Google groups admin SDK owners and members

Question

I'm provisioning groups in my Google Apps domain via the Admin SDK. From the info at https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/directory/v1/reference/members it tells me that "An OWNER does not need to be a member of the group"

I presume this to mean that if I want to set an owner to also be a member, I would need to add a member object with role "OWNER" as well as adding that same user with role "MEMBER". So I've tried adding a user to a group as an "OWNER", but when I then try to add the same user as a "MEMBER" I get a 409 error "Member already exists".

This leads me to believe that an Owner is automatically a member of the group, contrary to the documentation. If this is not the case, how does one create an owner that is not a member of the group?

Answer 1

You are correct. In the old Provisioning API, membership and ownership were separate attributes. However, as far as the Admin SDK is concerned, owners and managers of a group are also always members of the group. Removing them as owners or managers also removes them as members.

So there is no way to make a user an owner of a group but not a member via the Admin SDK.