Getting started with institutional storage at IU

Getting started with institutional storage at IU

Hello and welcome to Getting started with institutional storage at IU. My name is Beth, and today, I’ll be demonstrating how to access and work with your files on IU’s secure cloud storage solutions for institutional files, Google at IU Shared Drives and Microsoft Storage at IU.

This session is part one of a two-part series – this video focuses on using Google at IU Shared Drives, while the second video will focus on Microsoft at IU Storage.

As I move through the session, I’ll be mentioning some resources that you might find helpful – links to these resources will be available in the video description.

Let’s get started by talking about Google at IU Shared Drives.

Google at IU Shared Drives

Google at IU Shared Drives is a secure cloud storage platform for sharing, storing, and collaborating on institutional files. Departments can request a Shared Drive to store their documents in.

As a quick reminder, institutional files are files that you and others in your department need to access to do your jobs, such as meeting agendas, budgets, lesson plans, marketing materials, and more. For more information on institutional files, visit the Before Migration page on the Storage at IU website.

Shared Drives vs. Shared with me: what’s the difference?

Before we dive into working with Shared Drives, you might be wondering: what’s the difference between a Shared Drive and the files in Shared with me?

As mentioned previously, a Shared Drive is used for storing your department or office’s shared institutional files. When your department’s Shared Drive was set up, everyone in your department was added as someone who can access the drive and its contents without having to manually share the files with you. All of the files you see here will be institutional files.

On the other hand, the files in Shared with me are files and folders that have been manually shared with you by other users from inside and outside of IU. These files live in another user’s account and aren’t counted against your storage quota. Files you see here might be a mix of institutional files and individual files.

Now that we know the difference between Shared Drives and the files in Shared with me, let’s see how to find files on a Shared Drive.

Finding your files in Google at IU Shared Drives

There are two different ways to find your files on a Google at IU Shared Drive: either using a web browser or using Google Drive File Stream. I’ll demonstrate how to use both today.

Finding your files in a web browser

First, let’s talk about how to find your files in a web browser.

• To start, navigate to iu.edu and click the Log in to Google at IU button, then enter your IU username and passphrase to log in. For this session, I’ll be using a demonstration account. My alter ego for today’s session will be Diane Dell.
• After logging in, you’re brought to the Google at IU page - to navigate to your Google at IU My Drive, under the text “Select one of the tools below to get started”, click on Drive: Secure cloud storage and file sharing.
• The Google Drive page will load – from here, to load your My Drive, click on the Go to Drive button in the upper right corner of the screen.
• Once you’re logged in, you can see which account you’re using by looking in the upper right corner of the Google at IU My Drive page. If you have multiple Google accounts, you can also switch accounts by clicking on your user picture and viewing the list of accounts, then clicking on the account you want to use.

When I first open Google at IU My Drive, I see Diane’s individual files. If we look in the navigation on the left side of the screen, we can see that we’re currently in Diane’s My Drive.  As a reminder, institutional files should not be stored in your My Drive – instead, they should be stored in a Shared drive.

In addition to Diane’s My Drive, I also see Shared drives and Shared with me. Remember, the Shared with me area is where any file that has been shared with you, whether it’s an individual file or an institutional file, will be found.

Keep in mind that you may not see the Shared drives option yet in your Google at IU account. Once your institutional files have been migrated from Box to Google at IU Shared Drives, or if your department creates a shared drive on Google at IU, Shared drives will show in your Google Drive navigation.   

• To find the shared drives Diane has access to, in the navigation on the left side of the screen, I’ll click on Shared Drives.
• Diane’s list of shared drives will load. In this case, Diane only has access to one shared drive - IU-UITS-Training. However, Diane could have access to many shared drives, and they would all show up here.
• To open the shared drive, double-click the drive’s name.
• The drive loads, and we see the files and folders stored on the IU-UITS-Training drive. We can navigate through these folders just like any other folder system.

Let’s quickly see how to edit a file.

• I’m going to double-click on the 2020 Planning Documents folder and then double-click the Planning Notes file to open it.
• Google Docs opens in a new browser tab and loads the Planning Notes document. I can make a quick change to the document, and Google Docs will automatically save the changes as I make them. When I’m done, I can close this browser tab.
• Back in the IU-UITS-Training shared drive, I can see now that the file was modified just a few seconds ago.

