Shared Folders vs. Shared Drives

Remember, the best practice in HandySchool is to use shared drives for collaborative work. This ensures that access to files does not disappear when a user leaves the district.

The terminology for shared folders and drives can be very confusing so for clarification:

Shared folder - a folder owned by a HandySchool user that is in their Google Drive but shared with you and/or others.  You will find these in the Shared With Me section of your Google Drive which also shows the owner of the folder.  If the user leaves the district, collaborators will lose access to the contents and it will be gone completely when their account is purged after 12 months.

    

Shared Drive - a "Drive" that is not owned by a particular user.  It's owned by HandySchool and managers/users are assigned to the Drive.  Since Shared Drives are not owned by users, the contents are not at risk if or when a user leaves the district.  This is a great way to collaborate and share files and folders on a project, by grade levels etc.

   

A little history... Shared Drives used to be called Team Drives which made so much sense. A few years ago Google changed the name to Shared Drives which now causes a lot of confusion for users.

Another way to identify a folder source is to click the   in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.  A panel will come up on the right and show who the owner is and the type.

TIP:  If the owner is "Grapevine-Independent School District" then the folder or file is in a Shared Drive.  Though it shows who created the folder, that is not who owns it. 

**Only add @gcisd.net email addresses to shared drives!

Info of a Shared Drive:

Info of a folder in a Shared Drive:

Info of a shared folder (owned by a user):