Manage data policies for specific shared drives

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As an administrator, you control your organization’s policies on files in Google Drive, including files in shared drives. By default, the policies you set on the top organizational unit apply to all shared drives. However, you can assign shared drives to child organizational units to have their policies applied instead. You can also set the default organizational unit that shared drives are created in.

Why assign shared drives to organizational units?

Assigning shared drives to organizational units gives you more granular control on data sharing, security, and storage. For example:

• If your Drive sharing settings don’t allow sharing with external users or moving content to external Drive locations for your top organizational unit, but do allow them for child organizational units that collaborate with external people. When you assign shared drives to those child organizational units, those teams can use shared drives effectively while your overall policy can stay more restrictive.
• If you want the data protection rules set for an organizational unit to apply to certain shared drives. Assign the shared drives to that organizational unit so that the same data protection rules apply. 
• If you set data region policies for organizational units and want those policies to apply to data in shared drives they use. Assign the shared drives to those organizational units. That way, the data in those shared drives follows your data region policies.
• If you want to set different storage limits on shared drives by organizational unit. Assign shared drives to organizational units and then set storage limits for each one.

Assign a shared drive to an organizational unit

Assign a shared drive to an organizational unit

1. Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.

   If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.

2. Go to Menu  Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs.

   Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege.

3. Click Manage shared drives.
4. Find one or more shared drives you want to move.
   • To sort by storage use, click the Storage Used column header.
   • To filter the list, click Add a filter. You can filter by Shared drive name, Status, Date created, No members, and No managers.
   • To find shared drives by organizational unit, at the left click Selected organizational units. Select which organizational units' shared drives you want to see.
5. To move a single shared drive, point to the row and click MoreChange organizational unit. To move several shared drives at once, check the box next to each shared drive, then at the top click Change organizational unit.
6. Select the organizational unit you want to move the shared drives to, then click Continue.
7. Click Move.

Set the default organizational unit for new shared drives

Set the default organizational unit for new shared drives

1. Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.

   If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.

2. Go to Menu  Apps > Google Workspace > Drive and Docs.

   Requires having the Service Settings administrator privilege.

3. Click Sharing settings.
4. (Optional) To apply the setting to a department or team, at the side, select an organizational unit. Show me how
5. Click Shared drive creation.
6. For Organizational unit for new shared drives, select which organizational unit to assign new shared drives to.
7. Click Save. Or, you might click Override for an organizational unit.

   To later restore the inherited value, click Inherit.