Adding non-Google users as members to shared drives

[caseyedwardsfpr]

Hello!  I work for a company that recently started using Google Workspace for most collaborative activities to help with our workflows.  We really like how easy it is to collaborate in shared drives, but the biggest problem we're running into is that we cannot easily find a way to collaborate with clients and partners who do not also use Google as their main platform.  We often will add them to folders and files within shared drives, but we cannot actually add them as members to shared drives, which can be extremely problematic with larger collaborative projects.  We understand we could ask them to create a generic Gmail account that we could add, but asking the client to do an extra step just so they can collaborate with us seems excessive.

I tried joining the Feature Ideas section of this board, but I don't seem to have the right access level to do so.  Is there a way I can formally submit this issue as a feature request?

Thanks!

[AndrewB · Accepted solution]

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@caseyedwardsfpr wrote:

 We understand we could ask them to create a generic Gmail account that we could add, but asking the client to do an extra step just so they can collaborate with us seems excessive.

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They can create a Google account using another email address. That might be a good solution for long term clients.  

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With visitor sharing, your users can invite non-Google users to collaborate on files as visitors and use a PIN to verify their identity. You can see who has access to your organization's files and folders if you allow visitor sharing.