Best Practices for Organizing and referencing files in a team collaboration site.
Organizing Materials
Drive Folder Structure
Organize for Permissions
At a high level organize the file structure for permissions that align with the way the team functions. Team files, leadership files, public files... Then permissions are configured when the tools are setup, and putting files into the correct folders assigns proper permissions.
Organize by Topics
Each business activity should have its own folder in Drive. There should be some parallelism between Drive folders and Site pages for topics such as new members, general meetings, board meetings, etc.
Embed Folders into Site Pages
The team site is most easily maintained by embedding Drive Folders into Site pages.
There are multiple options for embedding:
- Embed Folder - preferred - files and subfolders are readily listed on page, and easily added and revised and changed out.
Less desirable
- Link to folder - equally maintainable, however users must click on the link to view contents.
- Link to specific file - these links will be broken if the file is replaced with a newer revision/upload of the file
- Embed specific files - can be a good option, but also required maintenance when a new version of the file appears.
Referencing Materials
Considerations when preparing documents and/or email messages that need to reference files - especially for template files that will be used repeatedly over time.
Preferred method - include links to website pages rather than direct links to specific files.
- Website links are more readable than are URLs for Google files
- The team site is the home base for team operations, when possible direct people to the site so they know how to find info there rather than returning to individual documents, emails or bookmarks.
- Maintainability - directing people to the team site is far more maintainable.
- The email / reference document can have brief essential info, with additional details on the site.
- By placing files in a folder on a site page (or links on a webpage), the files can be readily changed out - new version replacing old, additonal files - without necessarily requiring revisions to the referencing document.
URLs - Short vs Long
What's the story with two versions of URLs for site pages? What can or should I use?
Google Sites have two URL formats:
Short format, Google's 'Web Address Mapping', can be setup: demo.steveraab.com
Long format, Google's servers hosting the sites: sites.google.com/a/steveraab.com/demo/...
Long format always works, but is less readable
TBD - expand this section, include examples.