Update Your Drive and Docs metrics

Google Workspace administrators can use 94 organization-level and 70 user-level metrics for greater visibility into file sharing both inside and outside the domain, as well as details on user adoption of Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. The new metrics reflect actual user behavior and are easier to cross-reference against Drive Audit.

Summary of updates

In addition to adding metrics that cover more details about user sharing, we've added more metrics to cover additional behaviors:

• Actor metrics—the person performing the action on a file.
• Visibility metrics—useful for security reporting, and with an updated definition. Now, visibility metrics differentiate between someone sharing a file with an internal user or an external user. See Visibility definition below for details.
• Adoption metrics—collaborators, consumers, creators, and sharers. See Adoption metrics below.
• 1-, 7-, and 30-day activeuser metrics.
• Delta metrics—simplifies the calculation of the resulting change in visibility when a file is shared or created, as well as the number of items owned in general. Examples:
  • A file that receives additional permission changes, but which remains internally shared, counts as 1 internally shared file but 0 towards the delta for internally shared files.
  • A file shared externally and changed to privately shared creates a -1 for the shared externally delta and +1 for the privately shared delta metric.

Owner and actor metrics

Two classes of metrics can be segmented into owner and actor perspectives:

• num_owned_items —item activity, grouped by ownerwithin, the domain, on which activity occurs by any user, internal or external
• num_items —item activity, grouped by userwithin the domain, on files owned files owned by anyone, internal or external

Previously, these categories of metrics applied only to activity and ownership within the domain. Now, they apply to file activity by anyone and file ownership by anyone, whether internal or external to the domain.

Owner metrics

The diagram below illustrates owner metrics for num_owned_items_viewed , which shows number of files by owner in the domain that were viewed by anyone, internal or external to the domain.

Actor metrics

The diagram below illustrates actor metrics for num_items_viewed , which shows number of files viewed by a domain user that were owned by anyone, internal or external to the domain.

Visibility definition

Previously, if a user shared a file to an individual, it would be identified as "Shared privately," regardless of whether or not the user was external or internal to the domain. Now, shared files are identified as "Shared internally" and "Shared externally." "Private" now only applies to files that are never shared.

Table: visibility definitions

Updated visibility metric	Previous visibility metric
visibility_private:Only the owner.	visibility_private:The owner and also users and groups specifically granted access.
visibility_shared_internally:Only users/groups within the owner's domain.	<none>
visibility_anyone_in_domain_with_link:Anyone in the domain with the link can access.	visibility_people_at_domain_with_link:Any user within the domain with a direct link may access.
visibility_anyone_in_domain:Anyone in the domain may find and access. public_in_the_domain previously.	visibility_people_at_domain:Any user within the domain may access. Users in the domain can also find the file using the domain search option in the Advanced Search menu,
shared_externally: Users/groups external to the owner's domain may access.	<none>
anyone_with_link: Anyone with the link may access. People_with_link previously.	anyone_with_link:Anyone inside or outside the domain with a direct link may access.
public: May appear in search results and anyone who finds the web address of the file may access it.	public:May appear in search results and anyone who finds the web address of the file may access it.

Order of visibility

Depending on the sharing settings, a file may have multiple applicable visibilities. For example, one file could have the following:

• shared with users inside owner's domain— shared_internally
• shared with users outside owner's domain— shared_externally
• shared publicly— public

When calculating the metrics, only the highest visibility is taken into consideration, so the file in this example would be considered to be public. The ordering of visibility is the order listed in the visibility definitions table above, going from lowest ("private") to highest ("public").

Adoption metrics

We've created convenient aggregated metrics based on your feedback. These help you understand adoption and engagement of Drive within your domain.

num_creators

Number of domain users who create files—includes creators creating their own files and uploading content. Does not include other addition type events like UNTRASH and ownership transfer.

num_collaborators

Number of domain users editing or commenting/suggesting/marking to-dos on files, but only on files they do not own.

num_consumers

Number of domain users viewing files. Does not include printing or previewing.

num_sharers

Number of domain users who changed the sharing settings to be more collaborative than what they were before. Relevant visibility events include: changing file visibility to a more public level, or adding more users/groups even if the visibility level stays the same or even decreases (such as changing from anyone in the domain to anyone in the domain with a link). Files acted upon are counted regardless of domain ownership of the file. Ownership transfers are also included.

Comparison of changes

Differences in metrics calculations exist in these changes, so review the notes as well as Key issues below for relevant details. This section focuses on the mapping between the old and new metrics, so you can compare the changes from previous metrics that you used in your reports. For a list of all the new metrics, see Google Drive Organization Metrics and Google Drive User Metrics .

Replaced metrics

This table shows those singleton metrics that are replaced with new metrics, with the definitions emphasizing the difference. Range is from the start of the report date to the end for all metrics.

New calculations

The following table provides a mapping between old metrics and new metric calculations, showing how you can use simple calculations to obtain values with the new metrics similar to the ones available in the deprecated metrics.

Removed metrics

The following metrics have no migration path and will not be supported after April 2018. These older metrics tracked total number of files, while the new ones track the change in the total number of files for the reporting window.

Key issues to keep in mind

1. Aggregated stats exclude calculations for shared drive files, since they are owned by the domain, and not by individual users.
2. Metrics are calculated for every user in the domain, regardless of license.
3. Some metrics calculations yield different numbers:
   1. Views and Edits: previous calculations of view and edit metrics differ from that for current view and edit metrics. The current version matches the Drive audit logs for anything that counts as a view or an edit.
   2. Active users: previous calculations of active users only considered a view or an edit as an activity, while the current calculation includes all other activities on an item as well, such as edit or delete. As a result, the current metrics also count active users differently.
   3. External visibility: the previous calculation was incorrect. The current calculation counts a file as shared externally if the group that a file is shared with allows external users.