Using Google Groups for Collaboration

Collaborate with Google Groups

Google Groups is a great tool for working together with your team. You can use a Google Group to share calendars, invite people to events, or work together in Google Drive. The best part is that you only have to manage your member list in one single place. As people join or leave your group, the Google Group membership will automatically update everywhere else.

Organize events

Share a Google Calendar with your Group

  1. In Google Calendar, hover over the calendar you want to share, click More > Settings and sharing.
  2. Under “Share with specific people,” click Add people.
  3. Enter the email address of the Google Group you want to share the calendar with.

Note: If you share a calendar with a group, it isn’t automatically added to their “Other calendars” list in Google Calendar. They will need to click the link in the email they received about sharing the calendar to add it to their list.

Invite a Google Group to a Google Calendar event

Using Google Calendar, create an event, and in the “Add guests” box, type the name of the group you’d like to invite. After the group is added, you can see a list of the group members by clicking the Down arrow to the left of the group name. Save the event.

Google Groups and Google Meet/Zoom

  • To invite a Google Group to participate in a Google Meet or Zoom call, use the above instructions for inviting a group to a calendar event, use the “Add conferencing” option, and select Google Meet or Zoom.

Collaborate in Google Drive

Google Groups can be used to share files and folders in Google My Drive and Google Shared Drives.

  • To share a file or folder with a group, use the “Share” option to add the Google Group.
  • To add a Google Group to a Shared drive, use the Add members option in the Shared drives to add the group.
  • Set the permission level for the group as desired. See My Drive File Sharing Access and Permissions or Shared Drives Membership Roles for more information about access level.

Access provided by a Google Group will change over time as the membership of a group changes. See Google Group Roles and Permissions for information on managing the membership of an ad-hoc group. College Lists and Work Lists memberships are automated based on institutional reference data.

Communicate with Group members

Google Groups can be used to email members of the group as well as a Collaborative Inbox to organize, reply to, and assign messages/conversations. Google Chat can also be used with Google Groups to engage with group members in a Chat Room.  See Using Google Chat for more information.

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