Bulk actions on groups
Bulk actions on groups
The Groups page has its own bulk-action bar — separate from (and larger than) the Add to group action on the Users page. Use this when you want to act on the groups themselves: change their status or settings, merge members between groups, update their Google group or Classroom configuration, or delete them.
This action bar is the same in both per-school Groups and MAT overview → Groups — in MAT mode you can select groups from more than one school at once, and each action is applied and audited per school automatically.
Before you start
- You must be an admin. Mentors and other staff cannot bulk-edit groups.
- Some actions (Google group settings, Classroom state) only make sense for groups linked to Google Workspace / Google Classroom — applying them to a group with no Classroom link simply has no effect for that group.
Steps
Step 1 — Open the Groups page {#step-1}
Select Groups in the left sidebar (or Groups under MAT overview for the cross-school version).
Step 2 — Select groups {#step-2}
Tick the checkbox at the left of each row, or tick the header checkbox to select all groups matching the current filters. A banner offers to select just the current page or every matching group.
Step 3 — Choose an action {#step-3}
An action bar appears at the bottom of the page showing how many groups are selected. Action menus are grouped by category:
Add to queue Adds the selected groups to the sync queue.
Group status
- Active — normal working group
- Protected — preserved even with no members; never removed by sync
- Suspended — exists but is not actively synced (confirmation shown: their platform groups are disabled on the next sync)
Group settings (matches the settings on a single group's edit page)
- Default mentor role — School default, Member, Owner, or Manager. Setting it to Owner shows a confirmation, since Owners can manage the Google group itself.
- Preserve when empty — on or off (whether the group survives having zero members)
Add members to group Opens a panel where you search for a target group. Every member of every group you selected is added to that target group — a quick way to merge several groups' memberships into one (for example, combining split teaching sets into a single year-group list). Members already in the target are skipped, not duplicated.
Add members from a group The opposite direction. Search for one source group; everyone in it is added to every group you selected — for example, putting the whole senior leadership group into a set of subject groups in one go. Members already there are skipped.
Both of these copy the membership as it stands right now. If the groups should stay in step as people join and leave, put the group inside the other group instead — see Put a group inside another group.
In both panels, type in the search box to find the group: the list is searched as you type and shows the closest matches, so you never have to scroll a list of every group in the school. A membership never crosses schools — in MAT overview, any selected group in a different school from the source is skipped, and the result tells you how many.
Google group settings Opens a panel of Google group configuration options (the same options available on a single group's Google settings). Only the options you actually set are applied — anything left blank is skipped.
Set Classroom state Active, Archived, Declined, or Provisioned — sets the Google Classroom course state for every selected group that has a linked Classroom course. If some groups fail (e.g. a Google API error), the result names which ones failed rather than reporting a blanket success.
Delete Soft-deletes the selected groups. This is destructive and wide-reaching, so it's gated behind extra confirmation — see the next step.
Step 4 — Confirm if prompted {#step-4}
Actions that change access or delete data show a confirmation dialog. Delete goes further: you must type to confirm, and the dialog warns that any selected group linked to a Google Classroom will also be affected on the next sync — review the selection carefully before confirming.
Result
The action is applied to every selected group. A success message confirms how many groups were updated; for actions that can partially fail (like Classroom state), the result lists exactly which groups succeeded and which didn't.
Tips
- Use Add members to group to consolidate several smaller groups into one without manually moving each member.
- Use Add members from a group when the same set of people needs to land in many groups at once.
- If you find yourself repeating either action to keep groups aligned, nest the group instead — see Put a group inside another group.
- In MAT overview, use the School filter first to narrow down before selecting, especially in large trusts.