Preventing employees from accidentally leaving Google Groups (Department Email Addresses)

[ryota0918]

Hello everyone,

Our company utilizes Google Workspace, and we are facing a specific issue with Google Groups that serve as department email addresses.

On occasion, some employees (not all) have accidentally left their department's Google Group. When this happens, they lose access to the shared drives that are managed via that group and stop receiving important notifications distributed to the department.

This issue only affects a portion of our employees, not the entire staff.

We are looking for advice or countermeasures to prevent members from accidentally leaving these essential department groups. Are there any recommended settings within Google Groups or general best practices you could suggest?

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[icrew · Accepted solution]

You can do this with the free, open source, command-line, indispensable GAM tool. Check out:

• GAM: https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki
• and the mailing list at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/google-apps-manager
• and the Google Chat chat room at https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki/GAM-Public-Chat-Room

for more details. Specifically, see: https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM/wiki/Groups#manage-groups

The command you’re looking for is:

gam update group mygroup@example.org whocanleavegroup none_can_leave

(That will prevent people from being able to unsubscribe themselves from the group, and it’s an API-only setting, which is why you need to use GAM.)

Hope that helps,

Ian

[a_aleinikov]

Hi @ryota0918 ,

To help prevent employees from accidentally leaving important Google Groups, you can:

 Go to the group settings and under Membership Settings, uncheck the option that allows members to leave the group themselves. This setting ensures only group managers or admins can remove members.

 Assign group managers who can regularly monitor membership and quickly re-add anyone if needed.

 Communicate clearly with employees which groups are critical and explain why they should not attempt to leave them manually.

Unfortunately, Google Groups does not have a strict “lock” feature, but adjusting the membership permissions as above should reduce accidental removals.

[ryota0918]

Thank you for your response and valuable suggestions.

Your points about checking the Membership Settings, assigning group managers to monitor membership, and the importance of clear communication with employees are very practical and helpful. These are valuable countermeasures we can implement from an operational and settings perspective.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your advice!

Best regards,
Ryo

[paul_lees]

You could look at Patronum it allows you to dynamically populate Google Groups, so if someone leaves it accidentally, Patronum will add them back within the hour.

Patronum also works with Google Chat Spaces in exactly the same way.