Finding your files using Google Drive File Stream

Google Drive File Stream provides access to both your individual and institutional content through Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder on your computer.

You’ll first need to install Google File Stream on your computer in order to access your files through your computer’s file browser – Google File Stream is available for Windows and Mac.

• Detailed instructions for downloading and logging in to Google File Stream can be found in the IU Knowledge Base document About Google Drive File Stream.

Once you’ve installed Google File Stream, you can access your files by opening a file browser window. I’m using Windows, so I’ll be working in File Explorer. Once File Explorer opens, I can see Google Drive File Stream in the list of my computer’s hard drives.

• To navigate to my shared drives, I’ll click on Google Drive File Stream, then double-click on Shared drives. This shows me all the shared drives I have access to. I’ll double-click on IU-UITS-Training, and now I can see the contents of the shared drive.
• With Google Drive File Stream installed on your computer, you can access all the files that were available to you through the browser. These files aren’t downloaded to your computer – they’re stored in the Google Shared drive, but you can access them here. 
• Let’s see how to edit a file accessed through File Stream. To open a file, double-click on it – I’ll open the file Planning Notes.
• A web browser will open, and the file opens in Google Docs. I can edit the file just like I did previously, and Google Docs will automatically save any changes.

Moving files between My Drive and Shared Drives

There may be files and folders in your My Drive that you would like to move to a Shared Drive, like shared work documents that others in your department need access to. I’ll demonstrate how to move files and folders from your My Drive to a shared drive.

Moving individual files from My Drive to a Shared Drive

First, let’s return to Diane’s My Drive in the web browser. Diane has a file titled Student Outreach that should be moved to the Marketing folder in the IU-UITS-Training Shared drive. Let’s see how to do that.

• First, right-click the file, and in the right-click menu that appears, click Move to.
• A pop-up will appear, showing you the folder you’re currently in and the contents of that folder. From here, to access your Shared drives, click the back arrow in the left corner of the pop-up until you can see the list of sources available to you.
• Next, double-click on Shared drives, then double-click the name of the drive you want to work with. For me, that’ll be IU-UITS-Training. I can see the Marketing folder now, so I’ll click on it to select it and then click the Move button.
• A notice will appear, indicating that everyone who can see the Marketing folder will be able to see the file, and that you can’t remove items from Marketing. To confirm you want to move the file, click the Move button.
• A notice will pop up indicating the file has been moved to the Marketing folder.

Moving folders from My Drive to a Shared Drive

Moving an entire folder from your My Drive to a Shared drive is a little different. If there is a folder in your Google at IU My Drive that you want to move to a Shared Drive, you’ll first need to install Google File Stream, then upload the folder using a web browser. Let’s see how to do this using one of the folders in Diane’s My Drive.

The folder we’re going to move is called Folder to Move to Shared Drive – let’s navigate to that folder and look at the contents. As you can see, this folder contains a Word document, a Google Doc, and an Excel workbook.

Now, let’s go back to the shared drive and move the folder from Diane’s My Drive.

• Before moving the folder, make sure you’re in the location where you want to move the folder to – in this case, I want to be in the top level of the IU-UITS-Training drive.
• From here, click the New button in the upper left corner, then click Folder upload.
• The Select Folder to Upload dialog box appears. Navigate to the folder in Google Drive File Stream you want to move and click on the folder to select it. Then, click Upload to upload the folder.

You might have noticed that I get an error message when trying to upload the folder - 1 of 3 files failed to upload. If I click on the error notification, I can see that the Google Doc didn’t move.

Let’s look at the files that successfully uploaded. I see the Word document and the Excel workbook, but not the Google Doc. Only the Office files in this folder moved. The Google Doc will need to be moved separately.

The process for moving the single Google Docs file is the same as I demonstrated earlier, when I moved the file from Diane’s My Drive to the Marketing folder in the IU-UITS-Training drive.

One important thing to note is that the folder we uploaded was actually copied to the shared drive, not moved. It still appears in both Diane’s My Drive and the Shared drive. This can be confusing because these files are not connected, and changes made in one place will not appear in the other. Because of this, once you’ve moved any institutional files from your My Drive to a Shared drive, they should be removed from your My Drive to help avoid confusion.

