4 Big Reasons Your Business Needs Google Team Drive

WORKetc announces new integration for Google Team Drive.

Anyone who worked in an office environment before Google Drive was around is probably familiar with these email subject lines:

Over the years, issues relating to sharing files with coworkers have become less and less common. For this we can thank products like Google Drive which were a game changer for collaborative document creation.

Before Google Drive, we would spend our time hunting down the person who accidently deleted half a day’s worth of work by a simple key combination of “Ctrl + S”.

Now, we can confidently access and collaborate on files in Google Drive, in real-time without worrying about saving copies and tracking versions.

Cloud-based systems like Google Drive did solve a lot of problems, but they also introduced a set of new issues, most notably conflicts over file ownership.

To summarize the issue, let’s go through a typical example of how files are shared on Google Drive:

Sound familiar?

In the best-case scenario, John and David can fix the issue within a few minutes, however, these kinds of file ownership and sharing issues can have a costlier impact.

This is where Google Team Drives from G Suite for Business comes to the rescue and with it file management euphoria!

Dig a little deeper (like we did) and you’ll quickly realize just how much potential there is for Google Team Drives to change the way you work for the better.

Here are our Big Four reasons why you’ll want to take a closer look.

1. Increasing Team Productivity

In the busy day-to-day operations of any office, small hurdles like needing to request access to a document become the norm and aren’t seen as a major time drain.

Let’s say the average worker hits up a file-access issue twice a week, and that it takes on average 10 minutes to get sorted out.

Based on research from the University of California, we know that it takes a person an average of 15 minutes to return to focussing on a task.

This means a whopping 5 work days of lost productivity per year. But what happens if you have 10 people in your business, 20, 50?

Not using Google Team Drives could actually be costing you serious money in wasted productivity.

This is even more evident when you work in a remote team across several time zones (like we do here at WORKetc).

At times, you may need to put a task off until the next day because the co-worker who can give you the access you require is currently peacefully sleeping in a different time zone.

Another major drawback of most cloud-based file sharing systems is that files are owned by a specific person.

This can be very problematic if an employee quits and a non-suspecting IT manager deletes their G Suite account along with all the G-Drive files owned by the ex-employee.

Any of the scenarios above are a valid reason to look for a better file sharing solution, and when you consider all of them together, the answer is clear, the current system needs to be improved.

Team Drives are essentially like a Google Drive for the entire team (rather than an individual employee). This means that all employees will have access to all files in the Team Drive.

Team Drives solve all the time-consuming hurdles mentioned above:

2. Streamlining Access Control

So far, we mentioned that everyone in the Team Drive can access files, however, it is important to discuss user permissions that Team Drives offer (spoiler alert; they are great!).

Matrix of Google Team Drive access levels by role. Click for full view. (Source: G Suite Learning Centre)

Team Drives offer set roles that are assigned to anyone who is added to the Drive. In total, there are 5 permission settings ranging from full control over everything in the Team Drive (Manager Role) to “view only” file access (Viewer Role).

When you add an employee to your Team Drive, you select the role you want them to inherit. This role will apply to all files within the Team Drive.

This alleviates the need to send countless share links to your coworkers and allows managers to have more fine-tuned control over file access. For example:

John manages a marketing project and has a Team Drive set up for shared project files. He is notified that one of his employees has been moved to a different project. As per company policy, the employee should no longer have access to any files relating to the marketing project. John removes the employees’ access from the Team Drive with a few clicks.

In comparison, if the John didn’t set up a Team Drive, he would have to ask everyone on his team to find all files that were shared and remove access for the employee in question.

3. Simplifying employee onboarding

If you ever had to onboard a new employee, you know how stressful it can be. Most businesses have many systems that require you to set up several profiles, logins and access rights before a new hire can start working.

Between launching IT tickets for employee setup and explaining how the coffee machine works, you also have to train your new child hire.

Now, you have all the training documents on your Google Drive, but leaving a stranger with all your data is a risky move.

You consider sharing the files they would need using shared links, but that would mean sharing every single file & folder individually.

Then it hits you, you can set up a Team Drive, keep all onboarding files in one place, and give your new hire view only access.

The best part is that you can then use the same Team Drive for everyone at your company (even individuals who aren’t on your G Suite account).

Not only is this a more professional way of introducing an employee to your company, but it also simplifies the onboarding process.

4. Integrating into your WORKetc CRM

Demonstration of how Team Drives appear in WORKetc.

This wouldn’t be a WORKetc article if we didn’t mention WORKetc (shameless plug? Maybe…). All jokes aside, we are happy to announce that we added Team Drives to our comprehensive G Suite family of integrations.

New & existing WORKetc CRM users who already use G Suite will find that the Team Drive integration will make it easier to enhance your existing workflows in WORKetc.

Some notable features of our Google Drive & Team Drive integration include:

The Team Drive integration is now available for all WORKetc users. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with us.

Now folks, it’s time for show-and-tell, share your worst file sharing story (like a missing file!) in the comments section below.