Using Google’s New Storage Features
Last week Google released new storage features that will help schools obtain an overview into their organization’s storage use. As we’ve previously discussed in this blog, unlimited storage is ending in Google Workspace for Education and most organizations will be capped at 100 TB of pooled storage. Pooled storage includes data from all users (suspended and active) across Google Workspace (including Google Drive, Gmail, Google Photos and more). According to Google, “Admins can use these new tools to see how much storage is being used across their organization and view how close their organization is to reaching their storage limit.”
Super administrators can find these new features inside the Google Admin Console by clicking either the Storage card on their home page or selecting Storage from the menu.
New storage features in Google Workspace
These new features allow your Google super administrators to quickly and easily:
- Use the storage usage summary to view a storage summary for your entire organization
- View storage used in your domain by specific apps like Google Drive, Gmail, or Google Photos
- Find the users in your domain that are using the most storage
- Find the shared drives in your domain that are using the most storage
- Find and delete shared drives
- Configure storage limits for your users by OU and Groups.
In Storage Settings (Admin Console > Storage > Storage Settings) you can set up storage limits for your users. These limits included storage from all apps in Google Workspace and can be set by organizational units and groups. So, for example, you could set a storage limit of 5 GBs for your staff.
Additionally, admins can apply different storage policies using groups. Your organization may have journalism teachers, communications specialists, and videographers who create and use more storage. You can give these users additional storage by adding them to groups and then giving those groups more storage inside of storage settings.
A word of caution. If you set a storage limit for your users and some users are already over the limit, they will not be able to add content to Google Drive, edit their documents or create new documents in Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets until they are under the storage limit. Additionally, if these users are the owners of shared files those shared files cannot be copied and forms cannot be submitted.
So, if you set up a storage limit of 5 GBs for your staff and one of your teachers has 7 GBs of storage their account will be limited when you enforce your policy. This means they will not be able to upload new files or create new files.
How KIT Central’s Storage+ Can Help
While these new features can help super administrators get a glimpse into their storage situation they don’t let super administrators take actions and take control of their organization’s Google Drive. Storage+ can help.
With Storage+ you’re able to:
- Find the largest files in your organization
Find the largest files in your school district and then take action with Storage+. - Delete drive content
With Storage+ you can move files to the trash, schedule them to go to the trash, or delete them instantly all with just a couple of clicks. - Find and fix duplicate content
Do you have duplicate files on your Google Drive taking up storage space? Storage+ allows you to quickly find duplicate files and then delete the additional copies all while maintaining access and editing rights. - Move files to Google Cloud Storage
Have files that you need to archive? In only a couple of clicks you can move files from Google Drive to Google Cloud Storage, freeing up space in drive and providing a spot for storing and archiving your data. - Transfer Files
While the Google Admin Console allows you to transfer the entire contents of a user’s Google Drive, Storage+ lets you select and transfer only the relevant files. Imagine that you need to transfer the files of a recently retired counselor to the school’s new counselor. Besides the files in question, the user’s Google Drive may also include personal photos, tax return information (and social security numbers), employee evaluations and more. With Storage+ you can share only the appropriate information and prevent accidentally sharing personally identifiable information (PII).
Want to learn more?
Check out our webinar, Using Google’s New Storage Features.
To help with the new storage changes coming this summer to schools using Google Workspace for Education, Google has introduced new storage features. This webinar will help you get to know the new features so you can take control of the storage in your organization.
