As a Groups administrator, you can restrict access to your organization’s groups, as well as what users can do in your groups.
No matter what option you select here, group addresses still appear as suggestions when typing addresses in Gmail or Calendar invitations.
When Groups for Business is turned off
If you turn off Groups for Business, then as an admin, you have full control over groups.
Manage all groups and group memberships
As an admin, you can use your Admin console to:
Manage a group’s access
You can also use your Admin console to set access controls for each group. For example, you can limit:
- Who can contact group owners
- Who can view members or conversations
- Who can post to the group
Learn how: Change a group’s access settings
When Groups for Business is turned on
If you turn on Groups for Business, you as the admin can control groups in all of the ways described above. In addition, you can control how users access, use, and manage your organization’s groups in the Google Groups app (groups.google.com).
Organization-level controls
In your Admin console, you can set organization-wide options for how users can access and work with groups in the Google Groups app, including whether users can create groups. You can set restrictions such as:
- Only users in your organization can access your groups.
- Only administrators can create groups.
- If users are allowed to create groups, group owners can’t:
- Add external members to their groups.
- Allow external users to send messages their groups.
Learn more: Set organization-wide policies for using groups
Group-level access and activity
Group owners and managers (including admins) can set additional group-level options to restrict user access and activity in the Google Groups app. Depending on your organization-level settings, in Google Groups, group owners and managers (including admins) can set restrictions on who can:
- View or join the group
- View or post messages or view members
- Manage group members and conversations
Learn how: Set permissions for managing a group
Group owners and managers can also turn conversation history and message moderation on or off and set other options to limit user activity in the group. For an overview of the features that group owners and managers can control, see Add features and manage conversations in Google Groups.
Group ownership
In addition, group owners (including admins) can:
Tip: If Groups for Business is on and you update any of a group’s settings, another owner or manager can modify the settings again. To instead prevent changes to your settings, make owners and managers regular members. That way, only you (the administrator) can customize the group’s policies and permissions.
