Team Drives Info
- What is a Team Drive?
- A shared space in Drive to create, store, and access files with your TEAM.
- This Team could be your grade level team at your campus. This team could be your department. This team could even be your grade level throughout all 3 Elementary schools or content between all 3 Elementary schools.
- Why would you want to use a Team Drive
- Typically, all Google Drive files and folders are owned by the person who creates them. This means that shared folders typically end up with files and subfolders owned by numerous different people. If one of these people leaves an organisation and their account is deleted, all the files and folders owned by them are also deleted. While both the end-user and domain administrator do have the ability to transfer ownership of shared data, this is difficult to manage and enforce – particularly in large organisations.
- Another common issue is the loss of access that occurs when users move shared files out of shared folders. This results in other people losing access.
- Unlike traditional Google Drive shared folders, files and folders in a Team Drive are not owned by an individual user. Instead, they are owned by the team itself. This eliminates the issue of data being lost when a former employee’s account is deleted.
- Team Drives function similarly to existing shared folders in Google Drive, but include two additional features to protect against shared data loss: New levels of access for members, and team based ownership.
- Different levels of access for members
- Full Access, Edit Access, Comment Access, View Access
- Full access: By default, people can manage members, and upload, edit, move, or delete all files.
- Edit access: Edit all files and upload new files. These people can’t move or delete files.
- Comment access: Can only comment on all files.
- View access: Can only view all files.
- Why again use a Team Drive?
- Remember, Team Drives function similarly to existing shared folders in Google Drive, but include two additional features to protect against shared data loss: New levels of access for members, and team based ownership.
- Staff should consider turning any large existing shared folder structures into Team Drives. This should be as simple as creating a set of appropriate Team Drives, assigning membership permissions and moving in shared content.
- Be careful, To minimise data access loss from file deletion or moving, use the ‘Full access’ membership permission carefully. This is particularly relevant because we are new to Google Team Drives and staff members may not yet be familiar with the consequences of moving or deleting shared data. Giving only selected people ‘Full access’ permissions reduces the likelihood of data be mistakenly deleted or removed from the Team Drive. However, be mindful that Team Drive members with only ‘Edit access’ will not be able to move files between folders, which could be frustrating if they create a file in the wrong location.