Update plan and resources for upcoming changes to Groups customizations

10/04/2019

Table of contents

Changes

Based on the feedback on the previous announcement, Changes to Google Groups settings starting May 6, 2019, Google is making the following changes:

Further improved the Groups Settings API feature to make it easier for Admins to plan and manage change (see details below).
“Post as the group” will remain a separate setting – it will not be included as Google previously announced.
“New member posts are moderated” will still be part of the configuration preserved without being removed as previously announced..
“Take topics” will be included in the settings content metadata.

To help Admins prepare for these changes, Google is also sharing a document Google Sheets describes the new settings that will be in a Group. Additionally, Google also changed the update date of these new settings for Scheduled Release accounts to June 3, four weeks after Rapid Release accounts.

Visit the Help Center to see details of changes.

Affected person

Administrators and End Users

Benefit

Google hopes this information will help Admins to better understand and prepare for the upcoming changes.

Additional details

Improved Groups API

On March 25, 2019, Google will update Groups Settings API. These updates are related to the API of the application that will be changed (described in advance notice) and will be easier to use the API, including:

All merged setups will also include APIs. The Administrator will then need to check the existing groups via the API, and change new settings if necessary.
Administrators can query the newly merged settings and review if the settings have met the requirements. Note that these settings will be read-only until officially released, then Admin can edit.
New settings for custom permissions. If the Administrator has custom permissions, API queries will return incorrect values. Changes will be highlighted if a group uses custom permissions for one of the merged settings and also helps Admins to identify groups that need to re-evaluate the settings.
New changes to the collaborative inbox feature. Google is rolling out a small change to groups in the form of Collaborative Inboxes. If the Administrator wants a group with the function collaboration mailbox (e.g. assigning topics), make sure that the settings are correct. Admin can do this by activating the collaborative mailbox feature. Note that these settings will be read-only until officially released, then Admin can edit.
New changes to group discovery. Google will open a feature that allows setting groups to be visible to which users. This setting will replace the old group directory. Note that these settings will be read-only until officially released, then Admin can edit.

See also Cloud blog to know more details of API changes and usage.

“Post as the group” will not be included in the content moderation settings

Google originally planned to include this feature, but it's a very useful feature so it will stay the same.

“New member posts are moderated” will still be supported.

The setting of “New member posts are moderated” is still maintained on the API as MODERATE_NEW_MEMBERS, and is still supported for use by Google.

“Take topics” will be merged with content metadata

Google previously suggested that the “Take topics” feature would stay alone. However, this setting will be included as part of the metadata setting content.