Suspend Google Workspace users by Schedule

This article is written for Google Workspace administrators.

Google Workspace administrators have to deal user suspension all the time.

• In business, employees leave, interns ended summer internships, contractors finished projects and leave, or third-party partners temporarily access corporate information with a short-lived account etc.
• In schools, students are expected to graduate in May, August or December yearly so their accounts are terminated at the end of the semester.

User suspension is crucial for organizations' information security. A business trade secret leak can cause business loss if some accounts are not suspended on time and shared documents are at stake.

Unfortunately, Admin Console doesn't provide the feature to suspend users in advance for you. Well, this article shows you how Foresight can suspend Google Workspace users for you on schedule.

Video tutorial

If you have read another article Create Google Workspace users by schedule, we know Mr. Carlos Koehler and Ms. Laura Sample's accounts will be created automatically. Now suppose today is still Oct 14, 2022. We know contractors Mr. Koehler and Ms. Sample would only work for our sales department for a week and leave by the end of the day on Oct 24, 2022. We now set up a time-based rule on Foresight to automatically suspend their accounts on Oct 24, 2022, at 04:45 PM.

Step by step instructions

1. Open your Rules page.
2. Click the blue button at the bottom right to create a rule.
3. In the Select a trigger page, select Time as the trigger. Time trigger means do some actions once at future.
   
4. In the Edit trigger page, select a future time using the date and time picker. This is the time users will be suspended. Note the trigger time must be at least 15 minutes from your current time.  If you have users due to suspension in different dates and/or times, create one rule for each due date/time. 
   
5. Click Next.
6. In the Select an action page, click Suspend user. This action allows you to suspend an individual account from your Google Workspace domain.
   
7. In the Edit actions page, type in the primary email of user to be suspended. Grant the access permission from your Google account for the first time.
   
   Note: Suspending a user requires an access permission to your Google Workspace Domain and Admin API enabled in Admin Console. Otherwise, the actions will fail by the time it runs.
   
   
8. (Optional) to suspend more users at the same time, click the + button at the tab head, and add another suspend user action.
9. Click Review.
10. In the Review page, give the rule a name for yourself to identify. Meanwhile, verify the visualized automation graph generated for a better understanding what's in the rule.
11. Click Create.
12. The dialog will close and you will see a card created in Rules page. By default, the rule is active when first created.
    
13. You are all set. Take a break. Everything will be automated by Foresight.
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14. On the due time of user suspension, Foresight will notify you if the rule is executed well and if some actions failed. Check up the notification on the top right.

What's next

With careful planning on Foresight, Google Workspace administrators can simplify user management in a few hours, rather than constantly monitoring and making changes on Admin Console. For user management automation, you might also like Create Google Workspace users by schedule, or Delete Google Workspace users by schedule.

Feel free to leave comments below.