What Are Organizational Units in Google Workspace: Quick Introduction

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Google Workspace administrators

How organizational units in Google Workspace work

Organizational Units are what you use to group types of users in your domain. Another way to put it is that they create a structure that contains Google Workspace user accounts and settings.
One user in Google Workspace can only be in a single organizational unit – in other words, one user can’t be in multiple organizational units
The organizational unit structure can be used for more than just sorting users visually by categories. When you add admin settings at Google Admin, you can configure many settings per organizational unit. You add a setting, and it applies to all users who are in the organizational unit you select.

This image shows the Users list, filtered to show only users from an organizational unit named Sub OU #1, as you can see in the top left corner.

The organizational unit structure

The top-level organizational unit is always named after your primary domain – workspace123.com in the example above.
You can create sub-organizational units, and group your users by some kind of category, such as their job responsibilities, or by their account settings, such as service access.
The category could be anything, for example, “IT team” or something else that unites users who are closely related.
Account settings could be, for example, users’ service access to Gmail. You could have an OU named “Gmail disabled” for all users who are not allowed to access Gmail. It could have to do with other settings, too – you could call it “2-Step Enforcement Enabled” for users with 2-step enforcement.

Use organizational units to apply settings to groups of users

Organizational units contain global admin-level settings that apply to the user accounts. You are allowed to apply admin settings to specific Organizational Units. This way, you can apply a setting only to particular users.

When configuring a setting, look for the organizational units on the left. You will configure the setting for the organizational unit you select and its sub-units.

In the example image above (you can click to expand it), you can see that Sub OU #1 is selected on the left, and now we can configure any of the settings on the right for it, such as Append footer, Restrict delivery, or Content compliance. Only users in Sub OU #1 will get the setting applied to their accounts.

For example, you may want to turn off Gmail for five users.

How to apply settings to one specific Google Workspace user only

Create an organizational unit precisely for this user only
Move the user there
Apply admin settings to that organizational unit

Organizational units and multiple domains

Since it’s impossible to apply different settings to users based on their domain, you can consider using organizational units as a workaround.

How to add organizational units

See how to create a new OU here.

What Are Organizational Units in Google Workspace: Quick Introduction

Quick and easy-to-follow guide for Google Workspace administrators

How organizational units in Google Workspace work

The organizational unit structure

Use organizational units to apply settings to groups of users

How to apply settings to one specific Google Workspace user only

Organizational units and multiple domains

How to add organizational units

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What Are Organizational Units (OUs) in Google Workspace

Add or Update OUs in Google Workspace

Move Users to Other OUs

Delete OUs

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