Bulk actions on groups

Select Groups in the left sidebar (under Users & Groups). For the cross-school version, switch to MAT overview — all schools in the school switcher and select Groups under Users & Groups.

Tick the checkbox at the left of each row, or tick the checkbox in the table header to select every group on the page. A banner then offers Select all N matching to take every group the current filters match, across all pages. Until you tick something, the bar just says Tick the box next to a row below to see what you can do with it.

An action bar appears above the list showing how many groups are selected. Action menus are grouped by category:

Add to queue Adds the selected groups to the sync queue. While cloud sync is paused for the school this button is greyed out and says cloud sync is paused until the resume date — the groups sync automatically when the pause ends. In MAT overview it stays live, and groups at paused schools are left out (the message says how many).

Send now Only shown on a school's own Groups page while cloud sync is paused and you can run syncs. It sends the selected groups through the pause so they exist in Google or Entra, but they start empty — their members are added when sync resumes. See Cloud sync is paused.

Group status

• Active — normal working group
• Protected — kept as it is: the MIS import neither adds people to it nor takes anyone out, and it isn't suspended when empty
• Suspended — exists but is not actively synced (confirmation shown: their platform groups are disabled on the next sync)

Group settings (the same settings as on a single group's Details tab, where the role is labelled Default teacher membership)

• Default mentor role — School default, Member, Manager or Owner. Setting it to Owner shows a confirmation, since Owners can manage the Google group itself.
• Preserve when empty — on or off (whether the Google group survives having nobody in it)

Add members to group Opens a panel where you choose a target group (type its name; the list shows the closest 50 matches). 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). Select Add members. Members already in the target are skipped, not duplicated.

Add members from a group The opposite direction. Choose 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. Select Add members. Members already there are skipped.

Add specific people Opens a panel where you type a name, username or UPN and tick as many people as you need. Everyone you tick is added to every group you selected — use it when a named handful (a new teaching assistant, three cover staff) has to land in a set of groups without you opening each group in turn. Select Add N people (the button counts your ticks). People already in a group are skipped, not duplicated, and you can pick up to 100 people in one go. Everyone added this way is locked into the group (exactly as if you had added them on the group's Members tab), so the next sync keeps them there even if the MIS doesn't list them. To add a whole group's worth of people instead, use Add members from a group.

The list is searched on the server as you type and shows the closest 50 matches, so keep typing to narrow it. On the MAT Overview Groups page it stays empty until you type, because it searches every school in your trust. People you have already ticked stay ticked and stay at the top of the list even when you search for someone else, so you can build the list a few names at a time.

All three 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 the two group 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. Only Active and Protected groups are offered. A membership never crosses schools — in MAT overview, any selected group in a different school from the source (or from the people you picked) 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: who can contact the owner, view conversations, discover the group, moderate or view members, post messages and join). Pick an option for each setting you want to change and select Apply to selected group(s). Only the options you actually set are applied — anything left unticked is skipped. If you set nothing you see No settings selected.

Set classroom state Active, Archived, Declined, or Provisioned — sets the Google Classroom course state for every selected group that has a linked Classroom course. Groups with no linked classroom are left out of the run.

This one talks to Google live, a few groups at a time, so a large selection takes a while. A progress bar appears above the list showing how far it has got. Keep the page open until it finishes — anything already changed is saved, so if you do close it, running the same selection again picks up the rest.

When it finishes you always get a message saying what happened: how many were changed, and — if any failed (for example a Google API error) — which ones. If none of the selected groups has a linked classroom you see Nothing to change.

Delete Soft-deletes the selected groups: they are marked deleted and re-synced. This is destructive and wide-reaching, so it's gated behind extra confirmation — see the next step.

Actions that change access or delete data show a confirmation dialog. Delete goes further: you must type DELETE 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.