If you have additional files or folders on your computer that need to be moved to a shared drive, you can follow the steps I just demonstrated to move those files as well – just navigate to wherever the files are located on your computer, instead of moving them from Google Drive File Stream.

For more information about moving files from your individual storage to institutional storage, view the IU Knowledge Base article Move files into Microsoft or Google institutional storage from an individual storage location.

Sharing and collaborating in Google at IU Shared Drives

For information about sharing and collaborating using Google at IU My Drive or Shared drives, you can watch the recording of Google at IU My Drive: Individual file management basics, which goes into detail about how to share and collaborate with others in My Drive – the processes are exactly the same when sharing and collaborating with others in a Google at IU Shared Drive.

Wrapping up

At this point, we’ve covered how to find and access your files in Google at IU Shared Drives. If you want to learn about how to access your files in Microsoft at IU shared storage, you'll want to watch the next video in the series.

As a reminder, if you need a refresher on how to use Google at IU My Drive, you can check out the recording of the session posted on IT Training’s website at https://ittraining.iu.edu.

Microsoft at IU Storage

Welcome to Getting started with institutional storage at IU. My name is Beth, and in this session, we’ll be focusing on Microsoft’s cloud storage for institutional files.

As part of this session, I’ll show you how to access your Microsoft shared storage space, how to move files from your individual storage to institutional storage, how to edit files located in shared storage, and how to collaborate with others.

Microsoft shared drives are for your shared work documents, or files that your entire department or group need access to.

You’ll likely be accessing your group’s Microsoft shared storage in one of three ways: through OneDrive on the web, through OneDrive Sync on your computer, or through Microsoft Teams.

You might already be familiar with OneDrive and may even be using it for your files, such as recipes, cat photos, and so on.

• If you’re not familiar with how to use OneDrive, check out the recording of OneDrive at IU: Individual File Management Basics – this webinar will give you a good introduction on how to use OneDrive.

Microsoft Teams is a little different than OneDrive. Microsoft Teams is a collaboration tool that helps IU students, faculty, staff, and external users work together and share information, all in one place.

The main features of Teams include the ability to edit documents collaboratively, share files with others, and chat.

Teams is included with Office 365, and you can also download the Teams app for your computer or mobile device from office.iu.edu, the Google Play Store, or the Apple App Store.

• To learn more about Microsoft Teams, visit the IU Knowledge Base article Get started with Microsoft Teams at IU.

Finding your files in Microsoft at IU Storage

Let’s learn how to find your files on Microsoft’s shared storage. There are three main ways you can access your shared storage: using Microsoft Teams, using One Drive on the web, or on your computer with the help of OneDrive Sync.

Using the Teams application

I’ll start by demonstrating how to find your files using Microsoft Teams.

• You’ll first want to navigate to a team by clicking on Teams in the toolbar on the left side of the Microsoft Teams window, then clicking the team’s name in the navigation on the left side of the window.
• When your team loads, in the tabs at the top of the main part of the Microsoft Teams window, click on the Files Your team’s files will load.

While we’re here, let’s quickly talk about how to create new folders and files in Microsoft Teams.

• You can create a new folder or file while on the Files tab by clicking New in the toolbar underneath the tab list, then clicking on what you want to create. You can make a new folder, or several types of new Office documents.
• To upload a file, next to the New button, click on the Upload button and navigate to the file you want to upload.
• If you want to move a file to a folder, you can click the Show Actions (three-dots) button for a specific file, and in the menu that appears, click on Move. Then, browse to the folder you want to move the file to.

Using OneDrive on the web

Now, let’s see how to find your team’s storage in OneDrive on the web.

• To get started, go to office.iu.edu and click the Log in button to log in with your IU username and passphrase.
• Next, in the list of applications, click on OneDrive – a new browser tab will open, and OneDrive will load and display your files.

The My Files section of OneDrive is not where you should be storing institutional files. They should instead be stored in Microsoft Teams – your team’s storage space will also show up as a shared library in OneDrive, as you can see in the sidebar for my OneDrive. If you take a look at the list of shared libraries, you’ll see that the team I’m working with, O365-IU-UITS-Training shows up here, because I’ve interacted with files on that shared drive frequently.

