When to use a Google Shared Drive

Overview

Need to share folders of files with a department or other permanent group in Google Drive? Shared Drives may be your best bet. Shared Drives allow folders to be created and shared without tying them to an individual owner, so they can persist as people come and go.

What are Shared Drives?

Google shared drives are a feature in Google Workspace for Education. They offer shared space in Google Drive where teams can create, store, search, collaborate on, and access all their team-owned files. The difference between a shared drive and My Drive is that all data (files and folders) are owned by a group or team rather than an individual.

Shared drives allow you to:

• Add new team members: Manage team members individually or with Google groups.
• Keep track of your files if a team member leaves: Shared drives are jointly owned by the team, meaning anything added to a shared drive stays there no matter who comes or goes.
• Understand and manage sharing permissions: Team members at the shared drive level see the same files and folders regardless of who adds or reorganizes them. You can manage permissions for editing, commenting on, reorganizing, or deleting files/folders at the shared drive, subfolder, and file level.

When should you use a Shared Drive?

LITS has created a set of guidelines to consider when using Shared Drives. You might want to create a new Shared Drive folder instead of a regular Google Drive folder when:

• The primary purpose of allowing for group collaboration between multiple users,
• It is likely to be in use on a long-term basis, especially if the people using that folder are likely to come and go over time,
• It will be used for operational purposes that support a business or academic function at the College or
• It does not contain personally identifiable information (PII) or other sensitive data, as outlined in the Data handling procedures.

The more of these conditions apply, the more likely it is that a Shared Drive folder will suit your needs.

Can I move a regular Google Drive folder to Shared Drives?

Yes - though there are limitations that are worth reviewing.

Where can I learn more about how Shared Drives work?

Google maintains a Getting Started with Shared Drives webpage that is useful for getting oriented and starting out with Shared Drives. We recommend you spend some time reviewing the instructions on that page when you first start using Shared Drives.