Retrieve aliases for all active users in Google Workspace

As a Google Workspace administrator, you can create an alternate email address for yourself. These alternate email addresses are also called email aliases. It enables the users or admin to receive and send emails with this alternate address. Sometimes IT admin needs to retrieve aliases for all active users in Google Workspace. But Google Admin Console doesn't have this option.

Here are some reasons why a user need aliases– 

(a) You are either handling multiple roles.

(b) You need to handle a temporary project.

(c) When you need to forward emails from the account of a deleted user.

Now that you have understood what you can do with an email alias, we will mention one more feature of it. For each user, you can add up to 30 email aliases without paying anything extra.

Active Directory relates to the services provided by the central database of Microsoft/Windows connecting the users to the network resources to accomplish their tasks. Several domain and directory services come under this umbrella title. 

Why do we need to retrieve aliases for active users?

In Google Workspace, there is no such option where you can retrieve aliases for active users. Earlier, there was an option to list all the Gmail Users and their aliases in Google Workspace (erstwhile G Suite). But it seems that Google has withdrawn that facility also. So, there is no option for retrieving aliases in the form of an exported CSV sheet. Moreover, it is impossible to download the aliases for thousands of users. 

So, what is the solution, then? Well, Foresight from xFanatical can be a great option.

Foresight helps us to reduce the effort by conveniently managing active directory alias. 

How to retrieve aliases for active users in Google Workspace with Foresight?

To retrieve aliases for active users, you need to follow the procedure given below. 

1. Sign in to Foresight with your Google WorkSpace Account.
2. On the Rules page, click on the New Rule button.
3. On the Select a Trigger pop-up, select the trigger called Manual Trigger.
4. After selecting the trigger, you need to now select the action. Choose the List Users action.
5. Give Foresight the necessary permission, then go to the Columns field. The fields, First Name, Last Name, and Email will be loaded there by default. You need to click on the scroll-down menu and choose the Email Aliases field. Select False in the User Suspended drop-down. After that, you need to click on Review.
6. Type in the Rule Name and click on Create.
7. On the Rules page, you will see the rule has been created. Now click on the Play icon on the rule. After you have done that, you will see that a notification appears on the Notification Bell. Click on Show All and you will be redirected to the notification page. You will see that the rule has been executed successfully.
8. Click on View Log to go to the Log Page. There you will notice a downloadable link from which you can download the list which has the aliases of all the active users. You can download the CSV from there.  

Notes

While you are retrieving the email aliases of active users from your Google Workspace account, you need to keep various things in mind. 

• Email aliases cannot be used to sign into your Google account. You will have to use your real email id for that. 
• Email aliases are public, and everybody can see them.

Foresight helps to automate almost every action in Google Workspace. There are other things that you can do with Foresight. You can export active users in Google Workspace. You can even bulk add and remove Google group members using Foresight. All in all, it is a great tool to automate different functions related to Google Workspace and help organizations to reach operational efficiency.