Julie McMurry
2024
Now with
more cats!
Cc-by 2.0 except component images
Cc-0 image links in footers
Take homes (if you forget everything else)
Getting started with Work account
& access / permissions
Cool cats
Use a work account
Why visitor-based sharing isn’t enough in google drive
(Ignore if you have never used drive in visitor mode)
Cool cats
Use a work account
for UNC this is tislab.org/request-unc-google
For other CTSA institutions, get in touch with me
For non-CTSA institutions I have some materials you can use to talk to your institution
Document ownership overview: LOCATION. LOCATION. LOCATION.
You personally own: avoid filing stuff here except shortcuts (unless you have no alternative)
A GOOGLE Workspace - Subscribing Institution owns: Not all subscribing institutions support this feature. Preferable since the hierarchy easily browsed. Few access surprises.
Other individuals own: assorted documents not easily browsed.
Where a document IS determines in large part who can find/view/edit it. More on ownership here.
Before you try to access the shared folder/drive, be sure you have:
it’s
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Multiple Google accounts?
Don’t use multiple sign on, toggle profiles.
Family account
PErsonal account
Work account
School account
Soccer team
2. Don’t hairball share:
Create and share documents
Create PRE-shared documents
Share whole drives,
not individual docs.
Share with teams,
not individuals
&
“Friends don’t let friends hairball share.”
See here for why
DON’T
DO
Never use “my drive” unless it is for your personal shortcuts to docs on shared drives
Recommended settings: https://drive.google.com/settings
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How to create a pre-shared document: TARGet. TARGET. Target.
Natively
From file upload
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Recommended view Preferences: List view generally best
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who you share with matters; this will determine what happens when you “ABC share” (URL address bar copy)
*Note this doesn’t mean that it will be indexed by Google/Bing/etc. — Just that it will be reachable by anyone who already has the link.
Know WHERE you are working (What the parent folder is)
If you are in a document whose parent folder is also shared with you, you’ll see a folder icon to the right of the document title. Hovering over it will show ‘move’ which sounds wrong scary, but you don’t have to actually move the file when you click the folder.
Just click the linkout icon to open the parent folder in a new tab. This doesn’t move the file at all.
I’m hoping Google improve this UI simple word to “see parent folder” as you almost never want to move a document when it is open anyway.
3. Don’t be a copycat
Find and version documents like a pro
Strategies for keeping on top of documents you’re actively working on:
For example https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=followup:actionitems gives you docs that have you tagged in them for follow up
2) RECENT https://drive.google.com/drive/recent
3) STARRED https://drive.google.com/drive/starred
4) Add shortcut to drive
Use this if you want a more custom structured view of documents that you’re accessing frequently. Shortcuts themselves can be shared and filed anywhere as well. Use of shortcuts avoids having to create copies of things in various places.
5) Add bookmark to browser
Because each gDoc has its own url, it can be handy to have frequently accessed docs at your fingertips
More here: https://seosly.com/google-drive-search-operators/
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Just like cookies in the break room…
a file created in a shared folder can be accessed by your team (whether via search for by stumbling upon), but your team won’t know to go looking unless you let them know.
So when you’re ready to have them do something with that file, copy the URL from your browser window and send it to your team in an email, slack etc.
http://joyreactor.com/post/1351456
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Slack someone a link to this slide
Sometimes you need a single file to be visible / findable in multiple folders.
The best way to do this is to create a shortcut and file that.
Think of it like a wormhole.
You can do this from the file view (file … add shortcut)
or the folder view right click file(s) … add shortcut to drive.
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Let google do the all the heavy lifting for version control.
You focus on the science. Do the writing online only.
“Don’t be a copycat.
The time you save could be your own. For naps.”
Version control: Name important versions, not copies
With the exception of Google forms, all google files are version controlled with tracked changes: presentations, docs, sheets, drawings. Versioning is done every few seconds.
Therefore give important versions a name to keep track of them. Eg. “As discussed 10-15” or “V1”, “Submitted” etc.
If what you need is for posterity or frequent reference, consider downloading a PDF version and filing that in the same folder with the date stamp. It won’t be confused with the live version since it can’t be (easily) edited.
Any version can be browsed, restored or copied; named versions are stored indefinitely
PROTIP: For things like weekly meeting minutes, a single document with running minutes is far better than a different document per meeting each week. All the better if the link to the agenda/minutes is in the recurring calendar invitation.
