Hiding Google Group emails from the entire Google Workspace Domain

[jadams-sfaet]

We are a MAT with 5 schools who all use the Trust's Google Workspace. We have issues from time to time with users having multiple email addresses for all the schools, especially if they work across multiple.

This causes problems when end-users need to email them, sending them emails to the wrong address etc.

Can you introduce a setting for email IDs to be hidden from the entire contacts directory for groups and users? We have 5 Governing bodies for each of the schools but due to the way GMail contacts works, when you enter 'governor' for example, we see all the entries for all the schools and some of the groups are empty or un-monitored but we cannot delete them because our SSO/Directory sync will just recreate them when it next syncs back to Google Workspace.

If we are able to hide group emails from the contacts directory in GMail this would solve this issue as users would be unable to see the email address and accidently email it.

[jadams-sfaet]

Additionals:

To add to this, it would also work well if it targeted to Users/GRoups in OUs so only they can see the other email addresses in the same OU and not on the larger forest in the workspace.

[richardvandelft]

Hi, 

The good news is you can do all that in the Google Directory.

Hide a user from the Directory: Follow the instructions in the admin help=> https://support.google.com/a/answer/1285988

Hide a Google Group from the Directory: This is a bit more tricky. It is not straight forward. However you can apply some restrictions to Groups. You can limit who can view the group and who can send messages to the Group. See admin help: https://support.google.com/a/answer/167093

However as you posted in your additional question. Likely the best way for your organisation is to create multiple Directories, and put the relevant address in the relevant directory for that OU. It involves multiple steps to do it right. You likely want to use dynamic groups to create such a custom directory. See https://support.google.com/a/answer/7566446 for the step by step approach.

[whiteb]

FYI - You can't use Dynamic Groups for Custom Directories. It throws an error. The support article you posted actually mentions this as well - "Note: Dynamic Groups cannot be added to a custom directory."

I saw your post, it was exactly what we were trying to do. Spent a bunch of time creating a dynamic group exactly how I needed, and then ran into that error 😞

Just posting in case it's helpful for someone else.

We have a third-party service that syncs to Google that we can create Groups in, that will stay updated that we are going to leverage to make Groups to limit Directory Visibility.

[ajojose33333344]

You can use google apps manager to resolve this issue.

https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM

Run the following command:

To remove the existing contact from user id's(optional) :  gam all users_ns delete othercontacts emailmatchpattern group@domain.com

To hide a group contact from the global address list:  gam update group group@domain.com includeinglobaladdresslist off

[furqant]

Hi there, Sorry I am late in the discussion and I hope your main problem has been resolved thanks to the great members, but I believe if I have understood your issues correctly, I agree with Richard that you need to create multiple Directories, and put the relevant address in the relevant directory for that OU. This way you, the members of a certain directory won't be able to access the email addresses in their directory only and for those users who need to have access to all the directories and contacts, these directories can be shared with those limited people. I hope this will resolve your issue overall. Please let me know if I missed something in it or you have any additional questions.