Google Workspace settings

In the sidebar, open Google Workspace → Settings. The Connection section is shown first; a section switcher lets you move between Connection and Sync. The page reopens on the section you used last, and the section is in the page address (?section=), so a link you copy opens on it.

The Connection section is split into Service, Domains and Admin account. Fill in:

• Google Workspace enabled — the master switch described above. Leave it on for a school that syncs to Google.
• Primary domain — your main Google Workspace domain, e.g. school.org. The sync's admin account lives on this domain. If you leave Secondary domain blank, your users' and groups' Google addresses end in this domain too.
• Secondary domain — only if your school uses a second verified domain in the same Google tenant (for example, each school in a trust has its own sub-domain). When it is set, your users' and groups' Google addresses are created on this domain instead. Leave blank if you have just one.
• Admin user — the username of a Google super administrator account: just the part before the @, for example realsmartadmin. The sync adds your Primary domain to work out the full address it acts as ([email protected]) — so don't type the full address, even though the box shows [email protected] as an example. Make sure the account really is a super administrator in Google.
• Admin password — this box always opens empty, with "Leave blank to keep current" in it. The stored value is never shown. Leave it blank to keep the stored password; only type in it when you need to replace it.

Switch to the Sync section and turn on the parts you want Realsmart to keep in step with Google. The section is split into three blocks — Passwords, Groups and Classroom, and Profile details — so related switches sit together.

User accounts themselves have no separate switch: while Google Workspace enabled is on, Realsmart creates, updates and suspends Google accounts to match Realsmart. The blocks below narrow what else is written.

Passwords — see Choose who password sync applies to below.

Groups and Classroom

• Sync groups — provision Google groups and their membership. Turn it off to hold every group change back for this school; user accounts are unaffected.
• Group types to sync — narrow which kinds of group go to Google; see Choose which group types sync.
• Don't sync Classroom teachers — stop the sync putting your staff into the domain's classroom_teachers@ Google group (the group Google Classroom uses for teacher permissions). It doesn't change who is a teacher on any class — class rosters follow each group's members; see Add a teacher to a Google Classroom.

Profile details

• Sync mentor profile pictures / Sync learner profile pictures — send pictures added in Realsmart itself up to Google for staff and/or students. Turning these on doesn't start an automatic copy: Realsmart support runs that copy when it's needed. To copy photos from your MIS instead, see Get pupil and staff photos from the MIS into Realsmart and Google.
• Sync organisation profile — writes your school's name as each staff member's organisation, and their job title, into their Google Workspace profile. Learners are never included.

Choose who password sync applies to

Two controls in the Passwords block decide whose Google passwords Realsmart is allowed to change.

• Sync passwords to Google — the school-wide switch. Push password sets/resets from Realsmart to Google. Turn this off if your school manages Google passwords elsewhere and you do not want Realsmart to change them: existing users then keep whatever password they have in Google, and password changes in Realsmart are not pushed. Two things still happen with it off — new Google accounts are always created with their initial Realsmart password (Google requires one), and if you later turn the switch back on, each user's current Realsmart password is pushed on their next sync so the two sides line up again.
• Skip password sync for these user types — carve-outs for individual kinds of user, so you do not have to choose between "everyone" and "nobody". Tick Students, Staff, Admins, Governors or Observers and those users keep whatever password they already have in Google, even while the switch above is on. Everyone else still syncs as normal.

A worked example: to push student passwords to Google but leave staff and admin passwords alone, leave Sync passwords to Google on and tick Staff and Admins.

The same two exceptions apply per type as they do to the school-wide switch — a brand-new Google account for an excluded user is still created with its initial Realsmart password, and unticking a type again pushes each affected user's current Realsmart password on their next sync. Leave every type unticked to sync passwords for everyone — that is the default. Ticking types has no effect while Sync passwords to Google is off, because nothing is being pushed anyway.

Choose which group types sync

With Sync groups on, Group types to sync lets you narrow which kinds of group go to Google, instead of all of them. Tick any combination of:

• Teachers of — the "teachers of" groups.
• Houses — house groups.
• Registration groups — registration / form groups.
• Role groups — the fixed role groups (learners, mentors, teaching staff, non-teaching staff, governors, observers, Ofsted).
• Year groups — year-group cohorts.
• Subjects — subject groups from Provision Subjects.
• Groups — the catch-all: classes and anything else, including groups you create by hand and any group that hasn't been classified into a type yet.

Leave every type unticked to sync them all — that's the default and matches how Google sync behaved before this option existed. This filter only takes effect while Sync groups is on. A per-group opt-out (Sync this group to Google on the group itself) still applies underneath — a group syncs only if its type is selected here and it's opted in. This is the same taxonomy as the Entra selector, so a trust can scope both platforms the same way.

Ticking Groups (or leaving every type unticked) also picks up any group that has no type set yet — a backstop so an unclassified group never silently drops out of sync. The other types match only their own kind.

Deselecting a type is not a purge: Realsmart simply stops managing that type in Google, leaving any groups it already created in place.

Preview which groups will sync

Below the type checkboxes, Groups that will sync previews exactly which groups match your current selection for this school — grouped by type, with a count you can expand to see the group names. It updates live as you tick and untick types, before you save. It's hidden while Sync groups is off.

Select Save settings (you'll see "Google Workspace settings saved."). Then confirm the connection actually works using Sync status → Test connection in the sidebar — it does a read-only check with the real credentials and never changes anything. See Test connection / Test permissions.

This page is per school — in MAT overview it asks you to switch to a school first. If you are a trust admin, Apply across MAT (top right of the page), or Platforms → Google settings in MAT overview, copies chosen Google settings to other schools in one go — only the settings that can be shared, never a school's own domain or admin account. See Apply sync settings across the trust.