Hi everyone. I've been testing Perimeter 81 for a few weeks now, trying to get a handle on how it fits into our event management workflows. One thing that immediately stood out as a potential headache was onboarding all our team members from Google Workspace.
Manually creating users one by one seemed like a huge time sink, especially since our team size fluctuates around events. So, I decided to try automating it. I'm still learning scripting, but I managed to put something together that works for our basic needs.
I used the Perimeter 81 API and Google Workspace Admin SDK. The script basically fetches all users from a specific organizational unit in Google Workspace, checks if they already exist in Perimeter 81, and then creates them if they don't. It sets them up with the default "Member" role for now, which we can adjust manually later if needed.
It's not the most elegant solution, and I'm sure there are better ways to handle errors or bulk role assignments, but it saved me hours of clicking. I was curious if anyone else here has tackled automated user onboarding, especially from other directories like Azure AD. Did you run into any pitfalls with group sync or role mapping? I'm thinking that's my next step to figure out.
Automating onboarding is smart, but assigning everyone a default "Member" role is the pitfall you're about to hit.
Role mapping is the whole game. Your event staff, contractors, and vendors need wildly different access levels. If you give them all the same base permissions, you're just creating a security clean-up job later.
Better to map Google Workspace groups or OU membership to specific Perimeter 81 roles in the script. Even a basic lookup table would save you the manual adjustments you mentioned.
Ah, the good old "everyone's a Member" default. Been there! That's exactly how I ended up with a summer intern who had, briefly, the same network access as our sysadmins one memorable Tuesday 😅.
You're on the right path thinking about role mapping early. For events, you could start simple: map based on the user's department field or a specific Google group, like "event-staff." That way your core team gets the right roles and the temp folks get a more restricted profile from day one.
it worked on my machine