Did you make some cat-astrophic edits? Restore from backup
this will replace what is the “Live” version at the same link
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/604811-cats
Provide a thread to follow. Don’t delete; “Deprecate” (obsolete) with care
Because of the built in versioning stay in the same document unless there’s a reason you can’t (for instance a tab needs to move from one sheet to another, or if two parallel docs have been merged):
Files “run away from home” all the time so:
4. Don’t get lost
Name & tag files for title search
DO | DO NOT |
Long-COVID-paper-2022 Long-COVID paper 2022 | Paper Long COVID |
No tags
5. Adopt a collaborative approach:
Many paws make light work
Right click is your friend for comments, suggestions, and sleuthing changes
Level Up on collaborative features:
TAG YOUR TEAM, FILTER COMMENTS
In general, for posterity, it can be helpful to select a larger section of text on which to comment. This helps the comment be understood whether or not the context is accessed.
Adding a comment to a resolved comment thread will re-open it.
Reminder that if you @mention someone in a comment, they will get an email but only if that email address has access to the document AND is configured to receive mail. The latter is not the case for most aourp.io addresses. Globally commentable documents behave differently.
Use the power of collaborative features; tame your notifications
Don’t blindly tolerate endless notifications. Every email notification you get will end with a link to “Change what Google sends you” [for this document]. Use it. You can also opt IN to get notifications of changes to any document. More info here
Quick tips
Change your doc and text defaults
Both at the document level, and at the text styles level. For NIH, one of the compliant styles is .5 inch margins and single spaced Arial 11 or higher (You can use your own preferences for other heading styles)
Change margins to .5” (Google’s default is 1”)
2) Create Arial 11 text at single space
(note that 1.15 is Google’s default spacing!) and then use text styles dropdown to update ‘Normal Text’ to match
You can do this with other header types as well
Then save as default
3) Once you’re happy with your text styles, save them as your defaults.
Apply (and USE) headings to enforce formatting consistency
and aid navigating between document sections
You can glance at the document outline (hide or show using the icon)
By applying heading styles
No, you’re not stuck with EndNote
Paperpile and Zotero save the day
Unsolicited advice: No one in 2023 should be using EndNote. It works mostly ok but is collaboration-hostile and has no advantages apart from market share. Many tools far superior now exist, some free. My personal favorite is Paperpile.com. 3$ per month is very affordable and it is fully compatible with with Google Docs (And MS Word by the way!).
If you don’t want all-in on Paperpile, it is still possible to take an existing MS Word doc with its EndNote refs, and migrate it to Paperpile refs in just 3 easy steps. Details here. You can go back to EndNote island afterward, but you won’t want to.
Even if not all collaborators buy into Paperpile, it is still possible for them to help add references by pasting just the PMID or DOI (or even URL) in text or comment. Someone with a paperpile license can come through later and sweep these into formal paperpile references.
Citations on a small scale can be done collaboratively using the native tool in gDocs (details here)
Get comfy with tables
It is possible to create tables that look very polished and don’t take much space; however, this takes knowing your way around the settings. In particular how to format multiple cells at once. See here for details.
First line left indent
Second (wrapped) line left indent
Rightmost limit for all lines in paragraph
Protip 1 :
Wherever you are
(folder, file, content),
right click is your friend
Documents list
Spreadsheets
Docs
Take homes (if you forget everything else)
Extra slides
Chrome profiles
Toggling between Google accounts is painful.
Main Personal gmail
Family account
Work account
Work service account
Spam address
Did you lose your chrome bookmarks when you set up profiles?
1) sign in under your personal account ... go to bookmark manager
2) go to the hamburger menu by your profile icon, export them to an html
3) sign in using CU and go to hamburger menu by your profile icon
Import bookmarks and settings
1
2
3
Moving and migrating documents
Moving documents the easy way 2023
Alternatively, drag and drop
Caveat: shared drive managers sometimes restrict the move & delete privileges.
If you need something you don’t have permission for, just ask your drive admin. The Google workspace development team are working on more granular options for permissioning
“Back in my day, we had to click the “move” icon and use the arrows to navigate up and down one folder level at a time.
It still works, but 0/100 I do not recommend.”
