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Google Admin Console

Updated on Aug 11, 2026

Description

Google Admin Console is the management interface for a Google Workspace domain, where administrators manage user accounts, groups, and organizational units. Improvado connects to it through the Google Admin SDK and extracts your workspace directory data into your data warehouse alongside the rest of your marketing and analytics stack.

Before you start

The account you authorize must have permission to read the directory in your Google Workspace domain. A regular member account without administrative privileges cannot read the user directory, and the connection will return no accounts.

How to set up Google Admin Console

Follow this setup guide to connect Google Admin Console to Improvado.

Click the Make a new connection button on the Connections page and select Google Admin Console in the Data sources catalog.

Click on the Google Admin Console tile.

Choose an authorization option — OAuth for a single administrator account, or Service Account to read the directory across the whole workspace.

OAuth (recommended)

Before authorizing, make sure you are signed in to the Google Workspace account you want to extract directory data from.

On the Google Admin Console tile, select the OAuth authentication option and click Authorize. You will be redirected to Google to sign in.

Review the requested read-only permissions and click Allow. You will be redirected back to Improvado automatically.

Service Account (Workspace)

Use this option to extract data for all users in your Google Workspace domain rather than for a single signed-in account. It requires a Google Cloud service account with domain-wide delegation enabled.

In the Google Cloud Console, create or select a project and create a service account.

Enable the Admin SDK API and the People API for the project under APIs & Services > Library.

On the service account, create a key of type JSON and download it. Note the service account's Client ID (the numeric client_id in the JSON file) — you need it in the next step.

In your Google Admin Console, go to Security > Access and data control > API controls and open Manage Domain Wide Delegation. Click Add new, paste the service account's Client ID, and authorize exactly these two scopes:

  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/admin.directory.user.readonly
  • https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts.other.readonly

Back in Improvado, on the Google Admin Console tile, select the Service Account (Workspace) authentication option, upload the service account JSON key file in the Service Account JSON field, and confirm.

After the connection process is completed successfully, the Google Admin Console connection will appear in your Connected sources list.

When the connection status is Active, and the account status column shows a number of accounts, you can move on to data extraction.

To extract data from the connected sources, check the instructions on how to set up data extraction.

Note

  • Improvado requests read-only access only. It reads your directory data, but it never creates, edits, or deletes anything in your Google Workspace.
  • Domain-wide delegation grants the service account access on behalf of users in your domain. Authorize only the two scopes listed above — no broader scope is required for this connection.
  • If the connection is Active but the account status column stays empty, the authorized account most likely lacks directory read permission in Google Workspace. Re-authorize with an administrator account, or use the Service Account option.

Release notes

You can find information about the latest API changes in the official Google Admin SDK Directory API reference.

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