Google Suite Upgrade
March 27, 2022 10:57 AM Subscribe
I am in charge of getting my company upgraded from our Legacy Free Google Suite. Historically, data handling/management at this company has been.... let's just say less than great.
I need to remove a LOT of inactive users that own a LOT of things on Google Drive that current users rely on.
I need to do this with the least inconvenience and/or impact to current users.
By "least" I mean that I have gone over every list-filtering permutation I can think of to narrow down what needs to be kept available, and told just figuring out parameters for me to reference was "too much extra work". I was hoping to archive/back-up currently unneeded files, to reduce data size/usage (and also time moving files). Is there any way to do this without user cooperation?
Users/Company will NOT consider changing their data handling practices, or switch to a different cloud provider or self-hosted server solution. In the past, users have had their username/email changed with the previous user's info as an "alias", so I'm not even sure if I can get access to change ownership for some of those "aliases". Users *might* be willing/able to learn to "change ownership" to a single "Department" log-in, but that's about all they're willing to give me, and I doubt they'd actually do it to existing files, or keep up with new ones.
I need help building a process to make the Google Suite upgrade as easy on me as possible while achieving at least:
- Eliminating Inactive Users (past employees)
- Keeping necessary files owned by Inactive Users available to Current Users (current employees)
- Doing this with absolute minimal impact/inconvenience to Current Users (I have already accepted that I will be giving up a weekend day for this.)
- BONUS: Is there any easy way to mass-delete "email older than..." in Gmail? (sooo much drive space used in email!!!)
I will also then need a process for the inevitable circumstances where one of my current users leave. They also own a lot of things that will need to be accessed after they're gone.
I am an office manager, not a data specialist, not an IT person, and I can manage data on a real server, but Google Suite, at this level, is a bit beyond me. I have no access to "real" support from Google until we upgrade. Users have treated any little favor I ask of them to help me with this as a huge inconvenience. I'm also busy with so many other things (I also do AR/AP and HR, as well as all the things that fall under "office management") I accept this will be a time-consuming and painful project. Please help make it less so?
By "least" I mean that I have gone over every list-filtering permutation I can think of to narrow down what needs to be kept available, and told just figuring out parameters for me to reference was "too much extra work". I was hoping to archive/back-up currently unneeded files, to reduce data size/usage (and also time moving files). Is there any way to do this without user cooperation?
Users/Company will NOT consider changing their data handling practices, or switch to a different cloud provider or self-hosted server solution. In the past, users have had their username/email changed with the previous user's info as an "alias", so I'm not even sure if I can get access to change ownership for some of those "aliases". Users *might* be willing/able to learn to "change ownership" to a single "Department" log-in, but that's about all they're willing to give me, and I doubt they'd actually do it to existing files, or keep up with new ones.
I need help building a process to make the Google Suite upgrade as easy on me as possible while achieving at least:
- Eliminating Inactive Users (past employees)
- Keeping necessary files owned by Inactive Users available to Current Users (current employees)
- Doing this with absolute minimal impact/inconvenience to Current Users (I have already accepted that I will be giving up a weekend day for this.)
- BONUS: Is there any easy way to mass-delete "email older than..." in Gmail? (sooo much drive space used in email!!!)
I will also then need a process for the inevitable circumstances where one of my current users leave. They also own a lot of things that will need to be accessed after they're gone.
I am an office manager, not a data specialist, not an IT person, and I can manage data on a real server, but Google Suite, at this level, is a bit beyond me. I have no access to "real" support from Google until we upgrade. Users have treated any little favor I ask of them to help me with this as a huge inconvenience. I'm also busy with so many other things (I also do AR/AP and HR, as well as all the things that fall under "office management") I accept this will be a time-consuming and painful project. Please help make it less so?
