The wonders of Google never cease to thrive.
On Jan. 3, 2019, Information Technology Director Steve Terry announced Capital’s latest IT feature for students and faculty—GSuite. In a newsletter sent to students, Terry detailed the tools now free to students, from Team Drives to Google Forms.
“It’s an enterprised version of Google Apps and because we’re in higher education, we get a better version of it, which is GSuite for Education. It’s a free service that we didn’t have to pay for.”
The request for a service like this came from faculty and student organizations who needed a place to collaborate on projects without the limitations that Office 365 and personal Google accounts can have.
GSuite offers many advantages for users, the first being a Google account with all the Google Apps you’re familiar with—Drive, Slides, Gmail, and more. There are new features like Team Drive, Drive with unlimited storage, and File Sharing.
Team Drive is exclusive to GSuite, a feature that IT hopes students and organizations take advantage of. This application is ideal for sharing and working with others, a secure platform to collaborate on.
“Anyone can create a Team Drive and share it with you, the concept is that there’s multiple owners of a Team Drive,” Terry said. “It doesn’t matter who comes or goes, there’s multiple owners and the content will always be there so it’s great for clubs, classes, and student organizations.”
The personalization for Team Drive goes as far as to change the accessibility for certain members of a group, so only few can edit, all can view, some can comment.
“A great benefit for us, as an educational institution, is that we get unlimited cloud storage,” Terry said.
Another feature is the unlimited storage through Google Drive, ideal for storing all of your papers and files. This feature allows you to save space on devices. On personal accounts storage is limited and any extra will cost you.
The last new feature is File Stream for Google Drive, which gives more accessibility between devices and Google.
“It’s a program that runs while your computer is open,” Terry said.
File Stream creates folders that fit the format of your computer—either Mac or PC, allowing you to find files easier, browse each file without downloading a copy every time, and open saved Google files into other programs like Microsoft Office and Adobe products. This adds versatility and accessibility to your files.
File Stream also allows sharing outside of other Google accounts, but use caution when sharing files with external users.
All of these GSuite features are all on a secure network, something that’s also specific to this version of Google Apps, so you can work with the peace of mind that your personal Google account can’t always provide.
To create an account simply go to Google Accounts, select ‘add an account’ and create an account using your Capital email and password. Google allows easy change between your personal and Capital accounts.
GSuite is not meant to replace the other programs already offered by Capital IT, like the Office 365 programs, but rather in collaboration with these programs.
“Office 365 is better at the finished product, but the collaboration through Google is more convenient,” Terry said.
File Stream allows you to switch between Google and Office 365.
