Skip to main content

Using Quarantine Manager in Google Apps

Fairly recently Quarantine Manager was introduced to Google Apps. This is a tool that works alongside SPAM filtering, objectionable content and content compliance rules you may have setup. Essentially the Quarantine Manager holds messages that fall into the categories you have defined for administrators to view before approving or rejecting the messages.

We have used this to block all SPAM messages going to students. This is a brief look at how to set it up.  Please note, it is very important to have authenticated email setup - this prevents things like group notifications every ending up in SPAM.

Step 1 - define some Quarantine Names

Head to email settings. You will find 'Manage Quarantines' below 'Authenticated email' near the bottom:
Click on 'ADD' - top left
Give the quarantine a name and description of what it is going to do. Decide if you just want to drop the message or send a rejection email. See example below:
This in itself does nothing - you have to link it to a compliance rule.

Step 2 - link to a compliance rule

Next go to 'User Setting' in the Gmail admin console. Select the sub-OU you want to apply the rule to and the type of compliance. In the example below I'm defining a SPAM policy - but it could be content compliance or objectionable content. 
Select edit:
Click the box at the bottom and choose the Quarantine you created. Click save and save again (appears bottom right).

This will Quarantine all SPAM (or whatever messages you set up) from this point on. Messages received prior to the rule being set up are not affected. However, SPAM folders are automatically cleared every 30 days - so within that time frame users SPAM folders will always be empty.

Step 3 - Review Quarantined messages

There you can select all the Quarantines you have set up - and allow messages if appropriate.

I've blanked out the usernames - but you can see the typical rubbish people get. These few steps prevent them from ever seeing any of it. The messages also still appear in Vault if you ever need to find them.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Delete a specific email using GAM

If a user send an inappropriate email to a loads of people or get stung by some sort of email exploit you can quickly delete the email from all of the recipients using a GAM command. Step 1 - get the email header Go into Google Vault and search for the offending user or someone known to have got the message. Click show details and grab the email ID. This will be a long string of characters followed by @mail.gmail.com Step 2 - find out who has the email Go into Google Vault and find the original message sent by the offending user. Look at the details to see who got it. Copy the list and dump it into a spreadsheet. Clean up to just a list of emails with a column header 'mail'. Save as a csv file. Step 3 - delete messages with GAM Put your CSV file in your GAM folder - this e.g. assumes its called mail.csv Run: gam csv mail.csv gam user ~mail delete messages query rfc822msgid: MESSAGEIDHERE doit The alternative nuke option is: gam all users delete messages query rf

Adding subdomains to G Suite

This is how I add subdomains (so basically new schools) to out G suite setup. I've got these steps documented on a scruffy set of notes that I've now got in Keep - so time to document them - for myself as much as anyone else! Steps in order (roughly) Add the new domain Verify the new domain Add MX records to hosting Add SPF record for Google to hosting Turn on email authentication Add DMARC record to hosting Setup custom Directory and restrict students OU to this. Create an admin quarantine for the domain. Configure SPAM setting for the domain. Turn on and off services as appropriate. Map a blank Google Site to the naked domain - if required. Setup some basic groups - allstaff, allusers (for directory) and students with appropriate permissions. Deploy custom wallpapers. So the steps in a bit of detail: Add the new domain & Verify ownership Click on Domains in the admin console: Add/remove domains followed by "add a domain" At this

My favorite GAM commands - well a few of them at least!

Where would be without GAM? Paying for expensive syncing tools or doing tedious manual tasks in the admin console. GAM can automate most things you might want to do in G Suite. So these are a few of my favourite commands - one I use either as part of a batch file - or just standalone. There are loads more - but these are ones that are used daily. Classroom Create a spreadsheet of all your domains classes -  gam print courses todrive Create a spreadsheet of a teacher's classes:  gam print courses teacher fred@mydomain.com todrive Bulk create classes: gam csv classes.csv gam create course alias ~alias name ~alias section ~subject teacher ~teacher status ACTIVE where classes.csv is a list of classes you want to make. Add teachers: gam csv teachers.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~teacher Add students: gam csv students.csv gam course ~alias add teacher ~student Sync Students (in this example to a group - but could be an ou/csv file) gam csv groups.csv gam course ~g