Sagamore Google Drive

Documenting how Sagamore Hills Elementary School can use the Google Drive service of their PTA's Google Apps account…

Using

Saving changes

When you want to save a new version of a document already in Drive, do not upload the document again. Instead, go to the document already in Drive that you'd like to update and choose Manage revisions…, then Upload new revision.

Getting started

To start playing with the PTA's Google Drive account, simply:

1. Visit Google Drive and login
   1. If you don't have a Google Account, you can create one. If you're nervous about having a Google Account, please talk to me—I've been there and may be able to address your concerns.
2. Search for "Sagamore Hills Elementary School". You should see a folder with that name, owned by, "Admin SagamoreHillsPTA".
   1. If you can't find it, let me know—you may not have access.
3. Optionally, to the "Sagamore Hills Elementary School" folder, you can:
   1. "Star" it so you don't have to search for it next time (it will be under "Starred" items)
   2. Add it to "My Drive" so that it will sync locally to your devices where Google Drive is installed.
4. Within the "Sagamore Hills Elementary School" folder, feel free to play: making folders, uploading documents, creating documents, etc.

If you've never used Google Drive, inevitably there's a learning curve. There's plenty of info online if you're a self starter, or ask me for help.

PTA ownership

Although any volunteer can add files to the Sagamore folder, eventually the file should be owned by the PTA admin account (see the theory section).

1. Log into Google Drive as admin@sagamorehillspta.org

New

For files that have not yet uploaded by a volunteer and shared in the Sagamore folder…

1. Upload the file(s) somewhere under the top-level "Sagamore Hills Elementary School" folder.

Preexisting

If a file has already been shared somewhere in the Sagamore folder…

1. Copy the file
2. Remove the original (the owner still retains it, it's just removed from the Sagamore folder)
3. Remove leading "Copy of" from the copy's filename

Theory

The idea is that all files are owned by the admin account, which is hosted by the Sagamore Hills PTA Google account, so that storage and deleting are under organizational control. All files are also assigned the highest level access (edit access) to the Sagamore Hills PTA Google Group, to which all volunteers are a member, so that any volunteer can edit files (old versions remain available and cannot be deleted (except by the admin)).

Volunteer Google Accounts (email addresses) are added and removed to/from the Sagamore Hills PTA Google Group to allow/disallow working with Sagamore's Google Drive hosted files.

A single folder named "Sagamore Hills Elementary School" contains all files (and folders). This top-level folder is assigned the previously mentioned permissions, which become the default share setting for new contents added to it. Volunteers will go to this folder in their own Google Drive environments to work with Sagamore files.

Although volunteers can add their own files to the Sagamore managed folder, those files should eventually become owned by the admin account (see "Adding files")so that they can be owned by the PTA (stored by, deletable only by, controlled by).