The owner managed strategy for managing files on Google Drive is the way Drive was designed to be used. It assigns the “ownership” of folders directly to user accounts, rather than through a central administrative service account.

There is not a central hierarchy that contains all company shared files, but rather user created folders and nested subfolders that are managed by the “owners” of those folders. File and folder organization is driven by the end user in which they choose to organize folders shared with them into their “My Drive” and access others solely from the “Shared with Me” section.

Advantages in this approach

• Features and functionality lend to an intuitive and collaborative user experience.
• Decentralized structure promotes end user organization of shared folders and documents in a way that is intuitive for them specifically
• IT Admins are not bogged down with managing permissions and folder structures
• Third party applications, like BetterCloud, allow IT admins to control and secure the ownership structure of documents on Google Drive.

Disadvantages in this approach

• Admins will need to closely track Google Drive storage across user accounts, rather than storing the majority of files on one central account.
• Decentralized file storage can lead to duplicate content and difficulty in finding the necessary resources from the appropriate content owner

Considerations in this approach

Google Drive administrators are best suited to monitor activity on domain files with tools like BetterCloud, rather than taking a “gatekeeper” approach. These tools allow a more efficient approach for IT without putting your organization at risk.

With the owner managed approach, files are serviced by the “owners” of the files which is the way Google Drive was designed to be used. This approach will allow organizations to fully utilize the powerful collaboration features of Drive, and is the preferred method for managing files on Drive.

This article is Part 3 of Google Gooru’s Comprehensive Guide to Moving a File Server to Google Drive. To access the entire guide for FREE, please fill out the form located here.