DRAFT

There are three different storage areas. 

 

My Drive is where you own everything. My Drive has a limit of 15Gb

Shared drives are where you share ownership. SIL Shared Drives have a 5Gb storage limitation. You can buy more storage here.

Shared with me shows you the MyDrive folders shared by others with you. 

 

It is important to understand that if your account gets closed and you share information from your My Drive, access to this information will be lost for others.

On the contrary, information shared using Shared drive, will not be lost if your account gets closed, because ownership is shared with others.

 

In Drive, you can specify three different types of access for each item

Editor (edit, add comments, make and manage suggestions), Commentor (no right to edit or manage suggestions) and Viewer (no right to comment or make suggestions).

 

In Shared drives, there are more access types on folders

A Manager can perform any task including viewing and commenting on files; making and rejecting edits in documents; creating, removing, or restoring files in the shared drive; as well as adding people and groups to specific files or folders. This is default access given to an account which creates a new shared drive.

 

Content managers have the same permissions as Managers, except that they are not allowed to add people and groups to the drive. They also can’t move files and folders from a shared drive to another shared drive or to their My Drive. And they can’t delete a share drive or permanently delete files and folders in the trash. 

 

Contributors are also known as Editors at the individual file level. They can add people to specific files in the drive, but they are restricted from  adding people to specific folders. In the files themselves, contributors can make or approve edits. They are also able to create and upload files and create folders in the shared drive. However, they won’t be able to move shared drive files or folders anywhere: not to My Drive, not to another shared drive, and not within the shared drive itself. They are also unable to move any files or folders to the Trash or permanently delete them once they’re in there. However, they do have the privilege of being able to restore files and folders from trash for up to 30 days. 

 

Commenters can view the shared drives, files, and folders, and they can add their comments to the files. Viewers are only allowed to view the shared drive, folders, and files. 

 

Notice that you can’t downgrade member’s permissions on subfolders. For all of these permission types, access to the shared drive or the folders within the shared drive grants the same level of access to all folders and documents within it. 

 

Although you can create as many Shared Drives you want, it is a good practice to use subfolders rather than new Shared Drives for related items. Like one Shared Drives named ITConnect and a subfolder for each year below it. But keep in mind that in Shared drives a member of the shared drive they will have access to everything. You can still share an individual file or folder to a non-member of a Shared drive and they will only see that file or folder. 

 

Think carefully about a naming convention for the Shared Drives in your entity for greater visibility.To delete a shared Drive it must be emptied beforehand. 

 

You can create shortcuts to items shared in your MyDrive. But Priority (top item in Drive) is a convenient way to find the files you often use by organizing them in workspaces.

 

Drive offers a powerful search with indexing of document content (including photos). Searching is definitely the easiest way to find stuff quickly.

 

Items deleted are kept in the trash bin for 30 days, and permanently deleted after this period. It is good to use a third-party backup solution, like Backupify, to backup your Shared Drives. Within SIL, all shared drives are automatically backed up by Backupify for free.

 

Notice that, when you are online, Drive allows you to open more than 40 application formats without having the program installed locally (such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop). If you are offline local applications are used.