Respond to a service disruption

Your company needs a plan for how to respond to a service disruption that affects your primary provider.

Train your employees how to use their Workspace accounts

Employees should know how to sign in to Google Workspace before an outage occurs. Additionally, we recommend developing training materials for getting tasks done in Google Workspace. You can repurpose the following help articles:

When an outage happens

Here are some steps you can follow during an outage. Work with your Google partner if you want further training, change management, or support.

  1. If you're using the same domain for both your primary provider and Workspace: Switch your domain's MX records to smtp.google.com. Learn more.

  2. Notify users to switch to Workspace.

  3. Employees sign in to Workspace:

    1. Employees must know their username and password
    2. We recommend employees use a security key
    3. Change password on first login

  4. Employees have immediate access to all Google Workspace services. If you purchased Business Continuity Plus, employees may have access to their synchronized email, calendar, and chats.

  5. Continue using Workspace until service is restored with your primary provider.

After an outage is resolved

When service is restored with your primary provider, we recommend the following:

  1. If you changed your MX records when the outage started, switch them back to you primary provider.
  2. Export your organization's data.
  3. Check your default retention rules in Vault to ensure your data will be deleted after you've exported your data.