Google Team Drives

[cgarber]

Is it possible to post assignments and docs that reside in a Google Team Drive directly from PS Learning?  

We have encouraged our staff to use Team Drives for school documents to combat ownership issues, but the inability to post assignments from those Team Drives is a problem.  Thoughts, anyone?

[jamiem7 · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your support with this feature request!

PowerSchool Learning users within your district should be able to select a folder within the Google Drive drop-down.  I have added screenshots below of the feature to select a folder within Google Drive.

[jamiem7 · Accepted solution]

Thank you for your support with this feature request!

PowerSchool Learning users within your district should be able to select a folder within the Google Drive drop-down.  I have added screenshots below of the feature to select a folder within Google Drive.

[aciuffo]

Thank you! This is definitely a step in the right direction! I really appreciate this change and will share it with our staff.  Also, thank you for sharing our feedback with the development team and working to improve PowerSchool Learning overall.

Would you still consider using one of the other file pickers? This style file picker you have just implemented definitely an improvement. For some users this style can be challenging to use because it does not show the overall structure, just a list of folders without some search terms. Additionally it requires the user to be aware of the reveal triangle shown in your screen shots. In my experience with our staff, most users have never clicked on the reveal triangle until it has been pointed out one on one.

[jamiem7]

At this time, PowerSchool Learning is not using another file picker.  I will be happy to add this to the feature request submitted to the PowerSchool Product Team!

[cgarber]

Hi, Jamie.  I'm the OP for this thread.

Are there any plans at this point for Google Shared Drive integration?  As stated earlier, we have a quandry at our school, having encouraged staff to migrate documents to Shared Drives, then learning that we can't access them in the PSLearning file picker.  We've had to put this migration to Shared Drives on hold, which causes problems for our school with respect to ownership and leaving staff.

Can you let us know when we might expect the File Picker to be updated to also access Shared Drives? 

Thanks,

Chet Garber

[martinm]

Hi Jamie (and other PS support staff on this thread)

Our schools are in the exact same position as @cgarber 's. Most of our teaching staff co-teach and, since we rely heavily on Google Drive, Shared Drives are the only practical way to share documents and resources. In order to add content from Google Drive to their PSL classes, our teachers using Shared Drives must first copy those resources into their own personal Drives before adding to their class.

Please escalate this fundamental requirement to your product development team on behalf of those schools in our situation (I'm sure we are not alone).

Many thanks

Martin M

[aciuffo]

@martinm @cgarber I have a partial work around for this issue. It's far from ideal, but it can work for sharing content that is stored in a Shared Drive though does not work well for the attach feature of assignments. 

It's possible to embed a Shared Drive (google) document in a PSL page. 

1. Open Google Document stored in a Sahred Drive
2. choose to publish to the web: File > Publish to the Web > 
3. Choose "embed" and click publish
4. Copy the embed iframe HTML and add to an "On Page Text" content block. You'll need to add the height and width parameters to the iframe tag to make it look right.

Complete instructions and an example can be found here:

https://ash.learning.powerschool.com/psladmin/powerschoollearningforteachers/cms_page/view/48773536

I suspect PowerSchool's reluctance to update the file picker has to do with the very different ways that Shared Drive manages permissions and sharing. 

@jamiem7 I understand that you have limited information you can share, but if you or your bosses can give us some more background and perhaps some techincal details, it might help us be a bit more understaning and patient. I know it gets old saying "At this time, PowerSchool Learning is not using another file picker," but we also answer to our staff and having some better informaiton or a timeline to share with them would be most helpful.

[cgarber]

Thanks for that, @aciuffo .  That's a good workaround for display level work, and something I'll suggest for staff who need it.

Most of my staff, however, wants access to Google Docs they can assign as homework, which isn't something we can get around with the embed codes.  Really important to get this feature added to the file picker; this is easy fodder for "why did we move to this LMS" discussions.

Atlas Rubicon did not originally have Shared Drives added to their Google file picker, then were able to make them available.  Can anyone at PS enlighten us on the issue related to this?

Any updates, @ScottS ?

[martinm]

Many thanks for sharing this workaround, @aciuffo! This definitely works when publishing resources on class pages (we're using a similar workaround, which I posted further up this thread). Unfortunately, as @cgarber mentions, it doesn't support the PSL assignment workflow.

Many of our staff co-teach classes, or teach parallel sections of the same Masterclass. Our schools have migrated en masse from Google Classroom, where it was easy for teachers to share, or reuse, assignments with handouts picked from Google Shared Drives. We have yet to find a workaround in PSL for this pretty common scenario.

