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Use cases → Admin and governance

Synchronise group memberships from HR to Google Workspace

Keep Workspace groups in sync with your HR system by driving changes through a service account with domain-wide delegation.

Who it is forIT or automation teams responsible for aligning Google groups with HR data.
APIsAdmin SDK
Typical scopesadmin.directory.group, admin.directory.group.member

The problem

Manual group management diverges from the truth in the HR system, leading to incorrect access and clumsy onboarding/offboarding. Automating this with a service account is the only way to keep up at scale.

How it works

  1. Export the current group membership state from the HR system.
  2. Fetch the current Workspace group membership via the Admin SDK.
  3. Compute the delta: who should be added, who should be removed.
  4. Drive changes through the service account, using domain-wide delegation to act as an admin.
  5. Log and alert on any discrepancies or failures.

What changes

Group memberships in Workspace reflect the source of truth in HR, with changes applied promptly and consistently.

The trap in this one. The Admin SDK's group member removal is eventually consistent: a remove followed immediately by an add for the same user can silently drop the user from the group if processed too quickly. This happens because the removal is still propagating when the add call is made, and the later add is ignored. You must introduce a delay or retry logic for re-adds to the same group-user pair to avoid silent membership loss.

Questions people ask

Can this pattern handle nested groups?

Nested groups are resolved at access time, but your sync logic must be explicit: only direct memberships are managed here. If you try to sync nested memberships, you risk breaking intended access.

How do I handle group ownership?

Group owners are a separate attribute in the Admin SDK. If your HR system tracks owners, sync them explicitly—otherwise, leave them untouched.

Want this built?

This is a pattern we run in production. We will set up the delegation and build this on top of it — $500 per hour, most of it working the same day.

Talk to us Or read the setup guide

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