Introduction
In this article you will learn about why school administrators want to disable email collaborators feature in Docs Editors. Before diving straight into disabling part, let's understand what does email collaborators mean. Email collaborators are the people who can view, comment or edit a shared files. This helps making collaboration easy but in school settings this causes issue. Students may send invites to other friends and this may cause security issue of sharing sensitive files.
Educational Institutes want to disable this feature to avoid unnecessary data sharing and invite external collaborators. Blocking email collaborators will provide safe environment for students and maintain professional collaboration across Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings. Let's read more!
xFanatical Safe Doc removes the File > Email > Email collaborators menu in Google Doc Editors
Why Disable Emailing Collaborators in Docs Editors for Education?
In schools, learning by collaborating is the key component. When students are assigned group projects. they need to communicate with each other and share necessary files when needed. That time email collaborators option helps but not for longer. Students gets involved too much into collaboration gets distracted by off topic conversations. Hence it is important to block email collaborator feature across all Google Docs editors.
One more reason is students may unnecessarily send invites teachers for collaboration. Let's understand it through a user story -
- Problem: Miss Jennifer, a high school teacher, assigned a group research task to students and after sometime noticed that students started sending email collaborations to other group students and other class teachers, which disturbed the whole classroom environment. Not only students sent invites, they got engaged in off-task discussions.
- Solution: Miss Jennifer then discussed this issue with IT administrator and decided to disable the option to email collaborators using xFanatical Safe Doc. Safe Doc offers a policy to block the option and avoid distraction in classroom.
- Result: After applying the policy, teacher Jennifer noticed positive changes in students focus and assignment submissions. Teachers did not get emails for collaboration from other groups any more.
Introduction to xFanatical Safe Doc?
xFanatical Safe Doc is a comprehensive browser extension used for maintaining a focused and secured online learning environment for students. This extension provides policies for administrators and teachers to manage and restrict access to various unwanted features of Google Workspace for Education (GWFA). This ensures a safe and productive digital learning environment for students.
Disable Emailing Collaborators in Google Workspace with xFanatical Safe Doc
Remove Email Collaborators option Google Docs
Google Docs provides an Email Collaborators feature that allows users to notify others via email about document changes or share the document with specific individuals. This leads to unintended sharing of important files, which causes security threat. Hence xFanatical Safe Doc provides BlockEmailCollaborators policy to remove email collaborators option in Google Docs.
xFanatical Safe Doc removes the File > Email > Email collaborators menu in Google Doc
Disallow Emailing Collaborators in Google Sheets
Google Sheets also supports email collaborators features and Safe Doc blocks support focus during learning and prevent accidental sharing of files and miscommunication educational settings. Implement BlockEmailCollaborators policy and you can disable the Email Collaborators option in Google Sheets.
Inactivate Email Collaborators option in Google Slides
xFanatical Safe Doc policy blocks email collaborator option in Google Slides as well to prevent unintended sharing of sensitive data.
xFanatical Safe Doc removes the File > Email > Email collaboratorsmenu in Google Slides
Constraint Emailing Collaborators in Google Drawings
Google Drawings provides the Email Collaborators feature, which allows users to notify others about changes to a drawing or share it via email. While this can be helpful for collaboration, in educational settings, this feature can lead to miscommunication or the exposure of sensitive data.
xFanatical Safe Doc removes the File > Email > Email collaborators menu in Google Drawings
How to Disable Email Collaborators in GWFE using xFanatical Safe Doc
Step 1: Install Safe Doc
Initially install Safe Doc in your Google Workspace environment.
Step 2: Configure Safe Doc settings
Once you install Safe Doc, configure settings to disable emailing collaborators in Google Workspace.
Step 3: Access Google Admin Console
Next, go to the Google Admin Console. In the Google Admin Console, click on Devices > Chrome > Apps & Extensions > Users & Browsers.
Step 4: Review the Policy
Find the policy and set it's value as per your requirement. The policy will look like below:
"BlockEmailCollaborators": {
"Value": true
}
Step 5: Save the Policy
Finally, click the Save.
How to configure Safe Doc?
Ensure the deployment of Safe Doc on your students' Chrome browsers, and review the xFanatical Safe Doc Configuration document for detailed instructions.
Conclusion
By now you have understood why schools want to disable email collaborators feature in educational environment and how Safe Doc helps in achieving this. Carefully follow the steps given in this blog to install and configure Safe Doc properly for students. Further, to learn more about how xFanatical Safe Doc can help enhance online safety in your educational institution, visit our website xFanatical Safe Doc and install to get a 30 days free trial.
xFanatical Safe Doc