PowerSchool are understandably channelling resource into developing Unified Classroom - perhaps there is a solution built into that platform. But for schools like ours still using PSL, with no immediate plans to migrate, the lack of a fix to this issue remains a frustration.

[aciuffo]

@martinm @cgarber 

I have another kludge to make assignments work from shared drives. It's plenty ugly, but it definitely works. I doubt your teachers will love this (mine sure don't), but it's a workaround.

To make an "assignment" link, do the following:

1. Double check that your Shared Drive is set to allow copying of documents (rt click on shared drive > Shared drive settings > Allow viewers to copy and print
2. Make the document viewable by everyone in your domain (or the web depending on your audience)
   
   • You may also need to do the following: Locate the document in your shared drive, rt click on document and click on Share > Who has Access > vertical 3 dot menu in top right corner > untick Restrict download, print & copy actions on this file for commenters & viewers.
3. Copy the link for the document
4. Paste the link into the assignment description field in Learning and change the end of the link from '/edit' to '/copy' -- see below for a working example:

original 'sharable link': https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYX2GRhvR_W1VOYaccOzjpfjc3xVuJ8DHE27HtxpYa0/edit

force copy link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nYX2GRhvR_W1VOYaccOzjpfjc3xVuJ8DHE27HtxpYa0/copy

Like I said: UGLY, but functional.

I'm pretty sure it's possible for PowerSchool to do this through the Drive API.

[martinm]

Wow @aciuffo - great work on finding a way around the problem! Thank you again for sharing.

C'mon PowerSchool. There's some determined work going on here in the community to try to address the issue. Necessity being the Mother of Invention, clearly there's a real need to warrant this great effort. We're sure you could add to the effort and help refine the solution a little for us!

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your participation in the Community and support on these feature requests!  

I am working with the Unified Classroom Product Team to place emphasis on these requests and gather as much information as possible.  I will update the thread as I am able to gather updates with the Product Team.  

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your patience as we review the Google Drive feature with the Unified Classroom Product Team!

The Product Team is looking into improving the feature for Unified Classroom and will provide communications on updates in Unified Classroom when they are released.  

If the teacher would like to share files with the 'view' only options selected, the teacher should not be required to be the owner of the file.  The teacher should only be required to be the owner when the teacher is using the 'handout' functionality.

[aciuffo]

@jamiem7 

---

The teacher should only be required to be the owner when the teacher is using the 'handout' functionality.

---

And there lies the problem. When a document is in a Google Shared Drive, there is no owner--the domain is the owner. The permission structure around the files is slightly different in Shared Drive making it nearly impossible to use the handout feature as it is currently structure.

Teachers would very much like to use shared drives for co-taught classes as this makes the whole planning process much more efficient and easier. Only one 'master' copy needs to exist. Storing the master copy in the Shared Drive ensures that when a teacher leaves the organization, the master says put and is not deleted with the user's account.

There is a workaround for storing documents in a shared drive (see above) involving checking the permissions and then using a force-copy URL, but that's all a hack requing an intimate knowledge of how the Shared Drive works, multiple steps and all-in-all terribly inefficient for teachers.

[jamiem7]

Thank you for providing these details!  

We have discussed this with the Product Team for Unified Classroom.  The Product Team is aware of the number of customers that are requesting improvements with the Google Team Drive feature within Unified Classroom and PowerSchool Learning and are focusing efforts on reviewing these improvements. 

[cgarber]

It sounds like this has escalated to the next level!  Thanks, @jamiem7 @aciuffo @martinm  for all the help on this!  Being able to integrate Shared (Team) drives in the File Picker will directly and immediately benefit our teachers, and will generate lots of goodwill at our school towards PowerSchool and their products.

Please keep the issue alive, and let us know if there's any progress towards release of this feature!  I'll be sure to bother you next week on this 🙂

[jamiem7]

Thank you for your support of this feature request!

The Product Team for Unified Classroom and PowerSchool Learning will review the request to see if the feature is a possibility.  The team will then determine if the feature can be built into the product.  If they find the feature can be built into the product, the team will work to making the change.  There is not a timeline for the process of product improvements that are shared, however, the Product teams share communication with districts of all updates when they are scheduled to be released.

[mrosenb1]

Any updates on this? Are enhancements to PowerSchool Learning canceled due to the change in PowerSchool's "LMS of choice" to Schoology? Can we expect to see only fixes to bugs from here on out?

[SowmyaN]

Hi @mrosenb1,

Thank you for reaching out for assistance through PowerSchool Community!

We recommend sharing your ideas directly with our Product team in the Unified Classroom Learning section of the PowerSchool Ideas Portal.  Our Product team reviews all suggestions to determine if the request can be implemented into the product.