The demise of multiple parents for Drive items

[gordon_may]

With Google removing the ability to have an item in multiple locations, and instead converting all but one to a shortcut, does anyone have any idea how good their algorithm is in working out which should be the final location? If they get this wrong - chaos!

[CloudGuardians]

Hi Gordon,

This is documented publicly, I believe. I any case the behavior is as follows:

 - Files will have a single parent (folder) or they'll be parented in "My Drive" (the root folder). For files currently in multiple locations the behavior will be as follows:

   - The parent will be the folder owned by the owner of the file, or the owner's "My Drive". All the folders belonging to the owner will have a shortcut. All folders belonging to users with whom the file was shared with will have a shortcut.

If you have any specific case-scenario let me know and I'll try to clarify the expected behavior.

[gordon_may]

Thanks, that's helpful. What if the file is in multiple locations owned by
the same individual? I hadn't seen detailed documentation on this, so if
you do find a source, please could you link to it.

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[CloudGuardians]

Maybe the public documentation on this is not very clear.

But in the case that you mention it will work like this:

 - 1. The file will stay only in the original folder, if still available.

 - 2. If the original folder is no longer available then the file will be only in the folder to which it was added first AND that belongs to the file owner

 - 3. If the file is only in a folder owned by another user then the file will be located in the owner's "My Drive", and the other user's folder will have a shortcut.

Hope this helps

[vamsi_krishna_p]

Hey Gordon..

First I should say that's a good question. Here is what I believe basis the articles I have read and some work I have done recently on this

Starting September 30, 2020, Google mentioned that it will no longer be possible to place a file in multiple folders in My Drive, including via the Drive API. Google mentioned that "all files already living in multiple locations in My Drive will gradually be migrated to shortcuts". I believe you are looking what factors Google will consider before finalizing the single parent folder in the gradual rollout that google has start doing. 

When Google is rolling out this to all files and folders I'm sure they will use apis for doing so and basis changes done to the apis here is how it could be

• Google will check what is latest position of the file / folder that it got recently moved to, by a user has access to Move and rest (parent folders got added by the users who have just view access) it would be a shortcut. You will understand better on who have access to move if you can get ACL for the file / folder and see for which users canMoveItemWithinDrive is set to true
• The orphaned files (which has no parent folder) will now be added with "Owner's My Drive" as parent folder. You can check the ACL files / folders and can see where canAddMyDriveParent is set to true

 Hope this helps