Auto assigning Workspace licenses question

[ddelboccio]

Hello!

I have certain student OU's set to auto-assign our Google Workspace for Education Plus licenses. 

No problem there.  Students are auto-assigned licenses when created or added to said OU's.

Should licenses be auto-REMOVED if students are taken OUT of those OU's?

Or is the auto-assign license feature only about ADDING/ASSIGNING licenses?

[Dean_Mantz]

@ddelboccio It has been my experience that auto-assign does just that. When I move users to our "Suspended" OU after they leave our district, it takes a manual process to get back their assigned license. 

[ddelboccio]

Manual as in pulling up the user in question and disabling/turning off the license?

[Dean_Mantz]

You are correct. Here are a couple of screenshots of my process. 

Select Users to remove licensesSelect the licenses to be removed.

[ddelboccio]

Thanks for confirming what I was also seeing.  I was HOPING that the auto-assign license feature was a TWO-WAY process that would also remove licenses when user was moved to a different OU that was not set to auto-assign.  I do realize licenses get removed when a user is deleted.

[Michael_Roop]

I do similar.  I also have a monthly reminder to pull the list of assigned users, divide them up by building group,  and I send off to the building secretaries just to make sure I havent missed anyone who no longer gets the license. 

I'm sure it's just my district that sometimes forget to let us know people quit, changed jobs, or have a long term sub.

[Dean_Mantz]

Lol, only if that was true about your district. My previous one was really bad because of the lack of communication. My current one does a good job, but there are times when paraprofessionals leave, and I don't get notified. 

[mfoley]

If you users to a no licensed  OU  I bet a GAM Script would work, and you just schedule the Script to run. 

[ddelboccio]

Do you know what the GAM command for this would be?

[llennon]

Additionally, you can add and remove licenses via a google sheet.  Go to your users in the Admin Console and download all users with all 41 columns to a google sheet. Open the sheet and create a filter or sort by multiple criteria, but you are looking for the data in column AK. 1010310008 is a student license, 101310009 is a staff license.

Add or remove the licenses you want, save as CSV, then use the bulk update and viola!

[ddelboccio]

So you are saying, from the Google sheet, column AK, simply deleting that cell and uploading back to Google will remove the license?

[llennon]

Yes! I wouldn't recommend for doing one or two users, but for a large number, this is a great option.

[ddelboccio]

I just tried it as a test for one user, and it did not remove the license.  Should it be immediate?

[wandaterral]

Here is the GAM command for removing licenses. https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki/Licenses#delete-licenses

My workflow is:

1. Save the email addresses to a CSV file with the header Email. Save the CSV to the desktop.
2. I'm on a Mac running GAM via Terminal. In terminal, to remove the Google Workspace for Education Plus (Student) license, this would be the command:

   gam csv <path of file> gam user \~Email delete license 1010310008

   Note that the tilde has to be escaped on the Mac.

[Josh]

For what it is worth I use Google Cloud Directory Sync for this.

I have it successfully configured to assign licences when the user is in the normal OU in Active Directory. When they leave they are moved to a disabled users OU in Active Directory and GCDS removes the licences.