The Security Risk of Orphaned Groups
Google Groups are often created ad-hoc for projects, social events, or temporary teams. Over time, the owners of these groups may leave the organization, leaving the group "orphaned."
An orphaned group (one without an Owner or Manager) is a significant administrative burden and security risk:
- No one is responsible for membership management.
- External members may remain in the group indefinitely.
- Spam settings and posting permissions go unmonitored.
The Challenge of Scale
For small organizations, a simple loop through all groups works fine. However, Google Apps Script has a strict 6-minute execution limit.
If you have 10,000+ groups, a simple script will time out and fail before finishing. Our solution is built specifically to handle this "Enterprise Scale" problem.
Solution: Intelligent Batch Processing
🔄 State Preservation
The script uses the PropertiesService to remember exactly where it left off. If
it processes 500 groups and stops, the next run starts at group 501.
This allows you to process an unlimited number of groups by simply running the script repeatedly (or letting the auto-trigger do it for you) until the job is done.
Batch Processing Audit Tool
Capabilities:
- Processes groups in batches of 500 (configurable) to avoid timeouts.
- Automatically sets up a trigger to continue processing every 10 minutes.
- Generates a final report only when ALL groups have been scanned.
How to Run
There are two ways to execute this script depending on your preference:
Option A: Fully Automatic (Recommended)
- Run the function
createAutoBatchTrigger()ONE time. - The script will create a trigger for itself.
- It will run every 10 minutes, processing a chunk of groups each time.
- When finished, it deletes its own trigger and emails you the final report.
Option B: Manual Stepping
- Run
auditGroupsWithoutOwners()manually. - Wait for it to finish the batch.
- Run it again. Repeat until you see the "Audit Complete" message in the logs.