I have had some experience with legacy Google Suite, but was not in the position you are in. However, just while you're waiting for someone with more experience, I wanted to make sure you had seen this Google page that sounds similar to your situation.
posted by forthright at 11:47 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by forthright at 11:47 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: It sounds like what you want to do is to move all the current files from all the inactive users into Shared Drives, while asking active users to move their own files into the same Shared Drives. Shared Drives belong to the organization, not a specific user, though different users can have different permissions for different drives. There is no storage limit for Shared Drives, though there is a 400,000 item per drive limit, but you can have as many as you want.
It sounds like you'll want to organize currently used files in some kind of reasonable directory structure and perhaps older files and folders can be dumped in one drive per account. If someone wants to clean that up later, that's a separate step.
It isn't clear from your question how users are finding and accessing files currently (are there shared folders?), but that might have some bearing on how you go about this. You'll need to figure out what structure of Shared Drives makes sense, depending on who needs access to what.
Any files that were previously owned by users that are now aliases of current users are owned by the current user, so you don't need to worry about that as a separate issue.
Ideally, for the future, you tell everyone to put everything that needs to be kept must be stored in a Shared Drive and then when someone leaves, their files are already in Shared Drives.
Is there any easy way to mass-delete "email older than..." in Gmail?
From inside the Gmail account you can just search by date and delete. From the admin side, I don't think so.
posted by ssg at 11:49 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
It sounds like you'll want to organize currently used files in some kind of reasonable directory structure and perhaps older files and folders can be dumped in one drive per account. If someone wants to clean that up later, that's a separate step.
It isn't clear from your question how users are finding and accessing files currently (are there shared folders?), but that might have some bearing on how you go about this. You'll need to figure out what structure of Shared Drives makes sense, depending on who needs access to what.
Any files that were previously owned by users that are now aliases of current users are owned by the current user, so you don't need to worry about that as a separate issue.
Ideally, for the future, you tell everyone to put everything that needs to be kept must be stored in a Shared Drive and then when someone leaves, their files are already in Shared Drives.
Is there any easy way to mass-delete "email older than..." in Gmail?
From inside the Gmail account you can just search by date and delete. From the admin side, I don't think so.
posted by ssg at 11:49 AM on March 27, 2022 [1 favorite]
Best answer: A Shared Drive is definitely the way to go. My group moved to a Shared Drive a year or so ago and though it took some effort, it’s 100% better than the mess we had before.
posted by sriracha at 1:11 PM on March 27, 2022
posted by sriracha at 1:11 PM on March 27, 2022
Response by poster: I had no idea Shared Drive existed! It sounds like Shared Drive is the way to go, but it looks like we'll have to upgrade first, which would mean paying for 28 inactive users. Is there a quick and easy way to move ALL of the inactive users' files to the drive, without having to select one by one?
Currently, whoever creates a file in Google Drive owns it, and shares to whoever needs it. Is there any easy way for active users to move all of their files to the Shared Drive? Is there a way to force new documents created by a particular user to be on the Shared Drive?
I will be looking more into Shared Drive tomorrow, and am happy to take any suggestions on how to create "best practices" and how to best guide my users to actually following them!
posted by MuChao at 1:56 PM on March 27, 2022
Currently, whoever creates a file in Google Drive owns it, and shares to whoever needs it. Is there any easy way for active users to move all of their files to the Shared Drive? Is there a way to force new documents created by a particular user to be on the Shared Drive?
I will be looking more into Shared Drive tomorrow, and am happy to take any suggestions on how to create "best practices" and how to best guide my users to actually following them!
posted by MuChao at 1:56 PM on March 27, 2022
As an IT person, if different teams at your company have different functions/collections of documents, you might create multiple Shared Drives like "Accounting," "Research," "Human Resources," and so on, as a long-term solution.
If you are a small enough organization, you can get away with moving stuff from one employee's personal Google Drive to another, without ever having to use Shared Drives. Since it sounds like your version of Google Suite doesn't have Shared Drives, you might have to condense your active users' data without them. I would check twice about whether this much administrative work is cheaper and better for your organization than paying to upgrade those 28 accounts, but I don't know your situation.
Possibly try to run through the process below once or twice, timing yourself, and then go to your management and say "it will take me approximately X work-hours to do this for one user without paying the license upgrade cost of $Y."
