Google Drive

Google Drive is a great tool for storing files that all team members need access to; however, it can be challenge maintaining permissions as students enter and graduate the program. To make this process easier, our team has transitioned to using a Shared Drive. Below is a comparison of why a Shared Drive is easier to maintain than a shared folder or shared team account.

This is the FRC 167 Robotics Shared Drive. All members and mentors have access to this drive.

Criterion	Shared Drive	Shared Season Folders	Shared Team Login
File Permissions	Manage permissions for all drive files from the shared drive settings	Each folder has individual permissions and will need to be shared with students seasonally	Students with access to login information will have access to all files
Account Access	Students can access from their own Google accounts, making it easy to see who made changes	Students can access from their own accounts, but may need things shared to multiple accounts for school/personal devices	Students must use the team account and may have to get a 2-factor auth code from a coach or another student
Access Previous Years	All season folders can be kept in the drive so students are given access to everything at once	Students looking for info from previous years will need to be added to each specific folder, making the flow of information slower	Students will have access to all seasons that are shared with or created by the team account
File Ownership	Files created by any account within a shared drive will remain property of the shared drive even if a student graduates	Files created by the team account will always be accessible, but files created by student accounts may lose access after graduation	Files created by the team account will always be accessible
Role Assignment	Members can be given different roles to help control drive organization (content manager, editor, viewer)	Member access is dependant on specific file permissions and may vary per document	Anyone with account access has full access to add, delete, or modify documents in the drive

Making the change to a Shared Drive took a lot of up-front work, but the process of reorganizing and unifying the way that we store information has made it a lot easier for our team to build on previous knowledge rather than reinventing it. In addition to the season folders, we also created directories for our camp curriculums and team branding that are not year specific. Overall, we have eliminated many challenges we previously faced with information access lost due to students graduating and found many gems we have forgotten about.

We traced back and organized digital files from the 2016-2017 season on, misc. photos from earlier seasons are in our Archived Seasons folder

To help with our future organization, we created a New Season Template that can be easily copied and renamed for each new season. This format now matches the previous years so new members are able to find resources with ease. In addition to the directories, we have made templates of important documents from year-to-year such as our master fundraising sheet, to-do list, and presentation template that are pre-saved into folders.

This is an example of our New Season Template, it was created based on common folders and groupings used in previous seasons

More information about Shared Drives available here.