Restricted access to shared G drive files

[AnnaB]

Hi Google team,
In future upgrades, can I check if there will be the ability to limit access to files within a shared G drive?

The reason being — we want to clear/simple way to organise files within a shared drive, however, some files have different intended audience restrictions within a group.

e.g.
User Blue creates 3 files in a shared G drive,
User Red is ok to see all 3 files
User Green should only be able to see file 1 and file 3  
User Yellow should only be able to see file 2 and file 3
so
File 1 - restricted to Blue, Red and Green user access
File 2 - restricted to Blue, Red and Yellow user access
File 3 - no restrictions (all users in the shared drive can view it - Blue, Red, Green and Yellow)

This would be very helpful for our business G Drive file management, rather than having files in peoples individual My Drives and sharing out, as this can be quite messy to manage especially when people leave the business.

Thanks

Anna

[stimms]

@AnnaB Google post their upcoming changes here: https://workspaceupdates.googleblog.com there have been some surveys in the past about changing the permissions structure in Shared Drives but no timeline or confirmation of permission structure changes have been published as far as I'm aware.

[KAM]

@AnnaB I believe you can do this as follows:

Create 4 groups: Blue, Red, Green & Yellow

Create a shared drive with no one having access but you and Create folders as you need and add the various groups as you need to various folders.

Folders off the root will only have permission for you to access unless you give additive rights.

Files in the folders and subfolders will inherit the additive permissions you've added to the folders.  

-KAM

[AnnaB]

Hi @stimms — thanks for sharing the workspace updates page, I will keep an eye out for helpful updates for our team.

Hi @KAM — thanks also for your feedback, however, this is not the solution we are aiming for, as adds a level of file hierarchy that isn't ideal. Also, restrictions can be at the individual document level (so wouldn't want to create folders just for these).

Atlassian/Confluence has the ability to restrict edit and view access on a specific page within a space/group, and it would be great if Google Drive could have similar functionality as it will make file organisation a whole lot easier.

Cheers Anna

[stimms]

@AnnaB KAM was just trying to offer a new way of working that could fulfill your access restrictions. Those of us that have worked with Google Workspace for a long time have learnt to adapt our ways of working to fit Google's ethos which is to not allow devolving permission inside a branching folder structure.

Rest assured though many users have been banging on the proverbial door asking for more granular permissions structures inside Shared Drives and it seems Google are finally starting to bend. Recently allowing Folders to be shared to users outside of the Shared Drive. They may well still be resistent to removing access to users inside a structure though, we can only hope and make do with what we have right now though.