In your position, my process might look like:
1. Bump your own account's storage level to handle at least 35 more GB of data, to be on the safe side. If you don't need it, you can scale down later.
2. Create a folder in your own Google Drive called something like "Former Employees." Add folders inside of that folder with the same names as your 28 former users.
3. For each of the 28 users, share the named folder with the inactive account, so they can move data there.
4. For each of the 28 users, sign in as or "impersonate" the user, or otherwise gain access to everything in their Personal Google Drive. (I'm vague here because I'm not sure how to do this in your verison of Google Suite. You might have to change their password and sign in as them in an incognito/private window.)
5. While impersonating an inactive user, move everything in their individual Google Drive to the folder on the Shared Drive that you created, and make your own account the "Owner" of the folders/files.
6. This will probably break permissions on the files, so you'll have to re-share/re-provide access to their data to the current employees who need it - at least, until you can get it into a Shared Drive and manage permissions that way.
7. Possibly set up the inactive user's email address as an "alias" or shared address for a current employee or employees, so if a contact emails the user's old work address your organization still gets that email.
8. When you've taken care of an inactive user's emails and Google Drive files, you can delete that inactive user from your Google Workspace organization so you don't have to pay for them any more.
This is a hassle, and might be more effort than you want to go to, especially if someone left your company long, long ago and nobody cares about their email or files. But it does preserve all of their information, and you'll be able to search your own Google Drive to find their stuff by keyword/title later if you have to.
Obligatory self-interested pitchy bit: This might be easier with IT personnel, and it will be less painful and time-consuming for someone using specialized migration software they've used many times before. Even if your organization simply wants to move to a newer version of Google Suite / Google Workspace, it might be reasonable to consider hiring an external IT provider just to handle the migration and then stop doing work for you. (My employer is an IT provider and it is cheaper to have us come in just for a migration than to have us work with you indefinitely.)
posted by All Might Be Well at 2:44 PM on March 27, 2022
If you are a small enough organization, you can get away with moving stuff from one employee's personal Google Drive to another, without ever having to use Shared Drives. Since it sounds like your version of Google Suite doesn't have Shared Drives, you might have to condense your active users' data without them. I would check twice about whether this much administrative work is cheaper and better for your organization than paying to upgrade those 28 accounts, but I don't know your situation.
Possibly try to run through the process below once or twice, timing yourself, and then go to your management and say "it will take me approximately X work-hours to do this for one user without paying the license upgrade cost of $Y."
In your position, my process might look like:
1. Bump your own account's storage level to handle at least 35 more GB of data, to be on the safe side. If you don't need it, you can scale down later.
2. Create a folder in your own Google Drive called something like "Former Employees." Add folders inside of that folder with the same names as your 28 former users.
3. For each of the 28 users, share the named folder with the inactive account, so they can move data there.
4. For each of the 28 users, sign in as or "impersonate" the user, or otherwise gain access to everything in their Personal Google Drive. (I'm vague here because I'm not sure how to do this in your verison of Google Suite. You might have to change their password and sign in as them in an incognito/private window.)
5. While impersonating an inactive user, move everything in their individual Google Drive to the folder on the Shared Drive that you created, and make your own account the "Owner" of the folders/files.
6. This will probably break permissions on the files, so you'll have to re-share/re-provide access to their data to the current employees who need it - at least, until you can get it into a Shared Drive and manage permissions that way.
7. Possibly set up the inactive user's email address as an "alias" or shared address for a current employee or employees, so if a contact emails the user's old work address your organization still gets that email.
8. When you've taken care of an inactive user's emails and Google Drive files, you can delete that inactive user from your Google Workspace organization so you don't have to pay for them any more.
This is a hassle, and might be more effort than you want to go to, especially if someone left your company long, long ago and nobody cares about their email or files. But it does preserve all of their information, and you'll be able to search your own Google Drive to find their stuff by keyword/title later if you have to.
