If you are interested in contracting Google Cloud solutions, you will definitely need to assign administrator roles to supervise the users activity or security. This is where the job of a Google Workspace administrator comes in hand.
Assigning administrator roles to other users can let you share the responsibility of managing your Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account. What you may not know is whom to appoint administrators and what tasks fall into their role description. Continue reading this article to find out more about what Google Workspace admins can do and how to find the best employees to fill in these shoes.
Google Administrator – what is it?
Google Workspace administrators are responsible for a number of activities that facilitate the work of all users and ensure the security of the organisation’s data. A list of their tasks includes adding new accounts and devices to the workflow, authorising access to applications that extend the capabilities of Google services, and ensuring security by imposing strong passwords or archiving the most important data.
The admin should develop a habit of periodically checking the settings in the console. It is a good practice to schedule full inspections for a time when other duties are less burdened, i.e. for the holiday season. Accurate auditing can take a long time, especially if your organisation has many accounts, devices, domains, and apps.
Being a Google Workspace administrator is rarely a full-time job, so consider naming a user that has a technical position in the company. Taking into consideration one or several employees that can help solve problems, reset account passwords, turn Google services on or escalate further to Google issues that need expert support.
With the help of FOTC
What does Google allow Google Workspace administrators to do?
Google offers pre-built administrator roles with one or more privileges that together, allow performing a common business function. One role, for instance, allows management for user accounts, another one is meant for groups, another one for resources, and so on.
Find out more about different types of administrators and what each of the roles do down below.
Super Admin
The user having this role can access and manage all features in the Admin console and Admin API, including users calendars and event details.
Some of their privileges include:
- Creating and assigning new admin roles
- Managing all other admins, including changing their passwords
- Transferring ownership of files for users that get deleted
- Inviting unmanageable user accounts to become Workspace managed user accounts
- Restoring deleted users
- Turning on 2SV for users within the company
- Installing apps from Marketplace
- Using the data migration service
- Receiving bills and important notifications from Google as a Google Business account manager
Each organisation using Google Workspace licences should have one if not two super admins.
Groups Admin
Each of your organisation’s groups should have a Group Admin in your Admin console.
Some of their privileges include:
- Viewing user profiles and the entire structure of the organisation
- Creating new groups or deleting old ones in the console
- Managing members of groups and their access settings
Furthermore, you can delegate a Group Reader with no privileges to change or update info or a Group Editor that has the permissions of a full Groups Admin.
User Management Admin
This user can perform all actions on users who aren’t administrators, like:
- View profiles and organisational structure
- Create and delete user accounts for users that aren’t administrators
- Manage individual users security settings for Gmail and other applications
- Perform other management tasks
You can discover many other admin roles that can better fit your company’s setup. At the same time, you can create a custom admin role to assign specific privileges that work best with your organisation’s workflow. Discuss with FOTC’s team of Workpace specialists to help you configure helpful roles for your organisation.
Google administrators – security and workspace control
Controlling data is one of the most important features of an admin’s job description. No wonder that the section for security is one of the most extensive resources in the console.
You can also read:
The possibilities of data control for an administrator get more substantial as the Workspace plan grows. However, even in the most basic version, you get access to a powerful set of tools that take care of data security in the company.
Impose password strength
For example, an administrator can specify the strength of passwords that all users in the organisation must respect when they sign in to their Google Account. Admins can also set a deadline for password renewal for each of the users as a measure of extra protection.
Two-Step Verification
An administrator can also make obligatory the two-step verification for users logging into their accounts. In this case, in order to log in to their account, the person will not only have to enter the password, but also perform an additional action – for example, use the security keys, SMS code or Google notification.
Control over devices
The administrator can also manage all endpoints devices belonging to the company, i.e. laptop, desktop computer or mobile phone from the console level. Thanks to this feature, the admin will protect the data against unauthorised access on every device that contains company information.
Read more about Google account security:
Be up to date with the latest news and connect with other GW users
What is a Google Workspace Professional Administrator?
This mid-career certification – Professional Google Workspace Administrator – helps you translate business objectives into policies, configurations, and security practices regarding users, content, and integrations.
Getting this certification can help your company enable employees to better work together, communicate, create, and access data in a secure manner. This will help your designated admin to operate with an engineering and solution mindset to automate workflows and increase operational efficiency while working with these apps.
What skills will this Professional Google Workspace Administrator exam assess?
- Planning and implementing Google Workspace authorisation and access
- Managing users, and resources cycles
- Control, review and configure Google Workspace services
- Configure and manage endpoint access
- Monitor organisational operations
- Managing Google Workspace adoption and collaboration within the business
What can you do to become a Google Workspace administrator?
As you might have already caught on, this is a Google certification that you can get through a Google Cloud exam. This certification exam can help you fill in another job request in your company, while learning the most out of Google Workspace.
You can find online training, in-person classes, and other resources to help you get the certification and fill this strategic role in your organisation.
It is a two-hour exam with 50-60 multiple choice and multiple select questions that will test you on the following topics:
- Object management
- Service configuration
- Troubleshooting
- Data access and authentication
- Support business initiatives
Who should you choose to become a Professional Google Workspace Administrator?
You can give this opportunity to anyone within the company, but there are some job roles that would be an advantage for this certification. Amongst these there are IT systems administrators, cloud solutions engineer, collaboration engineer or systems engineers.
To sum up, becoming a Google Workspace administrator can be a challenging task. One will need to understand all Workspace fundamentals and experience all kinds of troubleshooting situations. If you need more information about appointing an administrator for your Workspace suite or additional training for a Professional certification, get in touch with our FOTC UK team.
