Google Drive: Best Practices

Google Drive - Best Practices:

1. Organize your files strategically:
   1. If you share files with colleagues or other department members, use Shared Drives for files that you need to maintain department access to long term.
   2. If you want to share more than one file with a person, put all of the files that you want to share into a folder. Then, just “share” the folder itself. The “shared” settings that are applied to a folder also apply to every file within that folder.

2. Install your choice of  Back Up and Sync or File Stream

• Drive File Stream is a new way to access all of your Google Drive files directly from your Mac or PC, without using up all your disk space. Unlike traditional file sync tools, Drive File Stream doesn’t require you to download your files first in order to access them from your computer. Instead, when you need to view or edit a file, it automatically streams from the cloud, on-demand. With Drive File Stream, your team will spend less time waiting for files to sync, no time worrying about disk space, and more time being productive. Drive File Stream is only used for Manhattan College Accounts, it will not work for personal accounts.
• Google Drive Backup and Sync is a program that allows the user to backup data from their computer to Google Drive (the cloud). It also allows users to sync data from Google Drive to their computer.

3. Use the search feature frequently.  It is quick and precise, and it provides suggestions as quickly and intelligently as any other Google search feature:

4. Name your files so that they are easy to search for.  Use a naming convention that would aid the searching process, not hinder it.  
   Ex. “Spreadsheet2017” could potentially describe lots of files and wouldn’t be something that you would think to Search for a few months later, but “Annual Report Fall 2017 Spreadsheet” would probably only describe one file and would allow you to pull up all of the annual reports from every year by searching for just the phrase: Annual Report.

5. A double edged sword: Drive will actually allow you to have the exact same name for more than 1 file.  However, this should probably be avoided, because it may become hard to determine which of the duplicates was edited last.

6. When someone “Shares” something with you, select the “Add to my Drive” option.

If you have any further questions, please contact us at ITS@manhattan.edu or (718) 862-7973.