ARCHIVED: Manage departmental content in Google at IU

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Important:
While UITS endorses the use of Google apps, they can pose accessibility issues, and can take considerable time for individuals with disabilities to master. Therefore, it is best to offer additional options for completing course requirements.

Overview

With IU group accounts, teams, departments, and other groups at IU can manage files from one location. In order to avoid data loss, you must assign ownership of departmental and team data to a group account, as any data owned by individuals will be deleted if that person leaves IU.

Access Google at IU with a group account

Group accounts can access Google at IU by default. If you don't have a group account and would like to create one, see About IU computing accounts for groups or departments for eligibility and instructions.

Manage ownership in Google at IU

By default, content is owned by the account that creates it. For the purpose of work done within a group, it is best practice for files to be owned by a group account, not individuals, in order to avoid unexpected data loss. This can be accomplished in multiple ways for both Google Sites and Google Drive; see below.

Important:

Always use your Google at IU account for Indiana University coursework and other university business. Personal (free) non-IU Google accounts are not approved for institutional data. When working in Google apps, you can check the upper right to see which account you're logged into.

By default, unless you sign out, Google keeps you logged in, even if you close your browser; thus you could be logged into your personal account, even if you started from google.iu.edu. Consider adding a profile picture for each of your accounts to help differentiate between them.

In Google Sites

  • Log in as the group account and create your site. You can add site editors and participants with varying levels of access; see Invite others to edit your site.
  • If you created a site using your own account, share it with the appropriate group account and set the group account as the site's owner.

In Google Drive

  • Log in as the group account and create files and folders. The group account will own any content thus created or uploaded. However, this also means that anyone who can access the group account will have the same permissions in the group's folders.
  • Share your group account's folders with specific people, and request that those people transfer file ownership to the group account. This method allows users to have varying levels of access and to access the files and folders with their own accounts, enabling a greater degree of accountability. Ownership for content created by individual accounts in the group account's folders must be transferred to the group account one by one. For access details and instructions, see Share files from Google Drive and Make someone else the owner of your file.
    Notes:
    • When working with group accounts, UITS recommends choosing Share with specific people, as this will allow you to assign different access levels to different people.
    • Transferring the ownership of a folder will not transfer ownership of files within that folder; the files must be transferred separately.

This is document aaal in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2020-06-29 11:56:04.