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I’m about to emergency move shared folders to google drive starting for one of our offices (different business name, different shared drive), and have to get this done by Wednessday. The location is having issues with File share and I’ve helped users move their personal folders on the file server to “My Drive”, works well for them so far.

I’ve read a lot of writeups about migrating, and some videos as well.
Just wondering if anyone has done this recently and if there’s anything to watch out for.
Already installed google drive for office and removed google drive sync, will also disable conversion of office files before I proceed with the move.
I also created roles user for permision and admin user to host the shared files.

Seems simple enough, I think I’m ready to move the files but somehow I’m worried I might be missing something…
I don’t think I will have any chance to switch back if there’s an issue.

Any input will be appreciated…

Thanks

@Google

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Google has made this very straight forward. You upload stuff, set permissions, you’re set.

The only thing I would keep in mind during this whole thing is your folder structure and various permissions on things. Permissions need to match what they are on the file server to allow for a smooth transition.

Other than that, when we did it, it was very simple.

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Watch your data limit. For most it is 15gigs, they might have to give up some cat videos!

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Not sure if I’m missing something, migration was good but I noticed that, if I create a new folder/file from my account, when I log into the Admin account which hosts the shared files, the files or folders I created/added still has me as owner and not the admin account as owner.

How do I set this up so that any new file/folder added, regardless of who added it, is owned by Admin?
Is that even possible?
Just worried what might happen if a person’s account gets deleted and they are still the owner of a shared file…

Thanks

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GDocs is not setup that way; He who creates it, owns it!

If you have the management console you can transfer ownership and you can migrate entire accounts to another user. Under the admin account I believe you can “grab” ownership but this may have changed, have not had to do this in a while!

Yes, if an account gets deleted the doc go away, but in that process is an option to transfer the data to another user prior to the actual deletion. I suggest setting up a dummy account, create a few junk docs, then walk yourself through the account deletion process. The other option I have used is to change access to the soon to be deleted account and let it sit for a while while docs are migrated to other users. Change the password through the admin console and then you have time to go through the account and can move docs as needed to other users without deleting anything.

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Looks like there’s a way around it depending on the reseller/partner?
I went forward with asking bettercloud and it appears you could set policy to change files/folders ownership.
Although it didn’t seem to work the way I expected, or just doing a lot more than I hoped for…

policy.JPG
policy.JPG800×484 45 KB

I had google drive open when I tried this.
Had to delete the policy and ask a few more questions when I noticed a new “Transfered Files” folder outside the Shared folder I created… Plus, as it was processing, I could see files appear and disappear in the root directory of the share account…
Still waiting for a repy for more details or documentation to read and also if this can be reversed before I proceed, but it’s looking like it doesn’t function as I hoped…

I now have a few files from different users under this accounts google drive :
Root folder>Transfered files>User@domain.com’s transferred files>user@domain.com’s Violations
Files all belong to the share account and shared with the user it used to belong to…
Thankfully I recognize the files that have been moved and they seem mostly like file accidentally saved to google drive from gmail… Not very important and not very many.

The owner in files that I added to the shared folder from a different account remained the same though. Maybe it would have been updated after chewing through other people’s files if I had let it…

I’ll follow up with some updates once I get a responce.

thanks

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I’ve been told :

“I think the best approach would be to use the “dummy user” to flag the documents and then create a policy to change the owner of all of its contents.”

I retried my policy, and it seemed to work…
It seems to take more than a few hours before the policy gets applied on new folders/files but it did change the owner eventually… Say S is the owner of the hosting account and U is the roles user which A, B, C belongs to.
When A uploads a new folder to the shared folder, A is owner and S is editor. After policy is in effect, S becomes owner and A as well as U becomes editor. B and C are able to access and edit as expected.
Only issue is, you don’t see option for " Prevent editors from changing access and adding new people" in the folder, however, the option is not checked for the files so anyone that is editor can share with anyone else…
To fix this I’m looking at handling permisions from google admin page.

I’m ignoring the fact that I have a bunch of new folders in the root folder : “Transfered files>User@domain.com’s transferred files>user@domain.com’s Violations”… (Will look at fixing that if I stick with this method)

I will explore using scripts to 1. set folder owner, 2. set editor, 3. Prevent editors from changing access and adding new people, 4. rerun every xxx minutes…

Will return with more updates.

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Sorry for the long delay in the update:
After long emails with the google partner we use (better cloud) and profound cloud (trying to sell me their service without detailed info on how this will work).
I got some help with using google app scripts but turns out you have to be the owner of the file for the script to work.
Which means I’d have to use bettercloud’s policy, to take ownership then have the script run to fix permisions, sounds like a messy solution and not a great one considering the files are going to be there for the owner to share to anyone till the policy runs… There was a few hours gap before ownership changed in my tests…

During my research about scripts, someone said try AODocs…
I didn’t really want that due to the extra $$/user/mo.
Boss is back now and we’ve gone over everything I’ve tried and also had a presentation with AODocs.

So far it’s looking great, with everything we need and more… So seems like that’s what we are doing…
File server is kinda patched up so planning on Migration using AODocs and their migration tools…

What I learnt…

  1. Google says, currently: files and folders don’t inherit their parent’s permision… Especially “Prevent editors from changing access and adding new people”. They will add that to feature request… (so wouldn’t have worked anyways without some 3rd party tool)

  2. Google app scripts for maninpulating file owner and permision is kinda waste of time if you don’t already own the file

  3. Most google app partners (or at least the ones I spoke to) still require a third party app, such as AODocs for proper management of google drive files & permisions. Bettercloud doesn’t seem to know how their customers handle situations like this, profound cloud seem to be keeping their info to themselves, I guess afraid we would skip them and get the third party app ourselves if we knew which one…

  4. My post didn’t seem to atract anyone that’s actually done this before. :frowning:

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Good info, thanks for the update.