Changes to storage limits
On Dec 18, 2023, ITS announced changes to cloud storage accounts. The process and limit for Google shared Drives will be changing, and we will update this documentation once we have more details.
For more information, see ITS's page on Google and Microsoft changes.
Overview
Your department, research group, or team may be conducting a high amount of collaborative work. In such cases, you may want a single, centralized location where you can store and organize files, and make them accessible to all members (for instance, internal departmental policies, lab procedures, document templates, or media libraries).
If this is your situation, your team can establish a Google shared Drive. Any member of your team can set up the shared Drive—we suggest that this should be the project manager or senior administrator, or other member who can take the initial responsibility for setup and for adding other members.
If you are looking for instructions on using Google Drive (rather than managing shared Drives), please see our guide:
Creating a Google shared Drive
Quick guide
- Go to https://usc.edu/googledrive.
- In the left-hand menu, click on Shared drives.
- At the top of the left-hand menu, click on the + New button.
- Type in a name for your shared Drive and click on Create.
- The new shared Drive is created. Double-click on the shared Drive's name.
- The shared Drive displays.
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To add members:
- In the upper right side of the page, click on Manage members.
- Type in an email address.
- Use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate permissions you want to grant (otherwise Google defaults to Content manager).
- Click on Send.
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To add files/folders:
- Just as you would add files/folders to your own My Drive, at the top of the left-hand menu, click on the + New button to display options for creating or uploading files/folders on the shared Drive.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Go to https://usc.edu/googledrive.
- The Shibboleth login page displays. Log in using your USC credentials.
- The Duo screen displays. Follow the on-screen prompt to complete authentication.
- In the left-hand menu, click on Shared drives.
- The shared Drives page displays. At the top of the left-hand menu, click on the + New button.
- Type in a name for your shared Drive and click on Create.
- The new shared Drive is created. Double-click on the shared Drive's name.
- The shared Drive displays.
-
To add members:
- In the upper right side of the page, click on Manage members.
- Type in the email address of the team member you wish to add.
- Use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate permissions you want to grant (otherwise Google defaults to Content manager).
- Click on Send.
-
To add files/folders:
- Just as you would add files/folders to your own My Drive, at the top of the left-hand menu, click on the + New button to display options for creating or uploading files/folders on the shared Drive.
Managing members of a Google shared Drive
File ownership
An important advantage of uploading/creating files in a shared Drive over an individual USC Google "My Drive" account is that if the file creator departs USC, transfers departments, or otherwise leaves the shared Drive, the file they created remains available in the shared Drive.
Member types
Google's official documentation provides the following summary of the different member types:
- Manager: Can manage members, and upload, edit, move, or delete all files and folders.
- Content manager: By default, can upload, edit, move, or delete all files.
- Contributor: Edit all files and upload new files, but can’t move or delete files.
- Commenter: Can only comment on all files.
- Viewer: Can only view all files.
The person who initially creates the shared Drive is a manager by default, but we also suggest assigning at least one more person the role of manager as a backup. The member type you assign to others on your team just depends on the specific situation; furthermore, as your team's use of the shared Drive evolves, shared Drive managers can change peoples' member types as needed.
For example, if you intend the shared Drive to act as a repository for approved departmental policies, you may prefer to assign people as commenters or viewers, whereas if you intend the shared Drive to act as a collaborative project that team members will be actively authoring and editing, you may prefer to assign people as contributors or content managers.
Note: We recommend being cautious in terms of how many members you assign "Manager" or "Content manager" roles to, particularly as these roles include the ability to delete files. When a file is deleted from a shared Drive, it is deleted for everyone.
Managing sharing settings on individual files and folders
Customizing file sharing settings
By default, files in a shared Drive are available to members of the shared Drive, but you can still share files with additional non-members.
Note that shared Drive member access levels override per-file access levels: for instance, if you grant a member "Contributor" access to the shared Drive, you cannot lower their access to "Viewer" for an individual file within the shared Drive.
Transferring a file from My Drive to a shared Drive
As of this writing (July 2021), it is possible to move files but not folders from My Drive (your individual USC Google account) to a shared Drive.
Quick guide
- Go to https://usc.edu/googledrive and navigate to your file.
- Right-click on the file and select Move to.
- Click on the left-facing arrow in the top left corner of the window that appears. Continue clicking on the left-facing arrow until the list of options displays Shared drives.
- Double-click on Shared drives.
- Select the name of the shared Drive. Or, if you want to target a specific folder within the shared Drive, double-click on the name of the shared Drive to select the folder. Once you've selected it, click on Move.
Detailed guide (with screenshots)
- Go to https://usc.edu/googledrive and navigate to your file.
- Right-click on the file and select Move to.
- Click on the left-facing arrow in the top left corner of the window that appears. Continue clicking on the left-facing arrow until the list of options displays Shared drives.
- Double-click on Shared drives.
- Select the name of the shared Drive. Or, if you want to target a specific folder within the shared Drive, double-click on the name of the shared Drive to select the folder. Once you've selected it, click on Move.