IS GOOGLE'S LATEST CHANGES AFFECTING YOUR WORKFLOW?

Google is changing the way Google Drive works and this could affect your workflow, including saving files. If you are syncing Google Drive to your computer and saving files to Google Drive on your computer so it will then sync up to the cloud, then you may start to have problems, such as files not actually being saved to certain locations but there will be no warning or error message.

Please see the article in this link which explains what they are doing and why.

What is happening?

Google is changing their system on the Business Starter plan so that instead of folders being on your computer, they are replaced with shortcuts. Even though they look the same as before, unfortunately you can't save files into your folders in Google Drive anymore as they don't exist - as they are shortcuts now!

When will this happen?

According to Google it will just start happening randomly this year.

Google's Solution

The solution is to go to the next plan up which is twice the price and then you will get something called "Team Drives" which you will use instead.

This means files can be saved and sync'd between your computer and the cloud again and everything will work again as before. You will have a new "Team Drive" location instead of a 'My Drive / Shared Drive' folder location on your computer.

Below is a screenshot showing the 'Starter Plan' which you may currently be on, along with the next plan up which has the new Team Drive system available.

Costs (all figures exclude GST)

Cost wise, it is quite a jump from $9 per user per month to $18 but that is the cheapest plan that works. There is an alternative to the Google system if you don't want to go onto the next plan up for all users. This would cost $864 per year for the entire company which works out at $72 per month. You would have to crunch the numbers to see which of these best suits you.

Next Steps

Contact us to upgrade and migrate all your data over from the old system to the new system