Google Team Drives - is it worth it?

[enjay]

So, Google have released Team Drives but I'm not sure it would really make much difference for us, given how we've set up our Drive - what do you think?

 

We have a user called "Drive Resources - English", into whose Drive I copied all the contents of the English team's network folder when we first went Google. There is one of these for each subject area (we created them before Google lifted the 15GB cap on users, hence one per team). These folders are in turn all added into another Drive user's folder named "Staff Resources" which is then shared with the All Staff email group; each subject area's folder is shared modify to that team and read-only to everyone else. Leadership have modify rights on all folders.

 

In addition to these, lots of staff have folders in their own Drives which they have shared with the team members and/or cross-department colleagues (e.g. I have a budget folder shared with my line manager and the Business Manager).

 

As new staff join, I send them a link to the Staff Resources folder and they click "Add to Drive". Staff who leave are never deleted, just password reset and removed from the address book.

 

So, what would Team Drives offer which I'm not already achieving? I appreciate Team Drives is probably a slicker way of doing it, bu now it is done, I'm obviously only interested in benefits of the move to Team Drives.

[mjk]

As new staff join, I send them a link to the Staff Resources folder and they click "Add to Drive". Staff who leave are never deleted, just password reset and removed from the address book.

You wouldn't need to do that and more, which would be an advantage.

[enjay]

You wouldn't need to do that and more, which would be an advantage.

 

Those are both hands-off tasks. The link to Staff Resources is included in a "welcome letter" which contains key URLs and username/password formats, so I just need to make sure they click on it during my IT induction session with them. Salamander takes care of the leavers.

[FN-GM]

So, what would Team Drives offer which I'm not already achieving? I appreciate Team Drives is probably a slicker way of doing it, bu now it is done, I'm obviously only interested in benefits of the move to Team Drives.

 

1. You can share to more than 200 users

2. If someone leaves you won't need to move the share into another drive.

[enjay]

1. You can share to more than 200 users

 

Interesting, didn't know about that limitation. We don't employ 200 staff and use Google Classroom for student resources, so am not sure it is a limitation which affects us. Worth noting though.

 

2. If someone leaves you won't need to move the share into another drive.

I don't move any folders when someone leaves. Staff are encouraged to use the shared folders which exist, but I am certain there are other shared files in people's areas anyway, so would be extremely reluctant to delete leavers even after a move to Team Drives anyway (think about how often you get asked "can you copy X's folders into Y's area" after someone leaves!).

 

As I'm storing everything on the cloud, aka someone else's computer, the wasted space of this practice is fine by me. If Google ever start charging us for space usage, obviously I would rethink.

[bede]

We have more than 200 staff users and have not hit this - guessing because we share to a group which is likely what google expect rather than 200 individuals.