Shared Folders and Storage in Google Drive

[ggarcia4]

Hello community, tks for your help and comments.
Context: Client in Business Starter with 17 accounts. (Previously in GSuite Basic)

The domain director and administrator purchased 1TB of GSuite storage for his account only.

He did this in order to create a single place to organize his company's documents, he created a folder and shared it with the entire domain (16 accounts), granting permissions to folders by areas or topics.

Some people have reached their maximum storage capacity (30 GB), however the documents should mostly be in the shared folder (administrator property) and not in their Drives of each user, in such a way that it does not take up space in your accounts.

The question I bring to this community is the following:

It is clear that, when a user uploads a document to MY DRIVE the property belongs to him.
When a user uploads a document to a shared folder, to whom does this storage count, to him or to the owner of the folder?

I made a test and despite the fact that the user placed documents in the shared folder, they continued to count space for him. It stopped accounting for storage until the user changed the ownership of the document to the administrator and owner of the folder.

Is there a way to automatically set the ownership of the documents to the administrator and prevent users from occupying their assigned space?

Greetings and thanks

PD: of course we're trying to sell Business Standard version but, the client don't have a budget at the moment.

[Demir_Aydemir]

Hi @ggarcia4

Try this one
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf3tv0J7m6FuY5OzQYDurvSl4WsGuJWbPnzR1VRmWR79N-qUQ/viewform

Demir

[KAM]

@ggarcia4 I don't think Demir's Beta Link will help because you aren't using a Shared Drive.  You are using a folder you have shared from My Drive.  Doing that does not change ownership, I believe only the Shared Drive feature will do that where it changes the ownership to the organization.

One thought is to write a GAM script to search that folder and change ownership: https://www.ditoweb.com/2021/03/using-open-source-google-apps-manager-to-administer-google-workspace... 

Two thoughts there: 1) it's not going to work if they are using things like personal @gmail.com accounts and 2) There are high concerns that storage like they have bought is not going to be renewable so this is not something I would push as a long term solution.  

As you already mentioned, upgrading to a tier with Shared Drive and more storage is going to be the likely answer.  -KAM

[ggarcia4]

Tks for your comments.
GAM could a possibility... we'll check

About upgrading to Business Stardard it would the best option... Just a question.... 

What do you think of creating two domains (or a mix of accounts) for the company where one uses Business Standard and the other Starter, and granting permissions to the Starter accounts to a folder in the Team drive of the Business Standard account, might it work?
Or if a user places documents in a foreign folder, they will continue to be their property and count their storage.

I have no doubt that now that it is not possible to sell more custom storage, this storage issue will become a problem for Google, at least for their Starter accounts.

[KAM]

@ggarcia4 Mixing licenses on the same workspace instance A) typically requires a certain volume and B) will limit functionality for the users.  It's also typically pretty confusing unless the customer is technical.

Setting up a second workspace instance with a second domain on a sku with shared drives and adding people from another workspace instance to it should work.  I know we use @gmail users and people with all different skus on projects with Shared Drives.  In the old days, you didn't get the pooled or unlimited storage benefits until at least 5 users.  No idea what you'll get storage-wise this way so the costs might not outweigh the extra domain, extra account, and labor to setup/maintain. 

-KAM

[ggarcia4]

Tks for your comments.

It's always good to get expert opinions.

[ACWaters]

What did you find out about this? Anything more? I am having the same problem but on the other end of things.

Hope you can help me!

Thanks, Adrienne