If you want to make your team’s shared storage show up in OneDrive in the Shared Libraries section of your OneDrive, you’ll first need to follow your team – this is done using SharePoint, and you only need to do this once in order to make sure your team’s storage shows up in the web version of OneDrive.

• We’ll actually start this process inside the Microsoft Teams app. In Teams, on the Files tab for your team, click Open in SharePoint on the toolbar. Your internet browser will open if it isn’t already, and the SharePoint page for your team will load.
• On this page, to follow your team’s shared storage, in the upper right corner of the page, click the star next to Not Following to follow the site – the page will reload, and Not Following will change to Following.
• Now, we can go to OneDrive and look in the navigation on the left side of the screen for your team’s shared drive – it should show up under the Shared Libraries From here, you can click on your team’s name to navigate to your shared storage.

Again, for more information on how to use OneDrive, view the recording of OneDrive at IU: Individual File Management Basics.

On your computer through OneDrive Sync

What if you want to access your files right from your computer, without Microsoft Teams or a web browser? If you have the OneDrive Sync app installed, you can use that to access your team’s shared storage as well.

You’ll need the OneDrive Sync application installed on your computer first. Once that’s installed, open OneDrive in a web browser and navigate to your team’s shared library.

• From here, at the top of the files listing, click the Sync A dialog box will appear in your web browser indicating that it’s trying to open OneDrive on your computer. The Launch Application dialog box will also open, asking you to open OneDrive. Click the Open link button, and the OneDrive Sync app will briefly open a window as it syncs your team’s shared storage with your computer.
• Now, you can open File Explorer on Windows or Finder on the Mac and see your team’s shared storage listed as a drive.

One thing to keep mind about accessing your team’s shared storage on your computer is that OneDrive doesn’t download all the contents of the shared drive to your computer - files are only downloaded to your computer as you need them.

Moving files from OneDrive to a shared drive

You may have some files in your OneDrive account that should be moved to a shared drive, like shared work documents that others in your department need access to. I’ll show you how to move files and folders from your individual OneDrive account to a shared drive in both a web browser and through OneDrive Sync.

Moving files in OneDrive on the web

To move institutional files from your personal OneDrive storage to a shared library, you’ll first want to log in to Office on the web through office.iu.edu, and then navigate to OneDrive.

• Once you’re in OneDrive, navigate to the files or folder you want to move. The process for moving files and folders is the same – for today’s demonstration, I’m going to move the folder named Workshop drafts to the O365-IU-UITS-Training shared library.
• To start the process of moving the folder, I’ll right-click on it, and in the menu that appears, I’ll click on Move To.
• Next, in the panel that appears on the right side of my browser window, I’ll click on O365-IU-UITS-Training, then click on the General folder, since that folder contains all of this team’s files.
• Finally, I’ll click on the Move here The panel will close, and I’ll get a notification that OneDrive is moving the folder to its new location.
• To make sure the folder moved, in the list of Shared libraries on the left side of the screen, I’ll click on O365-IU-UITS-Training, then click on the General folder. I see the folder I just moved in the list of files and folders.

Moving files on your computer using OneDrive Sync

With OneDrive Sync installed on your computer, moving files and folders between your individual storage and your department’s shared storage is easy. Again, the process is the same for both files and folders - I’ll demonstrate moving a folder from my personal OneDrive to my team’s shared library.

• First, open up a file browser window. For me, I’m on Windows, so I’ll open a File Explorer window. Then, navigate to the location of the folder or file you need to move. In my case, I’ll be moving a folder called Marketing Files that’s in the top level of my OneDrive.
• Next, I’ll open a new File Explorer window. There are a number of ways to do this – my favorite way is by right-clicking the File Explorer icon in the taskbar, then clicking on File Explorer.
• A new File Explorer window will open. In the new window, navigate to the shared library you want to move the folder to - for me, that’ll be O365-IU-UITS-Training – General.
• Finally, I’ll press and drag the folder from the window where my individual OneDrive account is open to the window for the shared library, and I’ll let go once it’s in the new location. The folder is moved to the shared drive, and no longer appears in my individual OneDrive account.

