Information Technology Services

Google Mail (Gmail) is our Brandeis supported email client. With Gmail, your email is stored safely in the cloud. You can access Google Chat and Google Meet through your Gmail inbox.

Learn about creating a signature, setting up your out of office message, and setting up email filters. Google Workspace Learning Center has excellent resources to help you learn more about Gmail.

As a reminder, our Written Information Security Policy does not allow faculty and staff to set up automated email forwarding to a non-Brandeis email. Please review our instructions on how to disable email forwarding from our identity management system and Google Mail settings.

Google Calendar is our Brandeis supported calendar application to manage meetings and tasks. You can learn about sharing your calendar, scheduling meetings, and managing your time and tasks in the Google Workspace Learning Center for Calendar.

Google Drive is one of the cloud-based storage solutions offered at Brandeis. (Box is the other cloud-based storage solution. Compare Google Drive and Box.).

Faculty, staff and students have access to their own Google Drive, available with their Brandeis accounts. With Google Drive, users can also create and access Shared Drives.

You can create files in Google Drive or upload files to Google Drive from your computer or device. Google Drive has Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms among other applications. You can share these documents with other collaborators and edit together in real time. Visit Google Workspace Learning Center for tips and answers to common questions about using Google Workspace applications.

You can set permissions for files and folders in Google Drive by

• Viewer (only has access to view a file - cannot make changes to a file)
• Commenter (can view and make comments on a file)
• Editor (can view, comment, and make changes to a file)

Learn more about the features of Google Drive in the Google Workspace Learning Center.

What is the difference between Google Shared Drives and Google Shared Folders?

Google Shared Drive and Google Shared folders are two features of Google Drive that allow you to collaborate with others. Both are useful for sharing content with others, but there are important differences to understand when it comes to safely sharing and backing up your files.

Ownership of the files and folders inside Shared Drives is held by the Drive itself and all members of the drive have access to and control over the files and folders as set by the drive permissions. In other words, the Shared Drive is the owner of the files. The individual who created the initial Shared Drive for collaboration purposes is the manager of the drive and can invite other users and set security permissions for new members of the drive.

Ownership of the files and folders inside a Shared Folder is held by the owner of the folder. The owner of the files within a Shared Folder retains ownership of those files. Someone who creates a folder in their personal Google Drive and then shares access to the folder with other users is still the owner of the Shared Folder, because it resides on their personal instance of Google Drive.

Google Meet allows users to host or participate in video conferencing, online meetings and screen sharing in a virtual meeting room. It's available to the Brandeis community as an alternative to Zoom for hosting virtual meetings.

You can access Google Meet through the Google Apps menu, located at the top right of the page of any Google App, through the Google Meet button at login.brandeis.edu, or log in through meet.google.com with your Brandeis username and password.

Scheduling meetings through Google Meet can be done directly through Google Calendar or by logging into Google Meet (meet.google.com) and clicking "New Meeting".

Key features available in Google Meet:

• 100 participants per meeting
• Recording
• Screen sharing
• Digital Whiteboard
• Live automatic transcripts
• Virtual backgrounds

Google Meet is not intended to replace Zoom as our primary video conferencing tool, but as an alternative application for staff and faculty to hold administrative-related meetings or as a backup if Zoom webconferencing issues arise.

You can learn more about Google Meet by visiting Google Workspace's Google Meet training and help center.

Google Groups is a feature of Google Apps that makes it easy to communicate and collaborate with groups of people — such as project teams, departments, office locations and special-interest groups.

A Group is like a mailing list because it contains the email addresses of its members and a unique email address which allows you to:

• Send email to group members.
• Invite group members to meetings.
• Share your content with group members, including Google documents, sites and calendars.

Managing Google Groups

There are several options available to customize and manage a Google Group. Group owners and managers can assign membership rights and subscription types, specify email delivery options, manage message archive settings, change the visual appearance of a Group, and export and share a Group's member list.

Please review our Google Workspace Communities course to review how to set up and manage Google Groups.

Google Group Resources

• Manage Group Settings (Google support article)
• Google Groups Help Center