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What is a Google Admin?
A Google Admin, also known as a G Suite Admin or Google Workspace Admin, is an individual responsible for managing and overseeing the Google Workspace (formerly known as G Suite) services within an organization. Google Admins play a crucial role in ensuring that the company’s Google Workspace environment remains secure, efficient, and tailored to the specific needs of the users and the company as a whole.
How many Google Admins do you need?
Recommended ratio communicated by Google is one Google Super Admin per 12,000 active Google Workspace users. This is highly manageable and particularly advantageous in the current environment where finding IT personnel can be challenging.
Apart from the Super Admin, Google Workspace offers a set of predefined admin roles with more limited permissions. Admins with limited privileges help lift the load of small admin tasks off of the Super Admin, leading to a more efficient management of the company’s Google Workspace environment. You also have the option to create custom roles and assign granular permissions to them. To ensure that your Google Workspace environment remains secure, we recommend to follow the principle of least privilege by granting admins the minimum set of permissions they need to handle their responsibilities.
What predefined Google Admin roles are there?
You can find predefined Google Admin roles in your Google Admin Console → Account → Admin Roles. They include:
Super Admin – has access to all features in the Admin console and Admin API and can manage every aspect of the organization’s account;
Groups Admin – has full control over Google Groups tasks;
User Management Admin – can perform all actions on users that aren’t admins;
Help Desk Admin – can reset passwords for non-admins, view user profiles and organizational structure;
Services Admin – can manage certain service settings and devices;
Mobile Admin – can manage mobile devices and endpoints;
Storage Admin – can use the Storage page in the Admin console, access Reports and Drive settings;
Google Voice Admin – can manage all Google Voice settings;
Reseller Admin/Indirect Reseller Admin – only for authorized resellers.
What is Florbs?
Florbs is a software tool that makes Google Admins’ lives easier by simplifying and automating time-consuming tasks in Google Workspace. Handling admin tasks in Google Admin Console or GAM (Google Apps Manager) typically demands a certain level of IT knowledge and coding skills. This is where Florbs comes in: thanks to its user-friendly interface, Florbs app does not require coding skills. This enables even non-IT-savvy personnel to manage small admin tasks in Google Workspace, resulting in a reduced workload for your IT team. Florbs gives you the flexibility to create custom roles within the app, making sure that every admin has the ability to perform the tasks they need while maintaining compliance with data protection policies.
Why use additional custom Google Admin roles in Florbs?
Does your company have a CISO or a data protection officer who is responsible for overseeing the company’s Google Drive and generating compliance reports? Do they require assistance from Google Admin to collect the necessary data for their job? Does your company’s Marketing department frequently seek assistance from the IT team to add promotional information to email signatures? Do administrative tasks pile up on your Admin’s desk, awaiting their attention?
Lighten the load on your Google Admin by empowering selected staff to perform admin tasks alongside them. Define precise access levels based on users’ responsibilities: create customized user roles and tailor them to specific needs, ensuring efficient management of the company’s Google Workspace environment, with all admin tasks timely addressed. This approach allows for better security implementation, smoother employee onboarding and offboarding processes, elimination of bottlenecks and increased overall productivity and job satisfaction organization-wise.
In Florbs, you can create and assign various roles including (but not limited to):
Global Information Security Officer – has access to all features in the Florbs Security & Auditing module for the entire organization, such as:
- See all files shared outside of your organization and change or remove external access permissions for individual users, groups or entire domains;
- Create auto-unshare policies for files that were not accessed or modified for a specified period of time;
- See all files accessible and/or searchable within your organization and adjust access permissions;
- See who in your organization might need additional training based on their sharing behavior;
- See files shared with private email accounts (@gmail.com, @hotmail.com, etc) and change access permissions for individual files or in bulk;
OU Risk Manager – has access to Security & Auditing features limited to a specific Organizational Unit. This proves valuable for large organizations as it allows to assign data protection officers responsible for each individual OU, while having a single global CISO for the entire organization.
- Audit files within the OU, detect files shared externally outside the OU and outside the domain, change file access permissions for individual files or in bulk within the OU;
Compliance Officer – has read-only access to Google Drive audit reports for monitoring and proving compliance, does not have the ability to change file access permissions.
Automation Super Admin – has access to all features in the Florbs Admin Automation module:
- Create fully automated employee onboarding and offboarding workflows to save you more than 2 hours per employee;
- Transfer user data from Google Workspace to Google Cloud Storage to cut down on spending;
- Easily manage delegations in Gmail and Calendar;
- Quickly set up forwarding and out-of-office messages in Gmail for users;
Automation Admin – to prevent admin tasks from piling up when your Super Admin is not available:
- Can quickly manage delegations in Gmail and Calendar and set up forwarding and out-of-office messages in Gmail;
- Has read-only access to workflows in order to monitor the process, does not have permission to create, manage or delete workflows;
- Global Email Signature Admin – can create, manage and assign email signatures to the whole organization. This ensures that email signatures on all external communications are always consistent in branding and messaging, and the information is always correct and up-to-date.
OU Email Signature Admin – can create, manage and assign email signatures for a specific organizational unit. This is beneficial for large organizations with multiple entities or offices. Each individual entity or office may have its own logo, location address, slogan, legal disclaimer, website and social media channels, events, or promotional activities that can be promoted in the email signatures.
These are just some examples of how you can structure your admin team to efficiently handle all tasks in Google Workspace. Consider this as a source of inspiration, and create the roles that best suit your company’s specific needs.
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