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Use cases → Admin and governance

Provision team email aliases via API automation

Automate the creation and management of group and user email aliases across domains using a delegated service account.

Who it is forIT operations and automation engineers managing user and group email addresses.
APIsAdmin SDK
Typical scopesadmin.directory.group, admin.directory.user

The problem

Manual alias provisioning is error-prone and slow, especially at scale or with frequent reorganisation. Consistency across multiple domains is nearly impossible without automation.

How it works

  1. Fetch the current list of users and groups for the target domain.
  2. Read in the desired state from a source of truth (e.g., a spreadsheet or HR system).
  3. For each alias, call the Admin SDK to insert or update the alias for the correct user or group.
  4. Log the result and verify success by querying the alias listing endpoints after changes.

What changes

Aliases appear quickly and consistently, matching the source of truth, and can be updated or removed with a single run.

The trap in this one. The Admin SDK's alias creation is eventually consistent and does not guarantee immediate visibility. Calling the alias insert endpoint and then re-querying with list immediately after can return a 404 or missing alias for up to several minutes, leading to brittle idempotency checks or duplicate creation attempts if not handled. Rely on the API's error codes, not list state, to determine success.

Watch it explained

“Google Cloud Identity Alias account impact on Google consumer account” — Goldy Arora on YouTube. Third-party video, included because it covers this ground well. We are not affiliated with the channel.

Questions people ask

Can I add aliases for groups and users in the same workflow?

Yes, but the endpoints and required identifiers differ. Always check whether your alias target is a group or a user before issuing the request.

How should I handle alias removals?

Remove aliases by ID using the Admin SDK. Avoid relying on a fresh list after changes, due to propagation delays.

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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