How to bulk create Google Groups?

Introduction

Google Groups is a service solely created and developed by Google. It provides a collaboration space for people who have similar interests and backgrounds. It helps them to have a discussion in a common space. The group can be created for a personal purpose or even for a professional setup as well. The Google Group’s creator Admin can add other admins in the group. They can also populate the group with members by sending them an invitation. Members can also be removed from groups. If you have to send any kind of notification, the whole group can be informed at once. Likewise, there are many benefits and features in Google Groups.

Why do you need to Bulk create Google groups?

There are many instances in an organization when you need to bulk-create Google Groups. Imagine that you are a team manager who needs to create groups for various projects then you might need to perform this action. Likewise, if you are a teacher and need to create Google Groups in bulk for the class as per your chapter. There can be multiple similar sorts of situations that require Google Groups to be created in bulk. But how will you do that? This is what we will discuss in this blog post in detail.  

How to create Google Groups?

Given below is a simple procedure to create Google Groups. Have a look at the steps that has been given below: 

Creating groups from Google Admin Console

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.
2. Go to Directory > Groups.  
3. On the top of the console, you need to click on Create group.
4. Enter details like Group name, Group email, Description and Group owners.
5. After that click on Next.
6. If you want to add a Security label to your group, then you need to check the Security. box. This is an optional step, but you can do it if you feel that you need it. Learn more about security groups. 
7. Then again, you need to click on Next.
8. You need to select the type of group access — Restricted, Team, Announcement only, or Restricted. Each type of access has predefined permissions for the owners of the group owners, members and managers. The entire organization can access the group or even some members outside the organization can access the group, if allowed
9. For customizing any settings for the access, click on the table cells for selecting or deselecting any type of option. For any customization, you need to keep the group access type as Custom. You can make any type of changes to these settings.
10. After that, again click on Next.
11. For restricting the members who can access the group, you need to choose Restrict membership and add any conditions you want to add. Learn more about restricting group membership.

After doing all the required settings, you need to select Create Group.

Creating Groups via Google Groups Interface (groups.google.com) 

1. Sign in to Google Groups.
2. At the top, click Create group.
3. Enter information like Group name, Group email and Group Description and then select the settings for your group.
4. Click Create group. After that, you need to wait for some time for the activation of your new group. To test whether the group has been created or not, try sending a message to your Group. If the group has been activated, then the message has been delivered. Otherwise, you will receive a notification that the message has not been delivered.
5. If required you can also choose some advanced settings for the group. These advanced settings are privacy, adding members etc.

It would be best if you waited for some time to activate the group before sending a message to the group. Otherwise, you might get a notification stating that your message could not be delivered.

How to create a group in Gmail?

1. You need to access Google Contacts in your Gmail. You can also access it through the Google Waffle on the top right-hand corner of the page. 
2. Click Contacts, Frequently contacted, or Directory.
3. Select the contacts that you want to add to the group.
4. Select the Label icon and press Create Label.
5. Give your label a name. Type the name of the Group in the recipients’ box for sending an email to your group member.

Demo video

Bulk create Google groups with Foresight

With Foresight, bulk-creating Google Groups is fairly simple. You do not need to feed any automation code. Just follow the steps given below. But before that, we need to mention that the procedure has been divided into two parts:

• Rule Creation
• Triggering Rule

Rule Creation

1. We need a list of groups. Here is a Google Sheet with 4 groups. There are two columns in it, Email and Name. We will download the files in CSV format. 
2. Log in to your Foresight account with the help of your Google Admin account.
3. Go to the Rules page and click on the New Rule button.
4. Select the Data uploaded trigger. Upload the Google Groups CSV file. Wait for the file to be parsed. Then you need to click on Next.
5. Select Create Group action.
6. In the Group Email field, First, You should grant Foresight the necessary permissions by clicking on the Sign in with Google Button. select the Email variable. In the Group Name field, click onthe v icon and select your desired Group Name.
7. After doing all this, you need to click on Review.
8. Give the rule a name (Create bulk groups via CSV), and then click Create.

Triggering Rule

1. Go to the Dashboard again. On the Rule Panel, which shows the new rule being created. Click on the Upload icon. Upload the same CSV again. It will take a few seconds.

Verifying the results

1. A notification will appear in the top right-hand corner. Click on Show all.
2. You can also go to the Logs page using the left sidebar. You will see the rule has been triggered successfully.
3. In the Google Admin Console, you will see that the four groups have been created. 

This is a convenient tool for Google Admins. You can also automate various other actions with it, and you can bulk add members to a Google Group or bulk remove members from a Google Group. For more automation like these, check out Foresight’s website.