Overview

Google Shared Drives provide a shared space where teams can easily share, store, search, and access their files anywhere, from any device.

Files in a Shared Drive belong to the team instead of an individual. Even if members leave, the files stay exactly where they are so your team can continue to share information and get work done. Google explains this pretty well, so let's look at their helpful intro video on Shared Drives:

Highlights

• Manage business and project continuity. Shared Drives are ideal for projects or teams with rotating membership. As the name indicates, ownership is shared, preventing many of the access and security concerns that can arise when using traditional "My Drive" folderAdd new team members: Manage team members individually or through a Workspace Google Group (faculty and staff may request a Google Group).
• 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, regardless of comings or goings.
• When a colleague is added to a Google Group, they’re automatically added to all the shared drives that include that group.This can make onboarding and off-boarding team members easier.
• Learn more with Google's Productivity Guide: Shared Drives

Getting Started: Create a shared drive

1. On your computer, go to drive.google.com.
2. On the left, click Shared drives.
3. At the top left, click New.
4. Enter a name for the shared drive.
5. Click Create.
6. Add your Google Group for your team. Or, if needed, add individual members.

Considerations

• All students, faculty and staff have the ability to create a Shared Drive.
• Certain actions that can be done in Google Drive, such as folder level sharing, reduction of access, etc. are not available within shared drives.
• Offline access to files from shared drives is not available via browser, but is available with Google Drive for desktop.