Managing Shared drive access using Google Groups (for Shared drive Owners)

Determine which Group(s) provide access to the Shared drive

Overview

Access to Google Shared drives (originally known as Team Drives) is provided through a set of members, each of which has an assigned access level.

Cardinal Mail Google Workspace Shared drives are created with one or more Google Groups as members. Here are two examples.

A simple Shared Drive configuration has a single Group member with Content manager access, as pictured above.

A Shared drive with more complex access requirements has multiple Groups, each of which may have the same or different access levels.

What should not appear in the Shared drive's Member access list are individuals. Individuals should appear only in the Google Group that is a Shared drive member.

Note: The same Google Group can be a member of more than one Shared drive. In the examples above, you can see that group TS-BSC-Staff is a member of both of these Shared drives. The Group can have the same or different access level for each Shared Drive of which it is a member.

This document describes how Shared drive owners can see the list of Google Groups assigned as Shared drive members, and how they can add and remove a member from these Groups to grant or revoke access to the Shared drive for an individual.

To learn which functions are permitted by each access level, please see the "Shared drive access levels" chart later in this document.

Manage Shared drive access

To manage access to a Shared drive, you add or remove members from the Google Group (that is itself a member of the Shared drive, used to provide the specified level of Shared drive access to its Group members). If your Shared drive has more than one Google Group member, you first will need to determine the correct Group for which members are to be added or removed.

Determine which Group(s) provide access to the Shared drive

Sign in to Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/
On the left, click Shared drives (or Team Drives).
Open the Shared drive to view its files and folders.
At the top, just below the Shared drive name, the number of members appears as a link, e.g. "1 member". Click the link to view the members.
Review the list of members. Each member should be a Group, denoted with the icon below. Determine which Group member is appropriate to provide the access needed.

View all members of a Group

You can view the members of one of these Groups.

Sign in to Google Groups: https://groups.google.com
Click My groups.
Click the name of a group.
On the left, click Members to view the Group's members

Add members to a Group

Sign in to Google Groups https://groups.google.com/
Click My Groups.
Find the group in the list.
To the right of the group name, click the "Add members" (person with plus) icon to add members.
In the "Group members" section, enter the email addresses of the people to add. Separate multiple addresses with commas.
Do not enter a welcome message unless you are adding external members. Leave this section unchanged.
In the "Subscription" section, leave the "Each Email" option selected unless you have special requirements.
Leave the "Directly add members" options selected.
Carefully review the list of addresses to be sure there are no typos!
Click Add members.

Remove members from a Group

Sign in to Google Groups https://groups.google.com/
Click My Groups.
Find the group in the list.
To the right of the group name, click the "Group settings" (gear) icon.
In the left navigation section, select People > Members.
In the list of group members, check the box next to the members to be removed.
On the top group of buttons, click the "Remove member" (circle with horizontal bar) icon.
When prompted "Are you sure you want to remove this member from the group?" click Remove

Shared drives access levels

As a reminder, these are the access levels that can be assigned to the Shared drive member Groups. The functions (tasks) that are available to each access level are listed in the chart.

Technology Services administers Shared drive creation and removal, assigning Groups to Shared drives, and advanced Drive settings, so the “Manager” access level is restricted.

Shared drive owners grant and revoke user access to the Shared drive by adding and removing members from the Google Groups assigned to the Drive, rather than from the Drive directly.

Detailed information on using Shared drives is available on the university website: technology.catholic.edu/resources/google.html.

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