You will get to know the sharing options offered by many Google products. Docs, Slides, and Sheets can all be shared using the information in this video. Sharing a Doc, Slide set, or Sheet allows the owner of the document to distribute it to an audience, and it allows the owner to permit users in that audience to have differing levels of access and collaboration.

Let's see how this works. We'll be using a Doc as a sample, but the process and location of the share options is the same within Slides and Sheets. You can find the share settings in the upper right, or you can go over to the File menu and find them here. You'll be taken to the same options no matter which route you choose. Open the share settings and take a look at our options.

When the window appears, you'll see that there are a few places where you get to make some decisions. Let's first start with General access. General access defines who the audience is; in other words, who gets to see this document. The default is restricted, and restricted means only people with access can open it.

With the link, people who have access are the author and anyone you add via email address to this top field. Only those people will be able to click the link and actually be taken to the document. If that suits your needs, then you simply need to add the recipient's email address to the people field. This is a wise choice when the information in your document is sensitive or protected: letters to parents, documentation, student performance information—those are all examples of documents that might need restricted access.

If restricted is not useful for your file, you can choose another level of access. Let's take a look at what we have. We could choose Knox County Schools. That means that anyone who is signed into Google with their KCS Google account will have access. This is a wise choice for files that need to be seen by multiple colleagues but do not need to be seen by the general public: school schedules, PLC notes, professional development materials—those are all examples of documents that might require KCS access.

“Anyone with the link” is just that: anyone can click the link and gain access. This is a wise choice for documents that need to be seen by a wide audience of KCS members and beyond. This is a simple route for providing access to anyone with one simple link. Your student handbook, school-wide letters to families, and directions for how to use a digital tool are examples of information that could be viewed by people who are inside of the Knox County Schools organization and outside of it.

If you have ever had a document shared with you, and when you click the link it said “request access,” it's either because the author did not select a setting that included your particular address, or you're not logged in to your Knox Schools Google account. Double-check to make sure you're logged into your Knox Schools Google account, and if that is correct, then you'll need to contact the author to get them to adjust their share settings.

Once you've determined an audience, I'm going to select “anyone with the link.” Here, we now get to determine what permissions they have. Over to the right, you see a new drop-down with three choices. “Viewer” is the default role in Google. Viewer means a recipient can only view the file. The user can open links on this file, but no changes can be made. If the owner wants people to be able to interact with the file, the role must be changed. People with “commenter” roles can comment.

Let's see what comments look like. Okay, when you comment, you add a piece of text that floats over to the right of the original. This allows you to provide input without disturbing the original. Finally, let's look at “editor.” Editor gives recipients full rights to add things, move things, or completely delete things from the original. This could be desirable if you want multiple people to add and revise information.

Here's an example of editor rights: as the editor of this document, I could go in and completely remove this chunk of text. Notice that it removed my comment as well. Be careful when assigning full editor roles. The owner of a file can assign different roles to different users. Individuals who are added to the file in the people field can be given one role, while those who access with a link can be given another role.

This might be helpful if you were the owner of the file and you want coworkers to contribute. So, you could set Knox County Schools as editors, provide a link to your colleagues so that they can access the document and begin editing, but perhaps you only want other people to view. Maybe you might add a supervisor or a district-wide coach into this top field and give them view-only access.

The combinations of access and permissions can make your document very flexible for your sharing needs. As you create Google files, carefully consider who needs access and what types of access they need. This will help everyone benefit from the collaborative options that Google provides.