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Google Drive Mapping Conversion to a Business Resources Tree

Google Drive mappings are converted to a business resources tree in the following ways:

  • Google Drive represents files and folders in a graph (a.k.a. map) data structure so that every node may have multiple parent and children nodes. In a tree structure, however, every node can have only one parent. For example, a folder shared by two users actually has two different parents - one in each of the user’s personal drives.

  • To maintain a recognizable structure for Google Drive resources, Data Access Security displays business resources in a tree, exactly as they are arranged from the user’s perspective.

  • When users share folders, flattening the graph structure into a tree results in duplicate resources, which are maintained to keep the structure recognizable.

  • If external users (external to the company’s Google Apps domain) share folders with domain users, a separate “External” tree root represents those resources.

  • If shared drives exist in the domain and have members assigned to them, a separate "Shared Drives" tree root represents those resources.

Sample Schematic

The following is a sample schematic of the Data Access Security Google Drive resource tree:

* External
   * private@gmail.com
      * sharedFolder1
* Shared Drives
   * Shared Drive 1
      * sharedDriveFolder1
      * sharedDriveFolder2
* Users
   * u1@my-company.com
      * Folder1
      * Folder2
   * u2@my-company.com
   * u3@my-company.com

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