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Google Drive Sharing Controls Just Got Even Better

3 minute read

Admin Green1

Google kicked off this week with new features in Google Drive that greatly improve Sharing Controls for both the end user and the Admin.

Over the next several days, these new features will be available in the Admin Console in a new section called the Access Checker. Depending on the settings the Admin chooses, end users will notice these new features in a few days when they add new internal and external collaborators to Google Docs via Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive commenting, and any other scenarios that trigger a “Share with” prompt that previously defaulted to “Anyone with the link” if your domain was set to allow public sharing.

So what do these new Sharing control features mean? The documents we store in our Google Drive can have sensitive information that you may not want to share with all members of your organization, and most likely, information you don’t always want to share externally. However, with these new sharing settings, admins and end users both have more options.

For the End User…

With this new update, end users will receive the below alert when they attempt to add a new collaborator to a document through any of the channels mentioned above.

New End User Alert

New Share Alert

Let’s say for instance you are making a comment on a Google Doc and loop in a new user to the document with the “+” sign. This same alert will appear when you share a Google Doc with a new user through other methods such as attaching a Google file to a Calendar Invite or linking to a protected Google Sheet. This new feature is valuable when you are working on a document with sensitive information, and your Admin wants to make sure you have an extra warning before sharing information externally, or with a colleague in a different department.

For the Admin…

Access Checker is a new section in the Sharing settings of the Admin Console.

Access Checker

access-checker

As listed in the above picture, Admins now have three options to choose from for their users, as long as the checkbox “Allow users in yourdomain.com to publish files on the web or make them visible to the world as public or unlisted files” is selected.

Let’s say you selected the first option in the Access Checker screenshot, “
Recipients only, yourdomain.com, or public (no Google account required.).” This setting allows your users to attach a protected Google Sheet to a Calendar Invite, but also sends an alert before the invite is sent. With the new end user alert mentioned at the top of this article, the end user sharing the document will have the option to share with “Anyone at yourdomain.com,” or share with “anyone with the link.”

This Drive

These Drives

To begin using the Access Checker:

  • Go to your Admin Console.
  • Select Apps.
  • Click Google Apps.
  • Select Settings for Drive.
  • Scroll to Sharing settings.

Click here to watch this video on YouTube.

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