Provision Users

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you'll be able to:

• Provision users manually from the Google Workspace Admin Console.
• Provision users in bulk from the Google Workspace Admin Console.
• Explain when to use Google Cloud Directory Sync to manage provisioning.

In this unit, you learn how to provision users. Similar to Salesforce Settings, you use the admin console to activate services, add users, configure features, and much more. If you signed up for Google Workspace in the previous unit, you will have ended up in the admin console. If you logged out, that’s OK!

Log in to the Google Workspace Admin Console

1. Open a web browser window and go to admin.google.com.
2. Enter your Google Workspace administrator account email address and click Next.
3. Enter your administrator password and click Next. The admin console displays.
   1. If you have problems signing in, see the following article: Can’t sign in to the Admin console.

Provision a User Manually

Let’s provision a user manually.

1. Click the Users icon.
2. Click Add new user.
3. In the dialog box that appears, create your company’s IT Manager user account as follows:
   1. First name: Alex
   2. Last Name: Bell
   3. Primary email: alex.bell@yourdomain

If your account has multiple domains associated with it, you will see a domain dropdown list so you can choose the correct domain for each new user. The domain is the part of the user’s email address that appears after the @ symbol.

Each user is assigned to an organizational unit. At this stage of the course we have just one single top-level organization, so Alex will by default be placed into that organization. We discuss organizational structure later in this course.

1. Leave the secondary email and phone number fields empty.
2. You can assign a temporary, randomly generated password or manually enter a temporary password.
3. Passwords must be at least 8 characters long and cannot exceed 100 characters. Either way, it’s best to ensure that the new user changes this when signing in for the first time so ensure that Ask for a password change at next sign in is enabled. For this exercise, allow Google Workspace to generate the temporary password.
4. Click Add new user to create Alex’s account.

Congratulations! You’ve added your first user in your new domain!

Provision Multiple Users at Once

When adding many users at once, this method is quite time consuming. Let's see how to bulk upload multiple users at once.

You receive this mail from the IT manager, Alex.

Hey #AwesomeAdmin,

Thanks for creating my Google Workspace account. Can we get the rest of our user accounts created? Below is the list and attached is the CSV for your convenience.

Can you create these user accounts?

Thanks,

Alex Bell, IT Manager

You got this!

1. In the admin console, click the Users icon.
2. Click Bulk update users, then click Download blank CSV template. This will download a blank file with all the required columns to your local machine. Leave this dialog box open to upload the file after editing.
3. Open the CSV file in a spreadsheet application or a text editor if you prefer.
4. Populate the file with a row for each user using the information from the table Alex provided.
   
   The file contains a column for each attribute that appears on the user profile in the admin console and in Gmail contacts.
   
   The following columns are mandatory.
   1. First Name
   2. Last Name
   3. Email Address
   4. Password (enter hellohello1)
   5. Org Unit Path (For this exercise, enter the forward slash symbol / into this column. This represents the root organization)

If you prefer, you can use this example CSV file as your starting point. Simply edit this file and change the domain part of the email address to match your domain.

1. Save a copy of your file to your local machine. Alternatively, if you have created your own file in Google Sheets, click File > Download As > Comma Separated Values (.csv, current sheet).
2. Return to the Bulk update users dialog box, click Attach CSV file and browse to your file, then click Upload to initiate the creation of the user accounts.
   
   If your file has formatting errors, a warning prompts that you may need to re-edit the file.
   
   If successful, the progress of the upload will be reported in the Tasks list at the top of the page. You’ll also receive an email report later.

The new users may take a couple of minutes to appear in the user list. If you don’t see them right away, try refreshing the screen. Review the list of users and explore the user settings.

Congratulations! You created multiple users at once!

Use Google Cloud Directory Sync for Automated User Provisioning

In this unit, you reviewed how to provision users manually and in bulk. Larger organizations may also use Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) for a more automated approach. The following video explains how it’s done.

Resources

• Video: Google Workspace Admin SDK Overview