. Once you have that set up, we'll provision some licenses to that test domain so you can run through your application like a real user would. 

Let me know if you have additional questions.

David obo Edu DevRel

[pol_at_wiris]

Hi David, many thanks for your answer. I've shared this with the person in charge or relationship with partners (we're a Google Partner for Education) and they told me that we did this for a proof of concept that did not materialize a year ago, and that the account gedu.demo that we used has been deactivated by Google and he has been told that there is no possibility of reactivating it. If you want I can give you all the details by email (my contact is [PII Removed by Staff]).

Best,

Pol Torrent  

[DavidEduDevRel · Accepted solution]

Hey Pol, sorry for the slow reply. Looks like your info was redacted but it might be easier if you submit the demo domain form from the docs because we have process / tooling set up and it's hard to manage one-off requests at scale. Can you just leave a note in the form about your domain status issues and we can start a conversation from there about what's your best option (e.g., getting a new domain, re-activating, etc.). I'll let the team know you're applying with a special case.