Team Drive: Administrative Controls

Google has been rumored to be working on a team aspect to Google Drive for years. This mythical feature was finally officially announced this past September but didn't actually emerge until last week when the Early Adopter Program (EAP) was launched for G Suite domains. Here's your first look at this substantial new feature to Google Drive.

My previous post provides an overview of Team Drive from a user perspective. This post is for G Suite admins who are interested in seeing the administrative controls for Team Drive. 

Admin Settings for Team Drive

Team Drive is in early release. G Suite Admins can request access to the Early Adopter Program (EAP) here. Note that you must be a domain admin in order to request access to the EAP release. 

The full launch of Team Drive to all gSuite users is expected in January of 2017. 

There are only a few administrative settings for Team Drive at this time. For the most part, Team Drive adheres to the same sharing restrictions for Google Drive that have been set for your domain. These controls are OU specific.  

You will find Team Drive listed for both internal and external sharing along side the traditional Drive sharing settings. 

The other setting disables Team Drive entirely for your users between now and January 1 when Team Drive is expected to launch. This setting can be applied to specific OUs within your domain. This setting is primarily for participants in the EAP who may only wish to test Team Drive with a small group of users. 

If you have additional questions about the admin settings for Team Drive, leave a comment below. I will update this post as new features and controls are added to the admin console.