It is important to understand how to manage your school Chrome Extensions on the respective Organisational Units. By understanding and using these settings, you can balance getting the benefits of automatic updates with having control when needed to keep things stable and compatible in your school's digital environment.

Default Behavior: If you have not pinned a version or set a specific policy to restrict updates, Chrome extensions will continue to update automatically by default. You do not need to take any additional action to enable automatic updates.

Automatic Extension Update:

To ensure that your school Chromebooks automatically update to the latest version of an extension available in the Chrome Web Store, you should not pin a version in the Version Pinning setting. By default, Chrome extensions will update automatically, allowing users to benefit from the latest features, bug fixes, and security updates provided by the extension developers.

Automatic Updates:

Chrome extensions are designed to automatically update whenever a new version is released on the Chrome Web Store.

Frequency of Updates:

Google Chrome checks for extension updates several times a day, so updates are usually applied quickly after they are released.

Benefits:

Users get the latest features, enhancements, and security updates automatically, without any manual effort.

Steps 

• Sign in to your Google Admin console at admin.google.com.
• On the Admin console Home page, go to "Devices" > "Chrome" > "Apps & extensions".
• Click on "Users & browsers".
• Choose the organizational unit (OU) for which you are using and ensure the Version Pinng setting is set to NOT PINNED

Controlled Extension Update:

When you decide to pin a specific version of a Chrome extension to your Organizational Unit (OU), you're essentially ensuring that all users within that OU have access to the same version of the extension. This can be particularly important if your organization relies on certain functionalities or if newer versions may introduce changes that could impact workflows or compatibility with other systems.

#Note: By pinning an app/extension, this app/extension won't get any updates, including security and compatibility updates.

Steps 

• Sign in to your Google Admin console at admin.google.com.
• On the Admin console Home page, go to "Devices" > "Chrome" > "Apps & extensions".
• Click on "Users & browsers".
• Choose the organizational unit (OU) you want to pin the extension version.
• Click the drop-down button next to Not Pinned.
• Select the Extension Version
• Save the Configuration:

Ensure that the settings propagate properly across all users and devices in the selected OU.

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