Folder sharing is now available in Shared Drives

Shared drives are a powerful way to empower teams and organizations to store, access, and collaborate on files. Until now, all permissions were set at the shared drive level or the individual file level, and it wasn’t possible to share specific folders within a shared drive.

How does this new sharing feature work?

This new feature will allow folders in a shared drive to be shared by managers of that shared drive. Those with other shared drive access permission levels (e.g. content manager and commenter) are not eligible to share folders, because they are not allowed to control broad access to content and membership of the shared drive.

Folder access levels are additive and can only be expanded from the shared drive access level. Access levels assigned at the shared drive level represent the minimum level of access users will have to all files and folders within that shared drive. This ensures transparency, predictability, and scalability. As a result, the access level of a user for a folder within a shared drive can only ever be greater than the access level of that user for the shared drive itself; it can’t be more restrictive.

Where do shared folders from shared drives show up?

Folders shared from shared drives that you are not a member of will show up in the “Shared with me” with me section of Google Drive. If you are not a member of the shared drive that the shared folder belongs to, the shared folder will not appear in the shared drive area in Google Drive. To make sure you are able to access the shared folder through your Drive File Stream, please add a shortcut to the folder in your My Drive. When a folder from a shared drive is shared with you you will receive a notification, just like when a file or folder is shared with you in the rest of Google Drive.

For more information about shared drives at Ryerson, please visit our page on shared drives. (opens in new window) 

For training on how to set up and start using a shared drive, please visit the G Suite Learning Centre (external link, opens in new window) .