Individual, Ephemeral
Recognizes institutions can build things that last longer than individuals can
Assumes everyone every team member knows how to act for the collective good and will do so in perpetuity. Assumes no one will leave a job and assumes if they do, they’ll continue to comply
“I thought we were an autonomous collective”
Collective, enduring
Risks are real
Common
Uncommon
Document ownership Fine print: Your drive, shared drives, shared with you
| Team Drive | Shared Folder (not in team drive) |
Loss prevention (Documents filed in team drives become owned by the drive owner rather than the document owner) | Yes | No; an owner of a document can delete it or unshare it without any recourse from the team. A document owned by an account that is deleted, is deleted forever. Folders owned by an account that is deleted are deleted forever, orphaning documents owned by others |
Easy transfer of ownership within or across orgs | Yes, in bulk in <1 minute | No; transfer must be done manually for individual documents. Takes HOURS. If it is not done, the documents are deleted when the account is or continue to clog the person’s storage after they leave the project |
Storage cap | Optionally capped per drive (averaged across accounts) | Capped per account |
Available override of permissions for individual docs and folders | Yes (Beta Sept 2024) | Yes; documents and folders can override a parent folder’s permissions. Caveat: can be confusing |
You own
A GSuite - Subscribing Institution owns
Other individuals own
What is the difference?
Owned by INDIVIDUALS (OLD)
Owned by ORGANIZATIONS (after 2017)
Migration from shared folders to shared drives is hard
MIGRATION approach
(MOVE to Shared Drive)
EXPORT approach
(Download - Re-upload)
PROS
CONS
What migration approach to take? It depends
MIGRATION approach
(MOVE to Shared Drive)
EXPORT approach
(Download - Re-upload)
How to identify and migrate at-risk docs
Documents that you’ve not shared, or that you’ve shared but not filed are impossible to know about.
https://drive.google.com/drive/search?q=owner:me
Open the wedge on ‘shared drives’ and find the appropriate place for them, drag and drop on the left
Ideally, except for shortcuts nothing (professional) should permanently live in your “My drive”, for any project. Your personal / family files are of course your own business.
Each person that
clicks on that link will see
THEIR documents that
they need to migrated.
Moving files from one shared drive to another shared drive
As long as the person doing the moving has manager-level permissions in both source and target drives, things should be pretty straightforward.
Yes.
Shared drive blues #1
Is it possible to override shared drive root permissions?
Some workarounds in meantime:
You messed up my spreadsheet
I didn’t mean to
SHared drive Lessons learned
Google-Microsoft
Hybrid environment survival strategies
Hybrid calendar environments are the worst;
they’re also inescapable
Hybrid or not, calendar best practices in general are here: tislab.org/calendar-best-practices
At a minimum, it is good to know how to use drive to best effect.
It now has 3 Billion Users.
Store safely
Sync seamlessly
Share easily with individuals or groups
Access anywhere
Add any file you want to keep safe with the button: spreadsheets, slides, documents, forms, photos and everything else.
Get files from your Mac or PC into Drive using the desktop app.
Google drive’s main advantages:
What is document / folder ownership anyway?
When you move a document to a team drive, the concept of ownership effectively broadens.
However for this reason,
ONLY THE OWNER can move a file to a shared drive.
At this time, moving folders to shared drives is not supported. Only documents can be moved.
If your institution pays for GSuite and you want to migrate your files from a different account of yours to a team drive, instructions are here
Shared drives: Important caveats
Constrain root permissions of shared drive. For loss prevention and sharing controls, the safest place to put a document is in a shared drive. Just be careful that the root permissions are not too permissive for your document.
Changing doc ownership. Moving a document from a personal drive to a shared drive changes the whole concept of that document’s ownership. It goes from being “owned” by a single individual who created it to being owned by the institution in whose drive it exists. All of the managers of the shared drive have full permission; all will receive notifications when someone asks to have a document shared with them. Therefore, for safety and sanity, limit the number of root-level managers where possible, but having at least 2 reduces the likelihood that an urgent sharing request can be granted.
Note: you can only move documents into a shared drive if you own them. If someone else owns them, you’ll need that owner to be the one to move the documents.
You can not move whole folders from personal drives into shared drives; ergo it is really best to set up the shared drives from the start of a project so that the structure is sensible. Once in a shared drive, moving folders is totally ok. Moving folders BETWEEN shared drives is also OK.
!
The URL for a document is just like an address to a home:
knowing where it is is necessary, but not sufficient to get in.
Sharing options
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What is document / folder ownership anyway?
You are the owner of all documents that you created outside of a team drive. To find out what those documents are, you can query owner:me
All of those documents and folders are at risk if you get locked out of your account, change institutions, etc. This is not the case if your institution pays for Google Workspace as there are loss prevention backups in place whether through delegation or migration.
