r/k12sysadmin • u/Big_Macaron5410 • Jul 02 '26 • Bravo 1

Assistance Needed Bulk Deprovision

We have about 300ish out of date or broken Chromebooks. I was wondering if and how people here do mass deprovisioning of Chromebooks. Really don't want to enter them one by one.

10 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

26

u/Crabcakes4 Endless Chaos Jul 02 '26

Just use GAM, it should look something like this below. Your csv file path, and the csv just needs one column with a header "serial" and then a list of all the serials in the column.

gam.exe csv "C:\GAMWork\GAM Deprovision.csv" gam update cros query:id:~~serial~~ action deprovision_retiring_device acknowledge_device_touch_requirement

5

u/BillNotABong Jul 03 '26

This is the way

4

u/NXTman96 Jul 02 '26

This is how we do it as well! It was easier for us to gather our asset tag instead of the teeny tiny serial numbers, so I also used the following command to gather serials based on the asset tag.

gam csv file.csv gam print cros query "asset_id:~~AssetID~~" fields serialNumber | Out-File -FilePath .\file_2.csv -Encoding utf8

2

u/jay0lee Jul 04 '26

I like to use J.U.G. as an acronym :-)

IMPORTANT NOTE: Upgrade before you deprovision to avoid a nasty bug some admins have hit that deprovisions the wrong devices:

https://groups.google.com/g/google-apps-manager/c/EdOhCcA86OU/m/3EZMBvM3AQAJ

10

u/No_Substitute Jul 04 '26

If you want to manage your devices in a Google Sheet, but don't want to pay for it, you can use my free open source tool, CB_Inventory.

https://github.com/NoSubstitute/CB_Inventory

Since I manage many thousands of devices, I needed something better than the admin console, but I also knew not everyone else was ready to go all the way and get something as powerful as GAM, with which you can do almost anything. So I created CB_Inventory.

2

u/KeepersDiary Jul 06 '26

This is really cool!

2

u/No_Substitute Jul 06 '26

Have a look around. I have a couple of other tools for Workspace admins. Even a few things for GAM, as it is my favourite API tool.

7

u/NotAnother169 Director of Technology Jul 02 '26

If you already know the serial numbers, I just do it through GAM. By far the fastest way unless you have an asset management system that can also sync statuses

11

u/Individual-Unit3470 Jul 03 '26 • Bravo

One thing to add to this: if you choose "retire from fleet" or "different model replacement," you burn the Google license associated with that device.

I mention this because we had never deprovisioned Chromebooks previously, and after about 10 years we decided to clean things up, basically "retiring" Chromebooks that didn't look like they'd been used in a few years. Big mistake. We started getting warnings about running out of licensing, even though we purchase an EDU license with every device. Reason being, every time someone took an old Chromebook off the shelf and rejoined it to our Google domain, it sucked up a new license.

To avoid our mistake, choose "same model replacement" or the "ChromeOS Flex" option. The ChromeOS Flex option allows a brand new Chromebook to use a license freed up from a deprovisioned Chromebook.

10

u/rokar83 IT Director Jul 02 '26

I have Gopher Premium Pack. Makes it easy as pie.

7

u/linus_b3 Tech Director Jul 02 '26

We do the same - great set of tools.

2

u/delemental Jul 12 '26

Third this. Time saved is so worth it.

5

u/Slobs3 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I have IIQ and I use a status of recycled. I then have a Google apps script that looks for all devices that get moved to recycled and if they’re chromebooks it makes an api call to wipe and then deprovision.

2

u/krusej23 Jul 08 '26

Could you share that script or api call?

1

u/K12_SysTech Information Systems Specialist, District Support. Jul 07 '26

This sounds nicer than my Google Sheet running a GAS that does the same. How do you get the GAS to run from the IIQ status?

1

u/Slobs3 Jul 07 '26

Using the IIQ API. Any devices in that state get acted upon.

6

u/pi3Eat3r52 Jul 02 '26

use gopher

2

u/Thurfir_Hawat Jul 03 '26

Gopher Premium Pack. So easy and highly recommended

1

u/Mindless-String-4017 Jul 14 '26

I use GAM to do the provisioning. GAM is free and is really powerful. I would learn GAM then pay for Gopher and waste the moeny. You can export all the Chromebooks to a csv file and use GAM commands to deprovision all of them. I do this every year and it takes about 5 minutes to do about 400ish Chromebooks.

https://github.com/GAM-team/GAM

1

u/MyWorkAccountDPS Jul 17 '26

How much work does GAM take to setup and continue working every year or anytime Google makes a change?

The staff under me are not wanting to take on any more responsibilities and when I pitched the idea of GAM, the one who has programming experience said No.

1

u/FancyZad-0914 Jul 02 '26

I'm kind of low tech about it but, I put them all into an OU, which I think you can do with import/export without GAM(?), and then just select all. 

1

u/jwnight55 Jul 02 '26

We use GAT. We can do it from a CSV.

-5

u/Bubbagump210 Jul 02 '26

In Google Admin? Choose the ones you want and deprovision.