Create and manage a Target Audience
Target Audience
This feature is currently available for Google Drive and Docs and Google Chat services. Supported editions for this feature: (Drive, Docs, & Chat) Business Plus; Enterprise; Education Standard, and Education Plus. (Drive & Docs only) Business Standard; G Suite Business; Nonprofits.
What is Target Audience?
Target audiences are groups of people—such as departments or teams—that you can recommend for users to share their items with. You can add them to users' sharing settings in a Google service, such as Google Drive or Chat, to encourage users to share items with a more specific or limited audience rather than your entire organization.
Create a target audience
As a Groups administrator, you can create a target audience to help users share items with appropriate departments, teams, or groups.
After you create a target audience, you can add members and apply it to a Google service, such as Google Drive, to make it available in users' sharing settings.
- In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
- Click Create target audience.
- Under Name, enter a name for the target audience that helps users understand who's a member (40 characters maximum).
- (Optional) Under Description, enter a description that helps users understand the purpose of the target audience (150 characters maximum). The description appears when a user points their cursor to the target audience in their sharing settings.
- Click Create.
- (Optional) To add members (groups or users) to the target audience, click Add members.
Important: Because a new target audience doesn't have any members, make sure you add them before applying the audience to a Google service. - (Optional; To apply the target audience to a Google service, click Apply to Google services, and choose the service.
(Optional) To create more target audiences, click Create another. - (Optional) If you don't want to add members or apply the target audience to a Google service now, click Done.
Manage members of a target audience
Add members to a target audience
You can add both groups and individual users as members of a target audience. Once you add a member, they have immediate access to any items shared with the target audience.
To add members
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
-
In the Target audiences list, click the name of the target audience.
-
And then click Members > Add members.
-
Search for groups or users by entering the first few letters of their email addresses. When the group or user you want appears, select it.
-
When you finish selecting members, click Add.
Remove members from a target audience
If you remove a member from a target audience, they'll no longer have access to any files shared with the audience (unless those files are also shared with them directly or through another group).
To remove one or more members:
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
-
In the list, click the name of the target audience.
-
Click Members.
-
(Optional) To remove one member: In the Members list, point to the member and click Remove.
-
(Optional) To remove multiple members:
- In the Members list, check the box for each member you want to remove.
- Above the list of members, click Remove members.
Set target audiences for a Google service
Apply, remove, or reorder target audiences
As an administrator, you can:
-
Apply target audiences to a Google service, to recommend them as sharing options for all or specific users.
-
Set the default target audience for users.
-
Change the order in which target audiences appear for users.
-
Remove target audiences to stop recommending them to users.
At least one target audience needs to be applied to a Google service. By default, a predefined audience that includes all users in your organization is applied to any services that have target audience settings. You can use the predefined audience or replace it with another audience you created.
Before you begin
Review important information about applying a target audience
-
You can apply up to 5 target audiences to a Google service for all or specific users.
-
To apply target audiences to service, you need to create a policy for an organizational unit or configuration group. You can't apply target audiences directly to a user's account.
Important: For Chat discoverable spaces, you can create a target audiences policy only for the top-level organizational unit. This policy will apply to all child organizational units.
-
You can set the default—or primary—target audience, which appears first in a user's list of sharing recommendations. You can also set the order of the other audiences that appear in the list.
-
When you apply a target audience to a service, it appears in a user's sharing settings for that service.
Review important information about removing a target audience
If you remove a target audience:
-
It's no longer available in users' sharing settings for the service for any items (such as documents or Chat discoverable spaces), except in items that are currently shared with that audience.
-
The default sharing option in users' sharing settings becomes Restricted—owners must add people they want to share the item with until they choose another target audience.
-
For Drive, members of the deleted target audience can still access any items previously shared with them. To prevent access to a shared item, you'll need to either remove members from the audience or delete the audience.
-
For Chat discoverable spaces, only members who previously joined a space can continue to access it. These members can continue to access the space even if the removed target audience is deleted.
-
After you remove a target audience from a service, you can permanently Delete the target audience.
How to set target audiences for a Google service?
To set target audiences for a Google service, you can go either directly to the sharing settings for that service or to your Target audiences list.
Set target audiences for Google Drive and Docs
For details about setting target audiences for Google Drive and Docs, go to Set general access options for file sharing in Drive.
Set target audiences for Google Chat
For details about setting target audiences for Google Chat discoverable spaces, see Google Chat sharing settings.
Alternatively, you can start setting target audiences from your Target audiences list:
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
-
In the Target audiences list, click the name of the target audience you want to apply to or remove from a Google service.
-
At the upper-right corner of the page, click Apply to Google service. You'll be taken to the sharing settings for the service.
Next steps: Follow the instructions below for the service you want to set target audiences for.
Edit a target audience's details
Change a target audience's name or description
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
-
In the list, click the name of the target audience.
-
On the left, click Edit details.
-
(Optional) Under Name, enter a new name for the target audience (40 characters maximum).
-
(Optional) Under Description, enter a new description for the target audience (150 characters maximum).
-
Click Save.
Delete a target audience
Before you begin
-
Important: Make sure you remove the target audience from any services it's applied to; otherwise, you can't delete the audience.
-
If you delete a target audience, members will no longer have access to any files shared with the audience (unless those files are also shared with members directly or through another group).
-
Members' accounts and member groups aren't deleted.
-
You can't delete the pre-defined target audience, which includes all users in your organization. This audience has the name of your organization.
Note: To stop using a target audience temporarily, you can remove it from Google services instead.
To delete a target audience
-
In the Admin console, go to Menu > Directory > Target audiences.
- In the Target audiences list, point to the target audience you want to delete and click Delete.
Or click the name of the target audience, and on the left, click Delete. - In the confirmation message, click Delete.
Please check the below-supporting article for your further reference:
About target audiences - Google Workspace Admin Help