Uploading your class to Google GSuite admin for Schools.

If your school has Chromebooks or anything that uses Google services, at some point, either as a head or an IT leader, you're going to realise you need to upload your entire school to Google Admin console. This can seem like an overwhelming task.

You could input this information pupil by pupil (not advised) or you can upload a .csv ('comma separated value file' or 'spreadsheet'). 
Stay with me, it doesn't matter if you don't know what this means or not. 

You also need to input every pupils email address, and create a unique password for them. Imagine trying to make 200-300 passwords up!
Doing this manually is a wicked waste of any teacher or secretaries time. So I'm going to share my tips for simplifying this seemingly overwhelming task. 

1 DOWNLOAD THE TEMPLATE

Fig 1

Login to you google admin console. Click Add Multiple users. (see fig 1 - this option only shows up under USERS and the top level of the organisation). 



Select add multiple users. Then click download as .CSV (see fig 2)

Fig 2

Once that file has downloaded, upload it to your google drive. (open drive.google.com and login). 

Drag the file into your google drive. 
BUT - LEAVE A COPY ON YOUR DESKTOP

Goto sheets.google.com and open the spreadsheet you just uploaded. 

When you open the sheet, you'll see many columns, the only ones we need are columns a through to d
a) First Name
b) Surname
c) Email Address
d) Password

The first two you will need to have ready on a spreadsheet first. Ensure that they're in the correct order (Column 1 First names, Column 2 Surnames) and simply copy and paste that data into the spreadsheet. 


2 CREATING THE EMAIL ADDRESSES

Now we need to populate the email address field. In the box to the right of the surname of the top student (should be row 2) 
We need to tell the spreadsheet to create an email address

This example assumes you'll want your email address to look something like this. 

For a pupil with the name John Doe

J.Doe@schooldomain.com

If your list is first names and surnames we need to pull the first initial from the pupils first name. 

Assuming the first pupil on your sheet is in row 2, in cell F,2 type 

=LEFT(A2,1)&"."&B2&"@schooldomain.com"

This lovely little string tells the sheet to pull the first letter from the Cell with the name in it (A2) and add a full stop & then add the surname, and then the school domain. NB - Don't actually write @schooldomain.com put your schools ACTUAL domain example '@ysgolwales.com' 

In a nutshell, this will create the email for the pupil. Which may seem like a lot of hard work for one pupil. However, now you have it, you can drag the box to the bottom of the list and it will auto populate the email address column. 

To do this, select the column with the equation in, either double click the small blue square, or drag the small blue square (see fig 3) in the bottom right of the cell straight down column C. This will duplicate the equation relative to the rest of the data and create your email addresses.

Fig 3

NB - If you want to differentiate pupil emails from teacher emails (and avoid duplicates), you may want to either use your teachers full names on their accounts, just use Mr or Miss/Mrs etc, or add a .p to all of the pupil accounts. In the last eaxmple, that would mean the equation you entered above would look like this

=LEFT(A2,1)&"."&B2&".p"&"@ysgolmaesglas.co.uk"

The only thing different being the & dot p

This would create the email address j.doe.p@schooldomain.com

MAKE SURE YOU CHECK FOR EMAIL DUPLICATIONS, ESPECIALLY BROTHERS AND SISTERS! Lily and Lucy for example.


Amend any email addresses manually (Lose the EQUATION and just type over the data in the cell with a made up email address). 

3 CREATE PASSWORDS

First thing we need to do is to add a plug in to google docs, which is much easier than it sounds. Follow this link and click install. 
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/random-generator/jbmegemikfiklkooomkedgngifmimhmk?hl=en

When the plugin is installed select all of the cells in the password column 

Fig 4

On the tool bar (Fig 4), choose Add-ons, Random Generator and Start.

From here, it's really simple to decide how to generate your passwords. 

For simplicity for the children, I've chosen a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and I've excluded special characters. I've also made the passwords 8 characters in length. 

Fig 5

Once you've chosen your options simply click the generate button (Fig 5) and within a second or so, you'll have all of your random passwords generated as well as the emails. 


4 COPY THE DATA INTO THE CSV FILE.

Now we made it this far we simply need to copy the data we've generated into the original CSV file on your desktop. Select all of the data and press CMD and C or CTRL and V. 

Copying and pasting into numbers (Mac), just pastes the data (not the equations) which is exactly what we need. 

On Excel, Click Paste Special and select Text only or Values only. 

UPLOAD TO ADMIN CONSOLE

It's plain sailing now, go back to Step one and click add multiple users, then upload your CSV file. 

I hope this helps make what is an otherwise agonising job, somehwat more bearable and considerably less time consuming. 

Disclaimer - I accept no responsibility for incompetence. The above is intended to be a guide only and is followed at your own risk etc etc, It's your responsibility to ensure you don't mess up your schools g-suite account, unless you want to hire me. In which case the email is info@roughcuts.ltd