Google group settings

3 steps 3 min Updated 4 November 2026

This is the Groups sub-area of Google Workspace settings (the page is titled Google groups). Today it holds one school-wide setting — the default mentor Google membership — and points you to where the per-group Google group controls live. A Group addresses in use button at the top right opens the list of groups Google can't create because their email address is already taken — see Group addresses in use.

Before you start

You must be a school admin with sync settings permission, with the school selected in the switcher.

Steps

Step 1: Open Google group settings

In the sidebar, open Google Workspace → Groups.

Step 2: Set the default mentor Google membership

Default mentor Google membership sets the role mentors are given in the Google groups they're added to. Type one of the three Google roles exactly as written — MEMBER, MANAGER or OWNER (it's a free-text box, so a misspelling will be rejected by Google). Leave it blank to use Google's own default (a plain member). This is useful when you want staff to be able to manage (not just belong to) the groups they're in.

Who gets which role: learners, governors and observers are always plain members, and admins are always owners. This setting applies to staff (mentors). A single group can override it with its own Default teacher membership (on the group's Details tab, in the Google settings card), and a person's own Google role on a group's membership overrides both — see Group membership options.

Step 3: Save

Select Save group settings. You'll see "Google group settings saved." The new role is used the next time each person's group memberships are synced (the Google sync runs every day except Saturday).

Per-group Google group settings (managed elsewhere for now)

The finer Google group controls — who can post, who can view conversations, who can discover the group, who can moderate members, and who can view membership — are not set here. Today they're applied per group, as bulk actions on the Groups page: select the groups and apply the setting you want.

Turning those into school-wide defaults (applied automatically during provisioning) is planned as a follow-up — it needs changes on the provisioning side to honour the defaults, so for now use the per-group bulk actions.

Allowing external (non-domain) senders to email a group

Yes — this is a live, per-group setting, not something that needs building. It's the Who can post message option (on the group's own Details tab, in the Google settings card — shown when Google sync is on — or applied to several groups at once via the Google group settings bulk action on the Groups page). Setting it to Anyone Can Post allows any sender, including people outside your school's Google domain, to email the group without being a member. The other choices (All Members Can Post, All Managers Can Post, All Owners Can Post, All In Domain Can Post) keep posting restricted to people inside your organisation, and School default leaves it to the default. This is separate from Who can join — that controls membership, not who's allowed to send mail in.

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