Editing your files

You can edit Microsoft Office files directly in teams, or on the web using OneDrive and Office Online.

Editing files in Microsoft Teams

To edit a Microsoft Office file in Microsoft Teams, go to the Files tab of your team and click on the name of the file you want to work with. For demonstration purposes, I’ll open New Employee Orientation – July 19.ppt.

• The file I clicked on opens in a simplified version of PowerPoint, right inside of Microsoft Teams. I can edit the file here, and any changes made will be automatically saved.
• To open a file in the full version of the Office app you’re working in, at the top of the editor, click on Open in Desktop App – this will load the file in the appropriate Office app. In my case, Microsoft PowerPoint will open and I can edit my file in the full version of PowerPoint. Any changes I make here will automatically be saved, too.

Editing files using OneDrive in a web browser

You can also open and edit your team’s files in OneDrive on the web using Office Online. Like demonstrated earlier, once you’ve favorited your team’s shared storage, you can find it in the OneDrive sidebar under the heading Shared Libraries.

• Once you’ve navigated to your team’s shared storage, click on a file’s name to open it. I’m going to open the file Lightroom Basics outline.docx.
• A new browser tab will open, and the file will open in the appropriate Office Online app – in my case, it’ll open in Word Online. Just like with editing files in Microsoft Teams, any changes I make will be automatically saved.

Collaboratively editing Microsoft Office files

While I’m here, I’d like to point out a few things about collaboratively editing Microsoft Office files. If you’re in Office Online, Microsoft Teams, or using Office 365, you can easily work with others on a document at the same time.

You might have noticed that another user, Carol Cape, is working on the Lightroom Basics outline document at the same time as I am. When collaborating with someone else on a document, the other people editing the document will each have their own colored cursor – when you hover over it, the person’s name will pop up, showing you who’s editing in a specific location.

You can also look in the upper right corner of the window to see who else is editing a document – the user photo or initials of the other people working on the document will show up here.

Editing other file types

When it comes to editing other types of files that aren’t Office files, depending on where you’re working, you’ll need to follow a different process.

If you have your team’s storage synced to your computer, you can simply open the file in the same way you’d open any other file on your computer, make edits to it, and save the file when you’re done – once the file is saved, OneDrive will sync it with your team’s shared storage. For example, I can open this Adobe Illustrator document, make edits, and then save it like normal – and the changes will be synced automatically.

If you’re using OneDrive on the Web, you’ll need to download the file to your computer, open it and perform edits, and then upload the file through the web interface when you’re done.

Sharing files in Microsoft at IU Storage

You can share files from your shared Microsoft storage space in several different ways. We’ll explore how to share files in Teams, in the Office desktop apps, in OneDrive in a web browser, and from your computer with the help of OneDrive Sync.

Sharing files in Microsoft Teams

There are two main ways to share files with members of a team in Microsoft Teams: you can attach a file to a message in the Posts tab, or you can directly upload a file using the Files tab.

Let’s see how to attach a file to a message.

• To start, select the team you want to work with, and if necessary, click on the Posts tab near the top of the screen.
• Next, start typing a message in the text field at the bottom of the screen. I’ll type the message “Here’s a photo of a kitten we can edit in the new Photoshop workshop.” If you want to alert specific people that you’re uploading a file, you can tag them using the @ symbol. I’ll tag one of the team members, Abby Abernathy.
• Now, we can attach the file we want to share with our team. To do this, underneath the text field, click on the Attach button – it looks like a little paperclip. In the menu that appears, choose where you want to open the file from – I’ll upload a file from my computer.
• When you’re done, click the Send button to send your message and the attached file. The file will show as an attachment to the message and will also appear in the Files panel in Teams.

You can also simply upload a file to the Files tab – all the members of your team will be able to access any files you upload there.

If you need to share files with people outside of your team, you may want to consider adding them to the team so they can access the necessary files. Alternately, you can share files with people outside of your team using one of the other methods I’ll be demonstrating.

In the Office desktop apps

To share a file from an Office desktop app, first, open the file you want to share. I’ll demonstrate sharing the file excel formulas charts pivottables.pptx.

