Google apps sharing to groups

[bondbill2k2]

I'm currently looking into the use of google apps and playing around with some of the settings. I have created some dummy student and staff accounts and made a few documents on the staff account to share with students. While I can share to a student by entering their account one by one I would like to share a file to say a year or a department all at once.

 

Groups seemed like the best solution to this so I created a group added a few students and tryed to share a file with that group account. This kind of works but not how I'd like, the group members recieve an email informing them they have a newly shared document and a URL to access it however this shared document does not appear in that users google drive shared files meaning users must keep safe that email or URL for access. Having looked at settings and a quick google of the problem I found a couple of people in the same situation but most articles were dated 2010 with no results.

 

I suppose the other solution is use shared folders with the appropriate permissions however this doesn't show up when shared to groups either and must be entered per user but wouldnt require adding all users each time a new document is placed in the folder. Does anyone have any improvements or suggestions relating to this?

 

Surely the email only group share isn't a good sharing method for any more then a couple of users?

[rdk]

When you share a document click in the usual place, then click on "share with contacts" (even if you think you don't have any). A new screen pops up where you can start typing names/account names of people in your domain and add them to the shared list. When you have everyone select "save as group". Next time you share a document you just select the group. The same group works in gmail - in fact I think you can only delete the group through gmail.

 

Unfortunately the group only works for the user who creates it - AFAIK. Other wise it is the rigmarole you described in your post. I would like the administrator to be able to create groups that everyone can use so that documents appear in directly in the docs list but I don't think it can be done.