Preventing Student to Student Emails

Many times schools are wanting to limit communications between students in order to provide a safer environment where students can learn to use email appropriately. The most flexible method for preventing mail flow is via Content Compliance rules. With the proper setup, you can configure a set of rules that will only allow communications from one Org Unit, Group, or combination of the two to openly communicate with the users within an Org Unit.

Designating approved senders

When setting up a designation of who can email an OU, we first want to add a header of the approved senders. Within the content compliance rules for OU you are wanting to be able to communicate with users, create a Routing Rule that will add a header onto the message. This header will be what is searched for on the students end to block all messages that don’t contain the header.

If desired, you can limit the rule further by only applying to certain Group Memberships or only when the message is addressing individuals that match a certain naming schema or sub-domain with the options found under “More Options” below part 3 of the rule:

This will stop all internal messages that do not contain the header setup on the approved senders OrgUnit from being delivered to students. Depending on what action you choose in the recipient’s rule will determine what happens to messages that don’t match the rule.

Read the details on Gmail confidential mode and how to use it for EDU

Configuring recipient rule

On the OU you wish to restrict the setting, students in this case, and add a content compliance rule to block all internal receiving messages that match the expression. Change the expression type to “Advanced content match” and set the Location to Full headers, Match type to “Not matches regex” and “Regexp” to the value of your header from the first rule:

This will stop all internal messages that do not contain the header setup on the approved senders OrgUnit from being delivered to students. Depending on what action you choose in the recipient’s rule will determine what happens to messages that don’t match the rule.

Using the same principles here, we can restrict communications to only users within a given school so that students from High School are unable to send messages to younger students. If you would like to know more on how to customize these rules for your domain, contact us or visit our support page to find out other ways we can assist you with technical projects within your Google for Education environment.

Find this article useful? Share it!

  • Stephen Gale
    Technical Support Analyst

  • About the Author:

    Stephen lives in Utah and enjoys the puzzle of investigating users’ problems and finding potential solutions. A recovering/reformed Gamer, Stephen throws himself into his passion for staying on top of all things Chrome OS and Chromebook related. Prior to joining Amplified IT, Stephen served as a Network Admin in a Therapeutic Boarding School and an IT director, where he implemented Google Workspace for Education. Stephen has studied computer science and security at Weber State University, Western Governors University. A self-anointed honor, Stephen likes Chromebooks more than almost anyone else in the world.