• You can start by either opening the file through File Explorer or Finder, or through Microsoft I’ll open the file through Microsoft Teams.
  • On the Files tab, click the file’s name to open the file.
  • When the file opens, click the Open in Desktop App
• Once the desktop app loads – in my case, PowerPoint – to share the file, click the Share button in the upper right corner of the window.
• The Send Link dialog box opens. From here, you can choose your sharing method by clicking where it says “People you specify can edit”. The dialog box will display the following sharing options to choose from:
  • People in Indiana University with the link, which makes it so you can share a link with others at IU. This choice gives you a couple of additional options.
    • If you uncheck Allow editing, people will be able to view the file, but won’t be able to make edits to it.
    • If Allow Editing is unchecked, you can choose to block downloads for the file – this means people can view the file on the web but can’t download it to their computer.
  • People with existing access, which doesn’t have additional options available
  • Specific people, which provides the same options as People in Indiana University with the link.
  • You may have noticed that Anyone with the link is grayed out, and when you hover over the information icon, it says “Your organization is preventing you from using this option”. This means we can’t create a link that anyone can access, whether they’re with IU or not.
• I’ll click the option for Specific People to select it, then I’ll click Apply.
• Next, enter the name or email address of who you want to share the file with. I’ll share this file with a demo account, demo23 – that account’s name is Tad Pole.
  • Keep in mind that when sharing with specific people, you can only share with people who have an IU username.
  • If you need to share files with people outside of IU, you can do this using Google at IU Shared Drives.
• At this point, I can add a message to Tad, telling him why I’m sending the file to him.
• Once I’m done writing the message, I can choose how I want to share the link:
  • Send sends an email to the person that includes the link.
    • This email will come from a Microsoft email address and will not be signed with a digital signature. It’ll also be marked as an external email.
  • Copy link copies a link to the file that you can then paste into an email to the person you want to share with.
  • Outlook involves creating a new message in Outlook with a link to the file in the message. I’ll click on this option to show you how it works.
    • Depending on your settings, the new message may already have the email of the person you want to share with on the To: line and a message in the body of the email. If this information isn’t automatically added, you may need to manually enter all the necessary information.
    • Since this option goes through your individual Outlook account, the message will come from you and will be signed with your digital signature.
  • You also have the option to send a copy of the file to someone – however, this isn’t a secure method for sharing files as once the file is sent to someone, you don’t have any control over who else can see it afterwards.

Sharing files in OneDrive on the web

Sharing files in OneDrive through a browser works basically the same as it does in the Office desktop apps, except sharing via Outlook isn’t an option, nor is Send copy.

I’ll quickly demonstrate how to share a file via OneDrive, using the file Lightroom Basics outline.docx.

You can either share from the files view or share from inside an Office Online app. Let’s see how to share from the files view.

• First, you’ll want to hover over the file you want to share and click the Show Actions (or three dots) button to the right of the file’s name. In the menu that appears, click
• The Send link dialog box opens. From here, the sharing process is the same as what we saw earlier when sharing files through the Office desktop apps – although, as I mentioned previously, you don’t have the option to share a file using Outlook or send a copy of a file.
• You do, however, have an additional option here that wasn’t available in PowerPoint: Open in review mode only. This is specific to Word documents, and this makes it so people can’t directly edit the document but can suggest changes or leave comments.

From your computer (with OneDrive Sync installed)

You can also share files right from the file browser on your computer, if you have the OneDrive Sync app installed.

• To do this, first, navigate to the file you want to share in your team’s shared library.
• Once you’ve found the file, you may need to click it once to select it.
• Once it’s selected, right-click the file, and in the menu that appears, click Share. This brings up a dialog box with the same options as in the office applications, with one additional option, More Apps. This gives you the option to share the file through other applications. This option may take a bit to show up when you first sync the files to your computer.

For more information about how to install OneDrive Sync, check out the Sync Microsoft OneDrive Files section of the IU Knowledge Base article About Microsoft OneDrive at IU.

Wrapping up

At this point, we’ve covered how to find and access your files in Microsoft at IU’s shared storage. As a reminder, if you need a refresher on how to use Microsoft OneDrive at IU, you can check out the recordings of each session posted on IT Training’s website at https://ittraining.iu.edu.

Additional links

• Recording of the Box Migration: Institutional Storage infoshare webinar