Google Drive Sharing Best Practices

Google Drive is another option at Duke to share documents and receive collaboration support from internal and external contributors. This information below is intended to help you make informed and correct decisions in the safest way to share Duke’s data.

Best Practices Duke Collaborating with Duke Google Files

• Duke institutional data must be stored in Duke Shared Drives.  Do not store critical work products or research data in your personal account.
• Every Shared Drive should have at least two people with the Manager role.  When creating your Shared Drive, assign at least one additional person as a Manager.
• All collaborators must have a Google account to collaborate. If a collaborator does not have a Google account, they will be prompted to create one before they can collaborate.
• Creators of files should be careful of sharing documents in Google.
  
  • When a document is created, the access to that file is determined by the access granted to the Shared Drive. Google will prompt when attributing this access. 
  • If the file is not part of a Shared Drive, access to that file is only available to the creator until the creator takes an action to share. 
  • It is recommended that users use the ‘Restricted’ or ‘Share with Duke University’ permission options for data that is sensitive. 
  • Files shared with the permission level “Share with anyone who has access to the link” should only be data that is public information. 

Duke Data Security Policy

Helpful references

Google: Get started with Drive - Share and Collaborate

Google: What are Shared Drives?

Google: Restrict sharing options on Drive files

Google: Set an expiration date for file access

Google: Transfer ownership of a file

Google: Switching to Drive from Box

Google: Share document with visitor