This article contains the following:
1. Google Accounts Manager (GAM) update
2. GAM Setup and Management
3. Review and Release Your Preview Report
4. Verifying a Preview Report
Google Accounts Manager (GAM) update
Clever is no longer supporting Google Accounts Manager so it is no longer being offered to new districts!
Here are a few alternative products that we recommend:
- The most popular paid service is Amplified IT
- This application is supported by Clever, and can be requested from your Clever district dashboard > Applications > Request Applications page by searching for 'Managed Sync for G Suite and Google Classroom'.
- If you have some technical expertise, and are able to export OneRoster CSV files, you can use the free 'School Directory Sync' tool from Google.
- See this article for details: G Suite Admin Help Article: Create CSV files
GAM Setup and Management
This article explains the process of setting up Google Accounts Manager to create and organize accounts in your Google Apps for Education domain.
Prepare Your Clever Data
Before you get started with setting up your sync, please make sure you have:
- Your SIS data synced with Clever, and;
- A verified Google Apps for Education domain.
If you have existing Google Apps accounts, please make sure they are entered into your SIS and synced to the 'email' field in Clever.
You can verify this by logging into your Clever Dashboard and browsing your student and teacher data. This will prevent Clever from creating duplicate accounts during the first sync.
If you need assistance syncing your student or teacher emails to Clever, please submit a support ticket.
Set Up a Clever Account in your Admin Console
In order for Clever to create and maintain your students and teachers’ Google Apps accounts, you will need to grant Clever access to your Google Apps account. All of the following steps will need to be taken in your Google Admin console:
1. Enable API Access
- Sign in to the Google Admin Console.
- From the dashboard, go to Security > API reference.
- Check Enable API access.
- Click Save changes.
2. Create an Admin Role for Clever, with API Privileges
- From the Admin console dashboard, go to Admin roles. To see Admin roles, you might have to click More Controls at the bottom.
- Click Create a new role.
- Enter a name and description for the role, then click Create.
- On the Privileges tab, check the following boxes for the Clever role - then save changes:

3. Create a user for 'Clever Sync'
- From the Admin console dashboard, go to Users.
- Select the organization unit to which you want to add the user. (You might need to click
to see organizational units.)
- Click
and select Add user.
- Enter the new user's First Name (Clever), Last Name (Sync), and Primary email address (cleversync@yourdomain.com).
- If your account has multiple domains associated with it, select the domain you want to add the user to.
- (Optional) Set the user's initial password.
- The Admin console generates a temporary password for the new user, using a mixed pattern of symbols, upper and lower case letters, and numbers. The length of the password will be the greater of the required minimum (eight), or the minimum password length you've set for your domain.
To set a different initial password, click Set password and enter the password twice. Google requires the password to be at least eight characters. See Password help for tips on creating a strong password.
- Click Create.
- Click Done.
4. Assign the Admin Role to the 'Clever Sync' user
- From the Google Admin console dashboard, go to Users.
- Click the Clever Sync user’s name to open their account page.
- Scroll to the bottom and click Show more.
- Click Admin roles and privileges.
Tip: To see the privileges granted by the user's current roles, click View Privileges.
- Click Manage roles.
- Choose the Admin role you created with the above privileges.
- Click Update roles.
Set Up GAM in Clever:
The following steps will need to be taken in your Clever Admin Dashboard:
4. Enter the Clever User's* email in the Google pop-up that appears:
*You will log in with the Clever user you just created - do not use your personal email associated with your Clever admin account. Once you log in, Google will ask you to authorize Clever Sync for Google Apps. Please click "Allow":
5. Select your settings, to let GAM know whether you'd like to provision accounts for students, teachers, or both:
6. You can also choose your own custom formats by choosing the "Custom Format" option and detailing the format you'd like using a fake user's information.
7. Confirm the settings you have chosen. Please confirm that you've selected the correct:
- Types of accounts to create/organize (students, teachers, or both);
- Username and password formats, and;
- Whether or not users will be prompted to change their passwords upon first login.
Review and Release Your Preview Report
Once you've successfully set up Google Accounts Manager, you'll receive a Preview Report explaining exactly what actions GAM will perform when updating your GAFE admin console. You'll see this message to review the Preview Report:
Each row in the report features an individual user’s Clever and/or Google Apps account information and one of three actions that will be taken for the user:
Match | Indicates that a user will have their Clever account connected to an existing GAFE account. Accounts are matched if they have identical email addresses in GAFE and the ‘Email’ field in Clever. |
Create | Indicates that a user will have a new GAFE account created based on the username formats the district selects while setting up GAM. |
Ignore | Applies to any GAFE users in your domain who are not in Clever. These users will not be modified when your district is released from Preview Mode. |
Here's an example of what you'll see in the Preview Report:
Verifying a Preview Report
Please follow the steps outlined below to review the data provided in this report:
- Confirm that the number of users in the Create and Match categories looks accurate.
- If there are more users in the Create category than expected, please verify that all existing Google emails are in the 'email' field in Clever.
- Review any users with numbers appended to their usernames. Check whether this is an expected conflict
- For example, if the sync creates ‘john.doe2@domain.org’, ensure that two separate users are named John Doe. If the conflict is not expected, refer to Step 1 (above) or contact Clever Support.
- Address any users with an 'Error' status. For more information on understanding and resolving errors in your sync Preview Report, please see this article.