Add Metadata in Google Drive

Why custom properties are useful for Google Drive?

One of the key features of Metadrive is the ability to create custom properties, also known as metadata or tags.

 

The main purpose of metadata is to facilitate in the discovery of relevant information and help to organize your documents in a structured way in your Google Drive folders or Team Drives.

 

Who can create custom properties?

By default owners and editors of the Google Drive folder or organizers and editors of the Team Drive can create custom properties. This can be configured for each folder/team drive.

 

The owner/organizer can decide if the user with edit permissions can create, modify or delete custom properties.

 

For more details check the article Permissions.

 

Where can I create custom properties?

In Metadrive, Google Drive folders and / or Team Drives are the organizational units. This means, administrators can configure them in order to organize and manage documents properly and also help contributors and users to work optimally.

 

 

What kind of properties can I create?

You can access to some system properties provided by Google Drive documents.

System:

  • Name: document name
  • Modified: Last modified time
  • Created: Created time
  • Quota: Quota bytes used
  • Modified by: Last modifying user
  • Thumbnail: document thumbnail
  • Last viewed by me: Last viewed by me time
  • Owner: document owner (only in Google Drive folders, not included in Team Drives)

 

Apart of these system properties, you can create your own custom properties. Let’s explain the different types of properties:

Custom:

  • Text: This data type is useful when you need to introduce different text for each document. It allows you write small sentences for each document.
  • Number: The best choice when you need to add numeric values!
  • Choice: Use this data type in case you have a fixed list of values. For example, for Status custom property can have as list of values: Approved, Pending and Rejected. You can choose also either you allow multiple selection or not.
  • Date: It’s quite useful because it helps the user to introduce the date in an easy way. The user can select the date with a selector, it’s not required to write anything.
  • Date Time: The same than date type with the possibility to include time.
  • Lookup:  Lookup is a property that uses a Google Spreadsheet as data source. You can define unlimited values for your property. More info here.
  • Contact: Use your Google Contacts as data source for your contacts properties.
  • Boolean: Select between ‘true’ or ‘false’.
  • Emoji: Use different groups of icons to represent your metadata.

 

How to create custom properties?