

Ask HN Googlers: Why is Drive document sharing for Google Domains broken? - davidw

http:&#x2F;&#x2F;webapps.stackexchange.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;26800&#x2F;google-drive-share-with-my-apps-workgroup-without-having-to-add-them-manually<p>If you share a document with &quot;everyone in your organization&quot; it is not visible to them by default.  This has apparently been broken for something like 5 years.
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brent_noorda
Top 7 reasons for why Google Drive document sharing remains broken for so very
long:

7 Google only thinks in terms of very large numbers, starting at a billion. If
you were to share a billion documents, and those billion documents appeared in
everybody's folders, then (you must admit) that would be a bad user
experience.

6 This feature is not part of Microsoft's or Facebook's or any hot-new-
startup's core feature set, so there's no incentive to fix this.

5 Writely finished integration long ago. There's no one to do the work.

4 Google is a search company. The current mode encourages users to search for
documents (in hopes they're there).

3 Fixing this feature would not increase ad revenue.

2 Google's tech support department left for a dental appointment six years
ago, and she never came back.

1 Fixing this problem would not lead to more Google+ logins

Google's recommended workaround: If you want to share your document with your
coworkers, and have them see it without searching, post the document on
Google+

~~~
robk
> 6 This feature is not part of Microsoft's or Facebook's or any hot-new-
> startup's core feature set, so there's no incentive to fix this.

This seems the most relevant. Without a competitive angle, it's hard to see
how this gets prioritized inside the company.

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kiwidrew
Yes, this annoys me to no end, and I can't for the life of me figure out how
one of the KEY selling points for Apps and Drive can stay broken and neglected
for so long.

My workaround is to create a folder that is shared with everyone (individually
list out each user in your domain) and make sure that all documents are
created in that folder or one of its subfolders.

And since there is no technical method by which you can ensure that everyone
creates their documents in that folder (and ONLY that folder)... you pretty
much have to resort to constant annoying emails "are you sure you created it
in $SHARED_FOLDER this time?" when you can't find stuff. Because the search
tool is also broken.

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davidw
Here's the linked Stack Exchange URL in a clickable format:

[http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/26800/google-
driv...](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/26800/google-drive-share-
with-my-apps-workgroup-without-having-to-add-them-manually)

This discussion started something like 5 years ago:

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/apps/rrq8Y3EZT...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/apps/rrq8Y3EZTwI/discussion%5B1-25-false%5D)

What kind of workarounds do you guys use?

This bit me on the ass because I did not even know people in my organization
did not see these documents.

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duncans
I've been considering a switch to Office 365 and SkyDrive or even just signing
us up for DropBox for Teams because Google Drive is so incredibly unintuitive.

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jsnell
AFAIK it used to work back in the days of Google Docs, and only broke with
Drive. So not 5 years, but maybe 2. And yes, it's a massive pain at least for
our workflow. At least a couple of times a month somebody forgets to drag a
new document into a shared folder, and are blissfully ignorant that nobody
else can find it.

~~~
rsanders
I've been using Google Docs / Apps since long before Drive, and sharing within
the org has NEVER worked in a sane fashion.

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eli
I'm not convinced this isn't working as designed. I think maybe it's just a
UI/documentation issue.

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stanleydrew
If I'm not mistaken people can still find the document with search.

~~~
sbhere
Finding the document with search isn't the issue. The issue is Google Drive
not functioning as expected. (Call it un-intuitive or whatever, but the point
is "everyone in my organization" to most people means everyone in their
organization.)

~~~
jshopshear
I support 300 Google users and I have 5 open tickets on Google drive that have
been open for months.. One is some files do not sync its like a ghost sync..
They say its a known issues. Two when adding files to a shared drive the user
that adds the file gets the storage added to their account not the shared
folder. Three moving items from shared to my drive sometimes they become
unshared and can only be reshared by the account holder and kinda get lost in
space.. Four I have a account that has 2TB some times it will say scanning we
for weeks at a time. Five when users have the client installed and work on
some docs the same time as others it makes a new file and or the user that
saves it last gats the changes saved.. They are all known props and at first I
got the run around like reboot and is your computer on but after keeping the
tickets open and supplying logs they have said they are working on a fix..

