One of the most common problems we encounter when onboarding a new customer is discovering where their data is stored, how they have organised their data, and how much they have.

From our experience, the vast majority of small businesses have no data management, organisation or data policies in place, with employees saving data wherever under any file name.

Sadly, even some of our customers don't follow our guidance on data management and have some very disorganised data - we let them know and guide them on best practices. Still, in the end, it is their responsibility to put this guidance into practice.

How to organise your data well in Google Drive.

There will always be different ways to organise your data, but at Kimbley IT, this is how we do it, and it has and still is working well for our business. And it will probably work well for your business too!

Use Shared Drives in Google Drive to organise your files.

You need to understand the difference between My Drive and Shared Drives in Google Drive.

My Drive is a user's personal storage area; any file stored in this area is private (unless you choose to share it). You should think of My Drive as your "Work in Progress" zone where you keep files you're working on and are not ready to share with the larger team or externally.

Shared Drives, on the other hand, are areas for collaboration and sharing. Files put into a Shared Drive are visible to all other members of the Shared Drive, and dependent on other members access permissions, they will have a range of actions they can take on the file.

You should create a Shared Drive for all your clients and all aspects of your business, only granting users access to the areas they need, keeping the structure of your Share Drives very flat, as explained in the next section.

Naming Conventions

Establishing a naming convention for your files, folders, and Shared Drives and enforcing the pattern is essential for organising your Google Drive. In addition, when you have a naming convention in place it makes understanding and finding data far more straightforward.

At Kimbley IT, we like to prefix all our files and folder with an initial, making identifying the content of the file and folder easier.

For example, we collect the WiFi details for all our clients, so each has the same file with the same sub name, but because the prefix is different, we can quickly identify the file we want through Google Drive's built-in search.

One of our clients, a marketing agency in Birmingham called Tomorrow People and has a file called "TP - WiFi Connection Details", which sits in a folder called "TP - Connectivity", which itself sits in a Shared Drive named "Client - Tomorrow People". Which quickly makes the relevant file identifiable when we need to access it.

Having a naming convention as describe and making sure the rest of your team stick to it is very important in organising your data.

Don't use lots of folders!

So as we have established, you should be using Shared Drives throughout your business to organise your Google Drive data. However, don't simply create one Shared Drive and then dump all your data in that Shared Drive. You need to create Shared Drives for all aspects of your business, and the flatter the structure (minimal folders in folders), the better and the more control you have over who in your team had access to what.

Like with files and folders, you need a naming convention for Shared Drives. We prefix all our shared drives that contain client data with the word "Client" and have a Shared Drive for each client, "Client - Tomorrow People", this way we can grant access to the data contained within to only team members who work with that client. It also makes it easier if a client under GDPR ever requested a copy of their data to quickly provide them access, knowing they only will see their data and no one else.

For our company data, we put these into their individual Shared Drives, with only the people needed to see the contents having permission to do so. Likewise, we prefix company Shared Drives with "KIT" (Kimbley IT). So for, Marketing "KIT - Marketing" HR, "KIT - Human Resources", Templates "KIT - Template Library" etc.

We have found the flatter your structure, the easier it is to find what you are looking for, rather than having to dig through a maze of folders inside more folders.

Use permissions to control who has access to what.

You should use the principle of least privilege to decide who has access to which shared drives and the folders and files contained within. In basic terms, only give people access to the minimal amount of data they need to perform their job.

So rather than giving all your team full access to all your data, use the permissions in Google Drive to control access. Harriet, who only works with Client A, does not need access to Client B and may only need view access to the Shared Drive "Finance - Payslips".

When you use a flat-file structure, a good naming convention and permissions built around Shared Drives rather than folders, the likelihood of a misplaced file is reduced as your users will only have access to Shared Drive related to their roles. By organising your data, you have made your business way more efficient and, as a side bonus, made your data and the data of others that you hold way more secure.

Still need a hand in organising your data?

If you have a data problem in your business with team members doing what they like, saving files in Dropbox, One Drive and others, and everything is just a mess, book a video call below. Let's discuss how moving your business to Google Drive would work wonders for your data management.

How to organise your folders and files in Google Drive using Shared Drives.