Google Admin Workspace Admin Console are privileged users who have access to the Google Workspace Admin console and Admin API: the tools used to perform administrative operations.
That level of access and authority depends on the type of each Admin role.
Before you dig further into your Google Workspace admin operations, it’s important to first understand the difference between a Google Workspace Super Admin and other Google Workspace Admin roles.
What’s a Google Workspace Super Admin?
As the word Super implies, the Google Workspace Super Admin is the top most powerful administrative role in your entire Google Workspace domain. You can think of it as the ‘leader role’ of your entire admin team.
Super Admins have access to every setting in the Google Workspace Admin Console. They can practically manage every aspect of your organization’s domain.
Super Admins also have EXCLUSIVE authority over the following:
- Creating or assigning administrator roles
- Resetting administrator passwords
- Setting up billing
- Performing license management
- Restoring deleted users
- Modifying an administrator’s settings
- Enabling or disabling contact sharing
As you can see, the Super Admin role is a crucial one. Not only do Super Admins hire other admins (creating and assigning admin roles), they also perform and control Super sensitive tasks that play a major role in protecting your Google Workspace from data security threats.
How many Google Workspace Super Admins do you need?
Every Google Workspace domain needs a minimum of one Super Admin, but we recommend two. That way if one is busy (or on vacation), the other can take on higher authority tasks.
P.S: Having more than two Super Admins, however, is not the best practice because of the authority level that comes with this role.
The Google Workspace Super Amin role is usually assigned to someone in the higher management line of an organization, or an IT head. That’s again because of the authority level this role entails.
Other Google Workspace Admin Roles:
So now we have the team leader (the Super Admin) and other Google Workspace admin roles of lesser authority assigned by the Super Admin.
Google has already created different pre-built admin roles based on its insight of common business tasks. However, you can always create custom Admin roles tailored to your own needs.
We believe the two most vital admin roles following the Super Admin are the Groups Admin and User Management Admin. Here’s why:
1.Groups Admin:
Google Groups improve communication and collaboration in your organization. They’re used to create mailing lists, web forums, collaborative inboxes, and to control access to documents and Google services.
Group admins have authority over Google Groups in the Google Workspace Admin Console. They can add or delete Google Groups in the Admin console, manage members and access settings within groups.
It’s very important for Group Admins to include the right people in each group, and apply the right settings so groups are secure and any sensitive data shared there is well-protected.
2. User Management Admin:
As the name suggests, user management admins control all actions for non-admin users.
This includes resetting passwords, monitoring service health, managing user accounts, service requests and onboarding and offboarding employees.
- Gat Flow takes the pain out of repetitive user onboarding and offboarding tasks in Google Workspace. It covers everything; from welcome emails and email signatures, to pre-loading files, pre-populating contacts and much more using built workflows.
User management admins can’t delete a global admin, create other admin roles, or reset passwords for billing, global, and service admins. Only Google Workspace Super Admins can do that.
User management admin roles are usually assigned to members of the HR team.
Other Pre-set Google Workspace Admin Roles Created by Google:
- Help Desk Admin
- Services Admin
- Mobile Admin
- Google Voice Admin
- Reseller Admin (applies only to Google Workspace Authorized Resellers)
Manage accounts
Expand the Users box to display four periodically accessed activities: Add a User, Delete a User, Update a User’s Name or Email and Create an Alternate Email Address (email alias). The box (as shown in Figure B, box on the left) also includes a Manage link that opens the Users list for your organization. In organizations where the set of users changes often, as is common in larger organizations, I recommend administrators keep this box maximized.
Access all settings
For access to all Google Workspace Admin console settings, I suggest you expand your browser to be full screen (or at least wide enough to fill most of your screen). At that point, a click (or tap on touchscreens) on the three-horizontal lines in the upper left corner should toggle the left-side menu between icons and icons with text labels and triangles to the left of items to indicate available sub-menus. Select the Show more button to ensure that all menus display (as shown in .
I recommend that administrators who are new to Google Workspace take an hour or so to explore all available Admin console menu items. A methodical review of each menu item, simply accessing each and every option, provides useful exposure to the breadth and depth of controls and information available to Workspace administrators.
Search
The Admin console search box lets you search for settings or accounts. Enter a person’s name, then select their profile from the results to go directly to their Workspace settings. Alternatively, enter a technical term or setting, such as DKIM (as in the example in , to access help pages to learn how to configure something or navigate to a setting directly from the search results.
How Secure is Google Workspace?
Google Workspace offers incredible communication and collaboration capabilities for your business.
However, you need to fully secure your domain and learn how to harness its full resources to protect your data from things like malicious outsider threats, insider threats and human error — which can have catastrophic consequences for your business.
The Google Workspace Admin panel is a great place to start. It’s every admin’s first whisperer for early signs of trouble.
Admins should always adopt the best Google Workspace security practices and audit everything happening in their admin panel.
