Google Introduces Daily Exports Feature for Drive Inventory Reporting

Google Drive Inventory Exports Now Support Daily Scheduling

Google is enhancing its offerings for Google Workspace users on Rapid and Scheduled Release domains by introducing daily export capabilities for Google Drive inventory to BigQuery. This significant upgrade allows administrators to gain deeper insights into file management across their organizations.

Benefits of Daily Data Exports

By exporting Google Drive inventory data, admins can assess various aspects of their organization’s files, including file classification, access permissions, and usage patterns. The inventory includes essential metadata for each file, such as size and applied labels, but importantly, it does not include the actual file content.

Enabling the Feature

According to Google, this feature is disabled by default and must be activated at the domain level. If an organization currently operates a weekly export, the schedule can be adjusted to daily by following these steps:

Go to Menu, then Reporting, and choose Data Integrations.
Click on Drive Inventory Exports.
Enable the export functionality by checking the corresponding box.
Select the appropriate BigQuery project ID for storing the exported data. If the project is not listed, ensure it is correctly set up in the Google Cloud console.
Enter the name of the intended dataset in the existing dataset field.
Click Save. If you encounter an error, this may indicate that your account does not have the necessary Project IAM Admin role on the Google Cloud project. Note that the first export may take one to two weeks to process.

Data Expiration and Limitations

Once exports are enabled, be aware that the default expiration period for the exported data is set to 60 days, post which the data will be deleted from Google Cloud. However, this setting can be adjusted within your BigQuery configurations.

It is also important to note that some content may be excluded from the export, such as videos made with Google Vids and any unclaimed Jamboard files.