Set up shared drives for your organization

Supported editions for this feature: Business Standard and Business Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Fundamentals, Education Standard, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Education Plus; Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, and Enterprise Essentials Plus; Nonprofits; G Suite Business. Compare your edition

Business Starter customers will get access to some shared drives functionality later in 2024. You'll be able to create shared drives and add members, files, and folders. However, to use admin security, sharing, and user settings for shared drives, your organization needs Business Standard or higher.

To create a shared drive, go here instead.

As an administrator, you can manage how users in your organization can create and use shared drives to collaborate in Google Drive. Files in shared drives are owned by your organization, rather than an individual. They persist even if the person who created the file leaves your organization, helping you avoid potential data loss.

Encourage your users to use shared drives for content intended for organization-wide or team use, such as project plans, research results, or team meeting notes. Have your users keep personal and private files, such as one-on-one meeting notes, performance assessments, and career development plans, in My Drive.

Quick start

Learn about shared drives and best practices for using them in What are shared drives?
Learn how to create shared drives and add members. Note: You create shared drives in Drive, not the Admin console.
Add files and folders to a shared drive.
(Optional) Consider if you want to limit sharing with external users, visitors, or non-members, and set the default sharing permissions for shared drives.

Advanced shared drive management

These steps help you understand and set shared drive management options.

Step 1. Learn about shared drives and your organization's needs

Learn about shared drives and best practices for using them in What are shared drives?
Understand access control in shared drives.
Access to files and folders in shared drives is controlled in two ways: 1) member access levels, and 2) file and folder sharing restrictions:
1. Access levels: Review the shared drive access levels that members can have. They range from being able to view the content of the shared drive (Viewer), to being able to manage members and delete the shared drive (Manager).
2. File and folder sharing: In shared drives, sharing is controlled in several ways:
  - Drive sharing settings on the organizational unit the shared drive is assigned to (the top organizational unit by default)
  - Default shared drive sharing options set in the admin console
  - Shared drive-specific sharing options managers set on a shared drive
  Important considerations:
  - When you move files into shared drives, users who the file is shared with can lose access. The shared drive sharing settings can override file sharing on a file. For example, if the file was shared with an external user but external sharing isn’t allowed for the shared drive, that external user loses access to the file.
  - If some users in your organization have licenses that don’t support shared drives, such as Frontline or Cloud Identity Premium, on this page review how these users can access content in shared drives.
  - If you want to allow sharing files and folders with people without Google Accounts, you can turn on visitor sharing.
Plan how you'll move content into shared drives:
- If you need to move many files and folders into shared drives, review shared drive limits and the Google Drive large migration best practices.
- To preserve folder structure from My Drive, administrators and users with Manager access can move folders they own or are shared with them to a shared drive. Otherwise, shared drive members with Contributor access or more can create folders and add files.

Step 2. Set shared drives permissions, sharing, and data retention

Set who can create shared drives.
For Google Workspace Business and Enterprise editions, all users can create shared drives by default. For Google Workspace for Education customers, shared drive creation is turned off by default. You can allow or block shared drive creation by organizational unit.
Set the default sharing permissions for shared drives.
- Set whether shared drive content can be shared with external users or people who aren’t members of the shared drive.
- Set whether viewers and commenters can download, print, and copy files in a shared drive.
- Set whether shared drive members with Manager access can override your sharing defaults.
Set which organizational unit new shared drives are assigned to.
By default, shared drives are assigned to the top organizational unit and the Drive data policies on that organizational unit apply. For more granular control, you can assign them to the shared drive creator’s organizational unit, or any other organizational unit.
If your organization uses Data loss prevention (DLP) for Drive rules, review the rules and make sure they're appropriate for your shared drive files. DLP for Drive rules apply to files in shared drives by organizational unit. Learn more about DLP and how shared drives are assigned to organizational units.
If your organization uses Google Vault to retain files in Google Drive, set retention rules for files in shared drives.
Set who can move files into shared drives.

Step 3. (Optional) Create shared drives and move files

You might want to create shared drives as an administrator in the following scenarios:

If you choose to only allow you and other administrators to create shared drives and move files, you must set up shared drives for your users.
If your organization is just starting with shared drives and you want to establish a structure for widely-used shared drives.

Learn how to create shared drives, add members, and set their access level. If you’re a manager of the shared drive, you can add members in drive.google.com. Alternatively, you can add members in the admin console.

Important: Until you add members to the shared drive, only users who the files are shared with directly can access the files.

Step 4. Train your users

To help your users get the most out of shared drives, share the following resources:

Access for users with licenses that don’t support shared drives

Shared drive privileges for users with Frontline Starter and Frontline Standard, Business Starter, G Suite Basic, Cloud Identity Premium, and Cloud Identity Free licenses depend on whether the shared drive is located inside or outside your organization.

Internal shared drives

These users can be added as members of shared drives, but only with Viewer privileges. However, if a file in a shared drive is shared with them directly, then they may also be allowed to comment or edit the file. They can’t upload files to shared drives, even if they’re members.

External shared drives

These users can be added as members of external shared drives and have any access level, including Manager.

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