The recently launched Groups Settings API allows Google Apps domain administrators to write client applications for managing groups in their domain. Once you have created the groups and added members using the Provisioning API, you can use the Groups Settings API to perform actions like:

• manage access to the group
• configure discussion archiving
• configure message moderation
• edit a group's description, display format and custom fields

Let’s have a look at how you can make authorized calls to the Groups Settings API from your client application.

Getting Started

You must enable the Provisioning API to make requests to the Groups Settings API. You can do so by enabling the Provisioning API checkbox in the Domain settings tab of your Google Apps control panel.

Next, ensure that the Google Groups for Business and Email services are added to your domain by going to the Dashboard. If these services are not listed, add them by going to Add more services link next to the Service settings heading.

Now you are set to write client applications. Let's discuss the steps to write an application using the Python client library. You need to install the google-api-python-client library first.

You can register a new project or use an existing one from the APIs console to obtain credentials to use in your application. The credentials (client_id, client_secret) are used to obtain OAuth tokens for authorization of the API requests.

Authorization using OAuth 2.0

The Groups Settings API supports various authorization mechanisms, including OAuth 2.0. Please see the wiki for more information on using the library’s support for OAuth 2.0 to create a httplib2.Http object. This object is used by the Groups Settings service to make authorized requests.

Make API requests with GroupSettings service

The Python client library uses the Discovery API to build the Groups Settings service from discovery. The method build is defined in the library and can be imported to build the service. The service can then access resources (‘groups’ in this case) and perform actions on them using methods defined in the discovery metadata.

The following example shows how to retrieve the properties for the group staff@example.com.

service = build(“groups”, “v1”, http=http) 
group = service.groups()
g = group.get(groupUniqueId=”staff@example.com”).execute()

This method returns a dictionary of property pairs (name/value):

group_name = g['name']
group_isArchived = g['isArchived']
group_whoCanViewGroup = g['whoCanViewGroup']

The update method can be used to set the properties of a group. Let’s have a look at how you can set the access permissions for a group:

body = {'whoCanInvite': ALL_MANAGERS_CAN_INVITE,
        'whoCanJoin': ‘INVITED_CAN_JOIN’,
        'whoCanPostMessage': ‘ALL_MEMBERS_CAN_POST’,
        'whoCanViewGroup': ‘ALL_IN_DOMAIN_CAN_VIEW’
       }

 # Update the properties of group
 g1 = group.update(groupUniqueId=groupId, body=body).execute()

Additional valid values for these properties, as well as the complete list of properties, are documented in the reference guide. We have recently added a sample in the Python client library that you can refer to when developing your own application. We would be glad to hear your feedback or any queries you have on the forum.

Shraddha Gupta   profile Shraddha is a Developer Programs Engineer for Google Apps. She has her MTech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi, India.

Google Groups is a great way to foster communication over email and on the web, connecting people and allowing them to participate in and read archived discussions. Today, we are introducing the Google Groups Service in Google Apps Script. Groups Service will allow a script to check if a user belongs to a certain group, or to enumerate the members of a particular group. The Google Groups Service works with groups created through the Google Groups web interface as well as groups created by enterprise customers with their own domain using the control panel and the Google Apps Provisioning API.

This opens a wide range of possibilities, such as allowing a script with Ui Services to show additional buttons to the members of a particular group - for example teachers or managers - and sending customized emails to all the members of a group.

Here are a few sample scripts to help you get started with the new API. To try out these samples, select Create > New Spreadsheet and then Tools > Script Editor from the menu. You can then copy the code into the script editor. The scripts’ output will appear back in the spreadsheet.

List Your Google Groups

The Groups Services can be used to fetch a list of the Google Groups of which you’re a member.

Below is a function which returns all the groups of which you’re a member. Copy and paste it into the script editor and run it. The editor will prompt you to grant READ access to the Google Groups Service before the script can run successfully.

If you receive a message stating that you’re not a member of any group, open up Google Groups and join any of the thousands of groups there.

function showMyGroups() {
  var groups = GroupsApp.getGroups();
  var s;
  if (groups.length > 0) {
    s = "You belong to " + groups.length + " groups: ";
    for (var i = 0; i < groups.length; i++) {
      var group = groups[i];
      if (i > 0) {
        s += ", ";
      }
      s += group.getEmail();
    }
  } else {
    s = "You are not a member of any group!";
  }
  Browser.msgBox(s);
}

Test Group Membership

Brendan plays trumpet in a band. He also runs the band’s website and updates its Google+ page. He’s created a web application with Google Apps Script and now he wants to add to it some additional features for members of the band. Being a model Google user, he’s already subscribed each band member to a Google Group. Although building a complete UI with Google Apps Script is beyond the scope of this article, Brendan could adapt the following function to help make additional features available only to members of that Google Group.

Of course, this is not just useful for tech-savvy trumpet players: schools may wish to make certain features available just to teachers or others just to students; businesses may need to offer certain functionality to people managers or simply to show on a page or in a UI operations of interest to those in a particular department. Before running this example yourself, replace test@example.com with the email address of any group of which you’re a member.

Note: the group’s member list must be visible to the user running the script. Generally, this means you must yourself be a member of a group to successfully test if another user is a member of that same group. Additionally, group owners and managers can restrict member list access to group owners and managers. For such groups, you must be an owner or manager of the group to query membership.

function testGroupMembership() {
  var groupEmail = "test@example.com";
  var group = GroupsApp.getGroupByName(groupEmail);
  if (group.hasUser(Session.getActiveUser().getEmail())) {
    Browser.msgBox("You are a member of " + groupEmail);
  } else {
    Browser.msgBox("You are not a member of " + groupEmail);
  }
}

Get a List of Group Members

Sending an email to the group’s email address forwards that message to all the members of the group. Specifically, that message is forwarded to all those members who subscribe by email. Indeed, for many users, discussion over email is the principal feature of Google Groups.

Suppose, however, that you want to send a customised message to those same people. Provided you have permission to view a group’s member list, the Google Groups Service can be used to fetch the usernames of all the members of a group. The following script demonstrates how to fetch this list and then send an email to each member.

Before running this script, consider if you actually want to send a very silly message to all the members of the group. It may be advisable just to examine how the script works!

function sendCustomizedEmail() {
  var groupEmail = "test@example.com";
  var group = GroupsApp.getGroupByEmail(groupEmail);
  var users = group.getUsers();
  for (var i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
    var user = users[i];
    MailApp.sendEmail(user.getEmail(), "Thank you!",
        "Hello " + user.getEmail() + ", thank you for joining this group!");
  }
}

Find Group Managers

The Google Groups Service lets you query a user’s role within a group. One possible role is MANAGER (the other roles are described in detail in the Google Groups Service’s documentation): these users can perform administrative tasks on the group, such as renaming the group and accepting membership requests. Any user’s Role can be queried with the help of the Group class’ getRole() method.

This sample function may be used to fetch a list of a group’s managers. Once again, you must have access to the group’s member list for this function to run successfully:

function getGroupOwners(group) {
  var users = group.getUsers();
  var managers = [];
  for (var i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
    var user = users[i];
    if (group.getRole(user) == GroupsApp.Role.MANAGER) {
      managers.push(user);
    }
  }
  return managers;
}

Let us know what you end up building, or if you have any questions about this new functionality, by posting in the Apps Script forum.

Trevor Johnston   Trevor is a software engineer at Google. Before joining the Google Apps Script team in New York, he developed travel products in Switzerland and supported Google’s help centers in Dublin. Prior to joining Google, he worked on Lotus branded products at IBM’s Dublin Software Lab.