How to Add Company-Owned Android Devices in Google Workspace

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

Requirements to add Android devices as company-owned

This feature is only available if you’re using Google Workspace Business Plus; Enterprise; Education Standard and Plus; G Suite Business or Cloud Identity Premium.
It’s supported for Android 6.0 and up, and you must enable Advanced Android Mobile Management.

Benefits of adding Android company-owned devices

You can gain even greater control over devices your company owns, track your inventory, and see device type and user information.
Devices listed in your company-owned inventory can automatically access Google Workspace data, bypassing the need for admin approval.
To add devices to your company-owned devices inventory, you must import a list containing the serial numbers of your devices.
Once a user adds their Google Workspace account to a company-owned device, it gets assigned to them.
Note that if a user starts using a device before adding its details to your Admin console, you can still add it as company-owned. However, the user might have to factory reset it and re-enroll.

How to add company-owned Android devices step-by-step with images

Step 1

In Google Admin at https://admin.google.com, click Devices > Mobile & endpoints > Company owned inventory in the menu on the left.

Step 2

You can see a list of all company-owned devices here. Click Add a filter to filter the list and find specific devices faster.

Step 3

To start adding devices, click the + icon on the top right.

Step 4

Now next to 1, click Select device type and choose Android.

Then click the Download import template link that appears below the device type.

Step 5

The template gets downloaded to your device in .csv format.

Step 6

You can open the .csv file using Excel or other spreadsheet editing programs, but in this case, we’ll do it using Google Sheets.

So first, upload it to Google Drive.

Step 7

If your Drive settings are configured to convert files to Google formats automatically, you just need to click the upload notification, and it will open in Google Sheets.

If not, you’ll see the Open with option on top when you click the upload notification. Click it and select Google Sheets.

Step 8

Create a list of company-owned Android devices

Now the template is open in Google Sheets.

Enter all devices’ serial numbers in separate rows under the Serial Number column.

Optionally, you may wish to track devices by Asset Tag. Asset tags are made up by you just to keep track of your devices more easily. If you don’t include asset tags, remove the Asset Tag column header.

To find a device’s serial number, go to the Settings, tap About phone, then look for “IMEI.”

Alternatively, if a user has added their Google Workspace account to the device, you will see details about the device in the Devices list, and you can see the serial number there.

Step 9

To get serial number info from the Admin console, in another tab, go to https://admin.google.com and click the Devices icon.

Step 10

Click Mobile devices.

Step 11

On the right side of the list, click the Manage columns gear icon.

Step 12

Click Add new column at the bottom and add the Serial Number column.

You can rearrange these columns and place the serial numbers one before the others for your convenience. Click and hold the little icon that appears on the left of the column’s name in this list, then drag it up.

Then click SAVE.

Step 13

You can now see devices’ serial numbers under the Serial Number column. In this image, it appears there because we’ve dragged it next to the Ownership column as described in the previous step.

Step 14

Once you’ve added all serial numbers to your spreadsheet, click File on top, then select Download as > Comma-separated values (.csv, current sheet). The new updated template gets downloaded to your device.

Step 15

Upload the list of company-owned Android devices

Now to finish the process, click UPLOAD FILE and select the spreadsheet you just downloaded.

Then click IMPORT.

When the upload completes, your devices will show up in the company-owned devices list. It may take some time for all devices to show up if you’re uploading a large number.