Google Workspace

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Revision as of 19:10, 21 September 2024 by Maltfield (talk | contribs)
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As a legally-registered NGO (non-profit in the US), Open Source Ecology has a free Google Workspace (aka Google Apps [gapps] or Google Suite [gsuite]) account.

Why?

Google Workspace lets us create Google accounts with a username on the @opensourceecology.org domain. For example, when OSE users manage email, we can do so from a gmail-like UI. While we have access to numerous apps in Google Workspace, OSE specifically makes heavy use of the following apps:

  1. Google Mail
  2. Google Calendar
  3. Google Docs
  4. Google Drive
  5. Google Meet
  6. Google Groups
  7. Google Slides
  8. etc

Google Groups

OSE uses (internal-only) Google Groups for creating one-to-many email lists (a designated email account that reaches the inbox of many people at OSE).

Because

  1. Google doesn't support the concept of "shared accounts", [1],
  2. Google may lock you out of being able to login to your account if their anomaly detection system thinks an account is being shared, [2]
  3. Google won't let you turn-off their "suspicious login" feature that locks you out of your own account -- even if their system is faulty and blocking you from logging in, even when you entered the correct password[3]
  4. Google doesn't let you forward mail from one account to many accounts

If you want to create a one-to-many email address (eg tractor-team@opensourceecology.org) for which there are many recipients, the way to do this in Google Workspace is to create a "Google Group".

References