Create a Shared Drive and Manage Members

Opportunity

A Shared Drive provides the best Google storage option for collaborative content because it is not subject to Lifecycle Management of individual accounts. For example, content in a Shared Drive will not be deleted if the person who created the document leaves the university and their account is deleted.

Additionally, Shared Drives have more granular permissions and roles. It is important that you understand these; please see below, Membership and permissions/roles of a Shared Drive. 

For these reasons, it is best practice to store collaborative content in a Shared Drive.

To create a Shared Drive:

1. Navigate to your bDrive.

2. Click on Shared Drives.

3. Click + New.

4. You will be prompted to enter a name for your Shared Drive. Use a name that clearly represents the Department/unit/team or project using the Shared drive. 

5. Click Create. 

Shared Drives Highlighted in list of Drive options

Membership and permissions/roles of a Shared Drive

In addition to the information below, you can refer to a video covering this topic.

• All members of a Shared drive have access to all content in the Shared drive. 

• Unlike in My Drive, there is no way to exclude a member from any single file or folder inside of a Shared drive. 

• Consider the five levels of permissions and roles for each member of the Shared drive carefully as these permissions extend to everything in the Shared drive. 

• If you need someone to have access to only a subset of the content in a Shared drive, do not add them as a member. Instead control their access to a folder or file by sharing items directly as you normally would in My Drive. 

• Note that an easy way to manage your Shared drive membership might be to create a bConnected List, which is a Berkeley Google Group and add that group to the Shared drive with the correct level of access. Then as you need to change the members of your department/unit/team, simply do so in the bConnected List. Learn more about creating a bConnected List. 

List of Permission Roles and Definitions for Shared Drives

Once you have your membership list determined, you can begin inviting members to the Shared Drive following these easy steps:

1. Once you have created your Shared Drive, double-click on it to open it up. 

2. You can find Manage members from the drop-down or use the link to the right that says Manage members. 

3. Start typing the name of the individual or Google Group you would like to add.

4. Determine the appropriate permission for the member from the drop-down. 

5. Add a message if you would like to notify them of their new membership. 

6. Click Send.

7. The person you invited will now see the Shared Drive when they click on Shared Drives from their Google Drive. 

Manage Members Role Options highlighting Content Manager as an example.

For more information about Shared Drive Permissions see this Google article.

Note: If you need to move a lot of content into your Shared Drive, see Moving Content into a Shared Drive.