Google Drive Wisdom

Not logged in

• Browse
• Help
• Home
• Login
• Reports
• Search
• Timeline
• Wiki

• Contents
• Diff
• Text

This is a research and a work in progress. No changes have been made.

The UW pays for access to Google Apps, including, notably, Google Drive (formerly Google Docs). We have special terms of service for privacy. You don't need a Google account; your UW NetID is good enough. Note that the privacy protects are limited to Drive, Sites, Groups, and Contacts. You can use other Google services with your UW NetID, but you don't get any special protections.

The Flightworthy team is considering using Google Drive to store design documents.

Benefits

• Eliminates download/upload step in editing or commenting on a design document
• Multiple people can edit or comment on a design document simultaneously
• Eliminates formatting wonkiness from using a mix of MS Word and OpenOffice.

Costs

• We become reliant on Google (and the UW to keep paying Google)
• Editing without access to Google requires Chrome, the foresight to enable offline access in advance, and to have had access to the document while Chrome was connected to Google Drive so it could keep a local copy.

Probably not costs

• We lose advanced formatting; Google Drive is a simple word processor. But do we really need it?

Proposal: shared folder

We create a shared folder into which new design documents are placed. Proposed permissions are:

• HTCondor dev team: Can Edit - This is full access; people can create documents, delete them, and modify the permissions (although the latter can be removed?). Should only be given to people we trust with similar access to the Wiki and AFS.
• Public: Can View - Maybe grant Can Comment, as the harm in abuse is pretty minimal.
• External collaborators - Can Comment (unnecessary if we granted the public this level)

On the up side, access is more closely controlled, and adding a new team member is easy. There is also a single place to find all new design documents (but does anyone care?).

On the down side, permission to create or edit documents is very chunky.

Proposal: individual file management

Individuals just create their own design documents, perhaps with a title prefix of "Design Document:" so they are easy to find. They are marked as "Public: Can Comment" (risk of abuse is low). If other people need edit access, it's granted on an as-needed basis. (We can also only grant comment access on an as-needed basis in a pinch.) The very rare design document with security ramifications won't be public; people are added as needed.

On the up side, eliminates challenges of the folder being removed, and it's very hard to accidentally or intentionally damage a design document unless you're the original author or were very explicitly granted edit access.

On the down side, there is no single place to find all new design documents (but does anyone care?).

Challenges and Questions

How do permissions interact?

I have a shared folder; all of HTCondor can edit it. I create the file FOO in that folder and modify it to grant edit access to someone@example.com. I now change the shared folder to grant edit access to new-team-member@wisc.edu. Does new-team-member end up able to edit FOO? Check.

What if someone leaves the UW?

The big problem is maintaining access to files (and maybe even the shared folder) if the owner leaves the UW. It's not clear what will happen to such files or folders. They might stay available. They might disappear.

Testing with just deleting a shared folder, it looks like documents owned by other people are put in the top level of the owner's documents. They're not lost. Presumably having an account closed will do no worse than this.

Alan has a query in to DoIT to find out the exact behavior.

We can download final versions and attach them to tickets, but it would be a shame to get so far and miss the final step.

What if someone closes their non-UW account?

The problem is similar to "What if someone leaves the UW?", but we may have even less control. (Being a UW account may come with additional control over files.) Shouldn't be a problem for the folder; we'll just ensure it's a UW account. But it seems likely that non-UW staff will occasionally create design documents.

Offline support

Untested. Unknown how it handles race conditions. Chrome only.

We really should test this.

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/1628467

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/09/whats-different-about-new-google-docs_22.html (Old. not necessarily how offline conflicts are handled)

"...you'll be able to do full editing of docs while you are offline and when you comeback online it will sync up and resolve all the conflicts." source

How to log in; recommended solution

1. If you want to simultaneously be logged into a personal account, do so first. If you use the UW login first, it is difficult to later log into your personal account.
2. https://apps.google.wisc.edu/ - Log in as usual.
3. If you logged into a personal account first, going to Google addresses will be your personal account; but following links from the UW login will be your UW account.

How to log in; simplified

(This will not work simultaneously with a personal account!)

1. On any Google login page, enter yournetid@wisc.edu; don't enter a password. Click "Sign in". You'll be taken to a UW login page, log in as usual.

Links

UW's sites/information

• Benefits of Use
• Knowledge Base
• FAQ
• http://www.doit.wisc.edu/googleapps/
• https://apps.google.wisc.edu/mailplus

This work is supported by NSF under Cooperative Agreement OAC-2030508 as part of the PATh Project. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF. Site built using CVSTrac.