Sharing only specific folders within a shared drive, but all users can still see the top level drive

[BrianTheQ]

This may not be possible, as I have yet to see another organization be able to do it.

I'm working with a non-profit using Workspace for Non-Profits, and our current method of storing/sharing files is just terrible.  I'm working getting shared drives set up so the organization owns the files, and even as people leave and come into the organization, there is no loss of work.  We plan multiple events a year, and so here's what I'm hoping to have happen.

The top-level shared drive will be the event name, which I'll call "event" for now.  Within that shared drive, there will be multiple folders such as "finance", "volunteers", "sales", etc.  That part is still being worked out.

What I'm hoping to happen is this.  A user logs into drive.google.com, and clicks on shared drives.  They see the "event" drive.  When they click in that drive, the only have access to the individual folders within the drive they have been given access too.  So if someone on the sales team comes in, they will not see the finance folder as they have no access to that one.  Is it possible to do this?

[icrew · Accepted solution]

No, it’s not possible. Shared Drives use what’s commonly referred to as a “waterfall” permissions model. While many of the specific details are different, Google’s competitor Box has a really good explanation of the concept in the video over at https://support.box.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043697254-Understanding-Folder-Permissions

Hope that helps,

Ian

[BrianTheQ]

Blargh!  I was worried about that, but thank you.

[andrew231]

Can't permissions be segmented within the Shared Drive itself? While the Sales team, as an example, shouldn't be added to the Shared Drive members list, it can still be added to a specific folder's permissions within the Shared Drive, right?

[micah_noble]

Previously you could but the issue was the top down permissions. This was problematic if you wanted a folder hierchy such as placing personnel files in the human resources folder as while you wanted to share the human resources training materials you also needed to keep personnel files private which meant you had to create a separate shared drive folder for the confidential folders. Now you can set subfolder permissions allowing you to use a folder hierchy while restricting access to some of the subfolders in the shared drive.

[micah_noble]

I'm not sure if it's still in beta but limiting folder access within a Shared Drive is a feature that we are using. That being said we were part of the beta group.