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Use cases → Admin and governance

Apply policies by organisational unit with delegated automation

Enforce settings, access or group membership by OU using a service account with domain-wide delegation.

Who it is forWorkspace admins responsible for policy enforcement across distinct organisational units.
APIsAdmin SDK
Typical scopesadmin.directory.user, admin.directory.group

The problem

Manual enforcement of OU-based policies is error-prone and does not scale, especially as users move between OUs or when bulk changes are needed. Automated scripts using domain-wide delegation can enforce rules consistently, but must account for the real structure and behaviours of the Admin SDK.

How it works

  1. List all users within each organisational unit using the Admin SDK.
  2. Determine which users or groups require policy updates based on current OU membership.
  3. Apply or remove policy settings, group memberships or access rights as required.
  4. Log every change for audit and reconciliation.

What changes

Policy enforcement matches the current OU structure, and user transitions between OUs are reflected in their settings and memberships without manual intervention.

The trap in this one. The Admin SDK's user list for an OU is eventually consistent: if a user moves between OUs, the change may not be reflected for minutes, even after a successful update call. If automation runs immediately after a move, it may apply policies to the wrong user set or revert recent changes, causing policy drift or unexpected reversals. Always build in a delay or re-check mechanism after OU changes before enforcing policies.

Questions people ask

Does this work for nested OUs?

The Admin SDK can list users for a parent OU including all children with the 'orgUnitPath' filter, but be explicit whether you want only direct members or the full subtree.

How do I handle conflicting policies?

Define a clear precedence: the automation should always start from a known baseline, then apply the most specific policy last so no ambiguity remains.

Want this built?

This is a pattern we run in production. We will set up the delegation and build this on top of it — $500 per hour, most of it working the same day.

Talk to us Or read the setup guide

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