However, even if your institution DOESN’T pay for Google Workspace, you can use a Google Shared drive paid for by another institution if the drive is shared with you (and allows you to write to it). This will guarantee that the documents don’t disappear even if you leave.
When you are the owner of a document, you alone receive the share requests, even if others have the permission to share. Not so with shared drives, when a share request is issued for a team drive document, all of the people who have manager-level permissions will get notified.
Rare Use case: you want to keep the existing version, but realize a prior version might be easier to repurpose for another reason.
Once you click on a prior version,
you can search the content.
You don’t need to restore it.
If all you need is a subset of the content from a prior version (eg a figure or a paragraph that was accidentally deleted)
just go to the desired version and
copy the content without copying the whole file.
Then Paste the content into the live document.
Version control: If it is perishable, use expiration dates, think about location
adhere to your institution’s file retention policies
Most people spend most of their time in documents created more recently than last month, and there’s a steep drop off after one year.
Ergo: inverse relationship between your likelihood of finding a document in search and your likelihood of of needing that document.
To keep from making the haystacks bigger, think about how to make freshness more obvious at a glance for everyone. One easy way is to use the year in the title
Technologically adventurous
Technologically knowledgeable
me
We’re a heterogeneous bunch and are not equally adventurous.
That’s Normal and ok.
But we all want more science,
less document faff.
Here’s how Google drive can help
If you decide it’s not for you, at least know what you’re missing.
Timid but curious
Change averse
You’ll have to wait 24 hours for full potency
Some features may not work right away
Converting from “Visitor” based sharing may be needed …
(instructions on following slides)
And, if you are setting up Drive for the first time with your existing work email (not a gmail)...
If your work address was added to a google group BEFORE you converted it to a google-enabled account, you will need to be removed and re-added to the gGroup to get the drive permissioning benefits.
I’m ready to come back in now.
To upgrade your account from visitor
I can haz upgrade?
Why share drives/folders with groups?
Storage is pretty cheap. Don’t sweat the small stuff
PROTIP: Edit doc metadata if you need to be able to find that doc using a keyword and you don’t want that keyword in the doc title
Disclaimer
Each person is responsible for complying with their home institution’s policies about what is and is not allowed to be shared on Google Drive (and with whom).
Overview of bridge2ai google drive
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Editable by members of the standards core google group
Viewable by members of the allhands google group
Editable by members of the allhands google group
Where is the drive?
Who can edit?
Allhands can view / comment
Allhands can edit
Allhands can view / comment but only the leads and core members can edit
We can tweak permissions as needed
0. What is Google Workspace (formerly “GSuite”)
What is google drive?
(google drive is at the heart of google workspace
- the artist formerly known as “GSuite”)
}
G Slides
Powerpoint
G Docs
Also store/share files of any type
G Sheets
G Forms
Google drive
MS Word
Excel
MS Forms
GMail
GGroups
Communication tools & more
Google workspace = Ecosystem of Interoperable Google apps
Sync Content
Permissioning
Tag individuals or groups to have threaded email-integrated conversations within any shared document
MS office analog
Why Google drive
Even if the old ways kinda work,
change can be good.
In 12 years, I’ve never seen anyone willing to learn
(and institutionally-permitted)
who went back to microsoft
Illustration from “A Great Big Ugly Man Came Up and Tied His Horse to Me: A Book of Nonsense Verse” by Wallace Tripp 1973
Anonymous poem circa 1970
Microsoft’s main disadvantage: 30 years of legacy desktop code (and bloated features to support; even clippy was resurrected as recently as 2019!) Several awkwardly overlapping and poorly integrated tools including MS Teams, Office365 online, Sharepoint, and even email.
Is it getting better? Yes. Is it there yet? No.
Google’s main disadvantage:
lack of user familiarity
GSuite isn’t perfect, but it blows the competition away in all of the ways that really matter for multi-institution teamwork.
No platform is perfect:
As with anything, you’re choosing
a set of intractable problems.
Google’s main advantage: Usability, flexibility, web-first, platform-independent
Microsoft’s main advantage:
Large userbase
Features by platform
“Yes, we’ve got those receipts.”
Is it all rainbows?
Well no, but think about dealing with a little rain, but avoiding tornados.
However…
using gDrive to full effect does require a fundamental change in thinking about how documents are managed -- not as static, serially-edited objects,
but as synchronously edited living works.
And it takes time to learn and adapt to this way of working.
Situation Where’s Waldo
the most recent /
authoritative version?
