Automate your school
with Google Sync.
Google Sync connects Realsmart to your Google Workspace domain and keeps your users, groups, classrooms and calendars in step, automatically. You decide exactly what syncs.
Google Sync
Realsmart connects directly to your Google Workspace domain, so the users, groups and classrooms you manage in your MIS and in Realsmart are mirrored to Google automatically. Nothing is switched on by default. You decide exactly what syncs, and you can preview the changes before anything goes live.
What Google Sync can do for you
Turn on only the pieces you need, from a single Sync services panel:
- Users, groups and passwords
- Staff and learner profile pictures
- Your organisation profile
- Seven group types, Teachers of, Houses, Registration groups, Role groups, Year groups, Subjects and Groups, each with a live preview of exactly which groups will be created before you switch anything on
Automatic organisational unit placement
Set up OU root paths for learners and mentors once, using templates like {YEAR}, {INTAKE_YEAR} and {TEACHING_LABEL}, and Realsmart will place every user in the right OU as they move through the school. A live placement preview shows you exactly how many members will land in each OU before you save.
Google Classroom, kept tidy all year round
Realsmart provisions your Google Classroom for you, and gives you the tools to keep it under control as the school year moves on:
- Automated Google Classroom provisioning from your MIS data, plus a manual “run a Classroom sync now” option whenever you need it
- A fallback owner for any classroom that would otherwise be left without one
- Choose what happens to classrooms between academic years: archive, leave as is, or archive at the start of next term, and reverse the decision if you change your mind
- Bulk reactivate last year’s classrooms in a couple of clicks
- A review screen for any classrooms that have ended up orphaned
Group membership and permissions
Set a default Google group role for mentors, then fine tune individual groups: who can post, who can view, whether the group is discoverable, and whether posts need moderating. Today these are bulk actions you apply per group. School wide defaults for these settings are on our roadmap as a follow up improvement.
Timetables, straight into Google Calendar
Realsmart turns your timetable data into a personal Google Calendar for every student and member of staff, refreshed automatically overnight. Turn on room booking to provision your rooms as bookable resource calendars too, and use our per user calendar tools to debug any user’s sync.
Already on Google? Bring your existing estate with you
Onboarding a school that already has Google accounts in place? Our cloud reconciliation tool gives you a read only audit of your existing Google estate and a guided, naming pattern based wizard to match it up with Realsmart, so you can see exactly what will be linked before Google Sync goes live.
See exactly what’s happening. Fix things yourself. No ticket required.
Every sync runs on a schedule, and you can trigger one on demand whenever you need to. Before Google Sync goes live for the first time, you can preview exactly what will happen to your users. Once it’s up and running, nothing happens to your data without you being able to see it, understand it, and put it right.
An honest status dashboard
One screen tells you exactly what’s syncing, what’s healthy, and what needs a look.
Errors, grouped and prioritised
No wall of noise. Just the issues that matter, in plain English, ranked by what to fix first.
A full activity feed and logs
Every change is logged and explained, so you can trace exactly what happened and when.
Getting started with Google Sync
To connect Google Sync you’ll need a Google Workspace super admin to set up a service account with domain wide delegation. We’ll guide you through this as part of onboarding. Here’s some of what you can configure from Realsmart once you’re connected.
Users, groups & passwords
Synced to Google, kept in step with your MIS.
Seven group types
Choose exactly which reach Google, with a live preview.
OU placement templates
Path templates like {YEAR} and {INTAKE_YEAR}.
Classroom behaviour
Including end of year archive transitions.
Timetable & room calendars
Pushed straight into Google Calendar, nightly.
Cloud reconciliation
Match your existing Google estate before going live.
Fallback classroom owners
No classroom is ever left without one.
Test before you trust it
Preview and connection test before anything goes live.
Run Google Sync and Entra Sync from one web application.
Do you also use Microsoft 365? Take a look at our Entra Sync page to see how the same glass approach, live status, plain English logs, full self service, works for Microsoft 365 too.