Obligatory self-interested pitchy bit: This might be easier with IT personnel, and it will be less painful and time-consuming for someone using specialized migration software they've used many times before. Even if your organization simply wants to move to a newer version of Google Suite / Google Workspace, it might be reasonable to consider hiring an external IT provider just to handle the migration and then stop doing work for you. (My employer is an IT provider and it is cheaper to have us come in just for a migration than to have us work with you indefinitely.)
posted by All Might Be Well at 2:44 PM on March 27, 2022
Is there a quick and easy way to move ALL of the inactive users' files to the drive, without having to select one by one?
Your best bet would probably be to close all the inactive accounts, which will give you the option to transfer all the user's files to your account when you close them. Then once all the files are in your account, you can easily transfer them all to a Shared Drive. You may need to pay for additional storage for your account for a month to make this work (and I'm not sure if you can do that now or have to wait until you upgrade).
Is there any easy way for active users to move all of their files to the Shared Drive?
It was many years ago that we did this, but for most users drag and drop or selecting all and then right click -> move works fine. I recall it could get a little slow for huge numbers of files, in which case the Google Drive desktop app is a better alternative (it's probably a good idea for everyone anyways).
Is there a way to force new documents created by a particular user to be on the Shared Drive?
Frustratingly, no. I think the point to reinforce to people is that you probably shouldn't ever share a document with internal users, instead move it into an appropriate Shared Drive.
how to create "best practices"
You need some kind of agreed directory structure. Search is obviously good in Drive, but it really helps to have structure that you can drill down into sometimes. You probably need to set up the skeleton of the Shared Drives and maybe folders in them and then make it clear to users when they should create new folders (this should hopefully not be a huge shock to people working in an office).
Drive also has a tag function, but we haven't used it.
I've found that it can be helpful to create Groups of users and to give those groups permissions to various Shared Drives, rather than trying to manage permissions for each drive separately. One of the groups can just be everyone, which makes it easy to share a drive with everyone at once.
Depending on how much you trust people, you might want to create some Drives that some people can view but not edit or can add to but cannot delete from. Shared Drives trash is purged after a month, so you don't want to get into a situation where someone deletes something they shouldn't and no one notices until it is permanently gone. This is of course also something to think about in your backup strategy.
posted by ssg at 2:48 PM on March 27, 2022
Your best bet would probably be to close all the inactive accounts, which will give you the option to transfer all the user's files to your account when you close them. Then once all the files are in your account, you can easily transfer them all to a Shared Drive. You may need to pay for additional storage for your account for a month to make this work (and I'm not sure if you can do that now or have to wait until you upgrade).
Is there any easy way for active users to move all of their files to the Shared Drive?
It was many years ago that we did this, but for most users drag and drop or selecting all and then right click -> move works fine. I recall it could get a little slow for huge numbers of files, in which case the Google Drive desktop app is a better alternative (it's probably a good idea for everyone anyways).
Is there a way to force new documents created by a particular user to be on the Shared Drive?
Frustratingly, no. I think the point to reinforce to people is that you probably shouldn't ever share a document with internal users, instead move it into an appropriate Shared Drive.
how to create "best practices"
You need some kind of agreed directory structure. Search is obviously good in Drive, but it really helps to have structure that you can drill down into sometimes. You probably need to set up the skeleton of the Shared Drives and maybe folders in them and then make it clear to users when they should create new folders (this should hopefully not be a huge shock to people working in an office).
Drive also has a tag function, but we haven't used it.
I've found that it can be helpful to create Groups of users and to give those groups permissions to various Shared Drives, rather than trying to manage permissions for each drive separately. One of the groups can just be everyone, which makes it easy to share a drive with everyone at once.
Depending on how much you trust people, you might want to create some Drives that some people can view but not edit or can add to but cannot delete from. Shared Drives trash is purged after a month, so you don't want to get into a situation where someone deletes something they shouldn't and no one notices until it is permanently gone. This is of course also something to think about in your backup strategy.
posted by ssg at 2:48 PM on March 27, 2022
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by MuChao at 11:00 AM on March 27, 2022