Time consuming, confusing, and annoying
Team-friendly, approach
Paper
Emailing Iterative Office Docs
Evolution of document editing
How to version and
not lose your mind
Downloading SOP
The time will come where you need to send a document to someone outside of drive. It could be the NIH, a journal etc; how do you handle this?
Account basics
Do I have to have some personal gmail shadow account to work in drive?
Nope.
(Not unless you want to and are allowed to)
Cool cats
Use a work account
The best approach is university-provisioned accounts where possible; most do offer them. Some starting points by institution include: Yale, Stanford, UCSD, UAB, UTH. If your institution provides accounts, you can usually find out who to contact by Googling your institution name and “Google Drive”
If university accounts aren't provided, your options are:
Option 1: Self-managed account.
Configure your existing work account for Google; see next slides for details
Option 2: Personal gmail.
Easiest for people who already have a gmail and who prefer not to toggle accounts.
Option 3: Dedicated work gmail.
Best for folks who like to keep home and work separate, and don't mind toggling.
Option 4: NIH-provisioned account.
Works with your existing university SSO; reserved for those folks who need this level of security for compliance with their institutions.
Google-enabled account options overview
To configure your existing work account, start in cognito
to ensure you don’t collide with any personal google logins you may already have.
Ceci n’est pas un chat
Use your existing work account
Never recycle passwords.
2024: Google are no longer supporting NEW self-managed accounts with existing (non-gmail) email addresses.
Recommendations for permissioning with very large teams
DO:
DO NOT:
Why? Rogue access requests get emailed to all managers, most of whom have no context, ergo oversharing or undersharing is common
Sharing options vary by what you’re sharing
| Viewer | Commenter | Contributor (add, edit) | Content manager (add edit, move delete) | Manager (add, edit, move, delete, AND share) |
Single doc | Y | Y | Y (“Editor”) | N | N |
Shared folder | Y | Y | Y | Y | N |
Shared drive | Y | Y | Y | Y | Y |
It is important to restrict root drive manager access because it comes with the ability to delete the whole drive for everyone; this is on Google’s roadmap to develop better more granular permissions.
If your group would like a more private area to work together, just ask.
It is no problem to spool up an additional shared drive.
your
Editable by members of the standards core google group
Viewable by members of the allhands google group
Editable by members of the allhands google group
Why Google Docs for Grants?
The biggest reason is that it takes the sting out of version management (see above here). Additionally:
Google to PDF is 100% fidelity with what you see on the screen (WYSIWYG). This is not so with MS Word to pdf which can downsample image resolution, thicken table outlines and even mess with page breaks.
Google to Word & Word to Google spacing is now 99.9% concordant between the platforms. The most consistent difference is how they handle hyphenated text, Google break before a 2-part word.
Which platform gives you more “space” at Arial 11 font? Sometimes it is Google that is a line over and sometimes it is Word. Either way the discrepancy is not worth choosing a platform over.
All of the typical formatting (with the exception of wrapping around tables and rotating text in tables) is supported.
Workarounds for working with tables, high-res figures and legends in Google Docs is here.
Working with equations?
There are some g-docs plugins for equations, none great.
Overleaf is hands down best for this use case and offers many of the google drive features - plus some.
A great use for collaborators who do not mind using technical markup syntax.
You can sync your Overleaf files to google drive, dropbox, or even both for good measure.
Link-based sharing (eg. with anyone the internet) is not usually best.
While that does resolve access issues, the documents show up as “headless” (unfiled): recipients struggle to navigate the folder context.
It also creates security vulnerabilities.
Share the safe and easy way:
Folders better than DOCS ; groups better than individuals ; restricted better than public on-the-web
“I don’t always share public on the web,
but when I do, it is view-only.
This presentation, for instance”
Use “File…approvals” menu to control revisions
Great for things like grants, papers, policies…
Learn more here
Requesting can only be initiated by certain tiers of accounts, but anyone can be an approver
Google Groups
What is a Google Group?
“Members only”
?
How do you get on a Google Group?
Before you go further, make sure your settings for any Google Accounts you have allow you to be added to a group; otherwise, it won’t be possible to grant you access to the Google Documents. If it isn’t a google account, you can skip this step.
On our teams when you onboard, you’re automatically added to the relevant Google Group(s) corresponding to your role in the program
Freeze panes approach is BEST for sorting if you do not need to filter. Freeze the panes by dragging the thick gray line. Then right click the column by which to sort.
If you need to filter, NEVER use filters on partial rows
DO use filters on FULL rows even if you don’t need those columns (yet)