- Organization
- Lift Schools, a 57-school trust
- Scale
- 5,000 employees and 30,000 students
- Industry
- Education
- Processes automated
- Google Workspace administration, Acceptable Use Policy enforcement, Gmail signature management, and recurring IT operations
- Previous approach
- Manual administration combined with Google Apps Script, with limited team bandwidth to build and maintain larger workflows
- Results
- 100% Acceptable Use Policy completion, standardized Gmail signatures across 57 domains, significant IT time savings, fewer support tickets and less admin overhead
Lift Schools needed more than a way to run individual Google Admin console actions. The IT team needed complete workflows around those actions — triggers, rules, reminders, deadlines, user communication, enforcement, and auditability — without using scarce Apps Script development time for every process. Zenphi became the Google Admin tool the team uses to automate recurring Google Workspace administration at scale.
Too many Google Workspace administration tasks for a small IT team to handle manually
Like many education IT teams, Lift Schools relied on a combination of manual administration and Google Apps Script to manage Google Workspace. That approach worked for individual tasks, but it became difficult to scale across 57 schools and thousands of users.
Tasks such as sending policy links, chasing acknowledgements, and updating Gmail signatures repeatedly pulled the team back into routine administration.
Users could ignore Acceptable Use Policy communications, leaving the IT team without a reliable way to ensure every staff member completed the process.
The team could script individual Google Workspace tasks, but building and maintaining end-to-end workflows required coding capacity they did not have available.
The requirement was Google Admin console task automation inside complete operational processes — including triggers, reminders, conditional actions, and enforcement.
“We needed to automate inside workflows — not just run one-off tasks. Apps Script required too much bandwidth and wasn’t sustainable.”
A no-code Google Admin tool for workflows around Google Workspace management
Lift Schools adopted Zenphi to automate Google Workspace management without writing a new script for every process. Instead of treating each Admin console action as an isolated task, the team can build the surrounding logic visually and connect administration to user events, deadlines, notifications, forms, and policy rules.
This makes Google Admin console tasks automation practical for processes that extend beyond a single command — especially when the workflow needs to run consistently across dozens of schools and thousands of accounts.
1. Automated Acceptable Use Policy enforcement
Lift Schools turned policy acknowledgement from an email-driven exercise into an enforceable Google Workspace workflow.
The process starts when the staff member first logs in, rather than at account creation, so the policy workflow begins when the user is actually active.
The workflow tracks the deadline automatically instead of relying on an administrator to maintain a follow-up list.
Staff receive a sequence of reminders before the deadline, removing repetitive follow-up work from the IT team.
If the policy is still not accepted, the workflow automatically restricts account access according to the process designed by the IT team.
The result was 100% Acceptable Use Policy completion across staff.
2. Bulk Gmail signature management across 57 domains
Lift Schools also automated another deceptively time-consuming Google Workspace administration task: maintaining consistent Gmail signatures across a multi-domain environment.
Employees provide their name and role through a simple form rather than asking IT to create or update each signature manually.
Zenphi dynamically inserts the appropriate school logo, phone number, and address.
The process produces consistent, error-free signatures across 57 domains without requiring IT to edit each user account individually.
Paul Kerton on automating Google Workspace administration at Lift Schools
Paul Kerton, Google Workspace Administrator at Lift Schools, explains the automation project and the impact of moving recurring administration into Zenphi workflows.
The same model turns repetitive IT requests into controlled workflows
At Lift Schools’ scale, the operational problem is volume. A simple Google Workspace task becomes expensive when it has to be repeated across thousands of users, multiple schools, and dozens of domains. The policy and signature workflows solve that by turning repeatable administration into standardized processes with clear inputs, rules, and automated actions.
The same architecture is useful for high-volume IT access request automation: collect a structured request, validate it against policy, route approval when needed, execute the Google Workspace action, and preserve a consistent record of what happened. Lift Schools’ documented use cases focus on policy enforcement and Gmail administration, but they demonstrate the operational pattern required to scale repetitive IT work.
From manual Google Workspace administration to scalable, enforceable workflows
| Area | Before Zenphi | With Zenphi |
|---|---|---|
| Policy acknowledgement | Email communication could be ignored | 100% Acceptable Use Policy completion |
| Policy follow-up | IT had to chase users manually | Six reminders sent automatically within a 21-day window |
| Policy enforcement | Completion depended on user response and IT follow-up | Account access can be restricted automatically when the deadline is missed |
| Gmail signatures | Repetitive manual updates | Standardized, error-free signatures across 57 domains |
| Workflow development | Apps Script required coding bandwidth | No-code workflows can be built and changed without Apps Script expertise |
| IT workload | More time spent on repetitive Google Workspace administration | Significant time savings, fewer support tickets, and less admin overhead |
More time for higher-value IT work
The case reports significant time savings for the IT team, fewer support tickets and less administrative overhead. With repetitive Google Workspace management handled automatically, staff can spend more time supporting classroom technology and learning initiatives instead of repeatedly carrying out routine administration.
“Zenphi’s support team built us a working prototype in 48 hours. That’s the kind of partnership we need.”
Google Admin automation without turning every process into a scripting project
The Lift Schools case illustrates the difference between automating an individual Google Admin task and automating the business process around it. Scripts can execute an action. A workflow may also need to wait for an event, collect information, branch based on conditions, send reminders, enforce a deadline, update an account, and log the outcome.
Using Zenphi as a Google Admin tool lets the IT team automate those complete processes while retaining the precision needed for Google Workspace administration. It also allows automation to expand at the pace the organization chooses rather than requiring every process to be rebuilt at once.
Expanding beyond the first Google Workspace administration workflows
Lift Schools is planning additional automation beyond the current IT workflows, including HR processes such as syncing staff data with Google Contacts, security automations such as data loss prevention, and training-delivery automation.
Questions about this case study
What Google Workspace administration tasks did Lift Schools automate?
The documented case focuses on Acceptable Use Policy enforcement and bulk Gmail signature management, alongside broader Google Admin automation and recurring IT operations.
How did Lift Schools achieve 100% Acceptable Use Policy completion?
The workflow starts on a staff member’s first login, gives the user 21 days to complete the policy, sends six automated reminders, and can restrict account access if the policy is still not accepted by the deadline.
How does the Gmail signature workflow work?
Staff enter their name and role in a Google Form. Zenphi then inserts the correct school logo, phone number, and address and applies a standardized signature. The case reports consistent, error-free signatures across 57 domains.
Why did Lift Schools move beyond Apps Script?
The issue was not that Apps Script could not perform Google Workspace actions. The team needed complete workflows around those actions, and maintaining them in code required more development bandwidth than was sustainable.
Can the same approach be used for high-volume IT access requests?
Yes. The same workflow structure can be used to collect requests, validate them, route approvals, execute Google Workspace changes, and record the outcome. The Lift Schools case itself documents policy enforcement and Gmail administration; see IT access request automation for the access-request pattern in more detail.
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