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Manage Storage in Google Workspace and Understand Limits

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Google Workspace

Updated January 3, 2003: Clarification on length of grace periods.

With the move to pooled storage across all subscriptions, Google no longer supports legacy options for additional storage for Google Workspace. As such, many individuals and businesses find themselves approaching or exceeding the pooled Google Workspace storage limit for their accounts.

What Happens Next After Reaching The Google Workspace Storage Limit

If you reach or exceed your pooled storage limit, Google gives you a grace period to either reduce the amount of storage used, or to add more pooled storage by changing your subscription.  After the grace period, your account becomes “read-only.” This change impacts your services including being unable to upload files or create new Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, or Forms.

Your grace period is:

  • 14 days if you do not have legacy Additional Storage license(s).
  • 60 days if you have legacy Additional Storage license(s).

You Have Options

You need to either add more Google Workspace storage, or you and your team need to free up storage.

Add More Storage

You have three options for adding more storage.

1 Upgrade.  The easiest way to add storage capacity, and Google’s recommended solution, is to upgrade to the next subscription tier, from Business Starter to Standard; from Business Standard to Plus; from Business Plus to Enterprise Standard.

2 Add Licenses. As an alternative, you can opt to add one or more additional licenses to increase the storage pool.  Both of these solutions will incrementally increase your cost.

3 Add 10 TB of Storage. You can add Additional Storage to Google Workspace subscriptions with pooled storage. The added storage comes in blocks for 10 TB at a cost of $300 per month.  This option is generally too expensive for most small and midsize businesses.

Which option is more cost-effective depends on your current subscription, your number of users, and the amount of storage you want to add.

Free Up Storage

We can recommend several techniques for freeing up storage, each with advantages and disadvantages.

1 Review and remove large or unnecessary files.  Ask each user to go through their “My Drive”. Your Administrator should review your Shared Drives. Be careful not to remove files that may be needed.

2 Review and remove duplicate files. Encourage each user to delete files that have been copied to a Shared Drive, or for which they have multiple copies that are no longer needed.

3 Remove and reduce large emails. Instruct and help users work to through their historical email and delete emails with larger attachments. Verify that the files were saved to My Drive or a Shared Drive. Be careful that the content of the email is no longer needed as well to avoid losing information you might need later on.

4 Move files to other storage. Using Google Cloud you have other storage options. These storage options work well for static needs, such as archiving projects and media (image, audio, video) libraries. Accessing Google Cloud storage requires

5 Move files to local storage. While counter to a Cloud Forward approach, you can move files to local storage. If you  do download the files to local storage before deleting, remember to make sure you protect those files with a backup/recovery solution.

We Can Help with Google Workspace Storage

Our team of small and midsize business cloud experts can and will help you chart your best path forward.  Let us help you assess the effort and cost for your options, and choose the best solution for you and your business. Schedule a call with a Cloud Advisor or send us an email.

About the Author

Chris CaldwellChristopher Caldwell is the COO and a co-founder of Cumulus Global.  Chris is a successful Information Services executive with 40 years experience in information services operations, application development, management, and leadership. His expertise includes corporate information technology and service management; program and project management; strategic and project-specific business requirements analysis; system requirements analysis and specification; system, application, and database design; software engineering and development, data center management, network and systems administration, network and system security, and end-user technical support.

Upgrade Coming to Spaces in Google Chat: From Conversation Topics to in-line Threading

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upgrade from conversation topics to in-line threading in spaces

A Google Chat upgrade is rolling out as of September 30, 2023. Google will be upgrading the format of all spaces organized by conversation topic to in-line threaded spaces in batches. The changes take place over the course of several months. Upgrades for each space may take a few minutes to complete. In some cases, it may take up to 12 hours to complete. The space will be unavailable to users during the upgrade.

Most users’ spaces will be upgraded during non-peak hours on weekends to try and ensure minimal disruption. Upgrades for all customers are expected to be finished by March 31, 2024. If you have a preferred month during which you would like the upgrade to happen, fill out this form by September 28, 2023.

Spaces organized by conversation topic have messages and replies grouped together in the main chat window. In-line threaded spaces, on the other hand, allow direct replies to any message, and allow creating a separate in-line thread, which is a sub-conversation that appears in a separate pane in the UX to a sub-conversation where smaller groups of people can continue a conversation on a specific topic. 

Before the Spaces Google Chat Upgrade

  • A few weeks before the Google Chat upgrade begins, users will see a banner in spaces that are organized by conversation topic. The banner will notify users of the upcoming upgrade. It will also have a link to a Google Help Center article which will have more details about the upgrade.

Who’s Impacted

This update to spaces in Google chat will impact admins and end users.

During the Transition From Spaces Organized by Topic to in-line Threading in Google Chat

  • When users attempt to open a space while it is being upgraded, they will see and error message.  The message will state the ‘Space is temporarily not available. We are updating this space to an inline threaded space.’
  • If users are viewing a space when the upgrade starts, most features will become unavailable until the upgrade completes, including sending and receiving messages in that space.
  • Search in Google Vault for Chat messages will still function, but results may contain duplicated messages from spaces that are being upgraded.
  • Chat APIs/Chat Apps that are trying to access a space during the upgrade will not work and will receive errors when trying to update space content.

After the Google Chat Upgrade To in-line Threading

  • Messages sent before the Google Chat upgrade will be retained. They will be arranged chronologically, instead of by topic. There will also be a separator titled “Begin New Topic” to indicate every time a new topic was started.
  • In some cases, when people have responded on older topics, the new chronological order takes precedence. Messages may not appear next to the original topic, but rather by the time they were sent. When this occurs, the new response will quote the last corresponding message.
  • Users will see a separator between the last message sent before the upgrade. They will also see  a notification in the space indicating that the space has been upgraded to use in-line replies.
  • The upgraded spaces will have their conversation history turned on by default. This will match the existing history behavior of spaces organized by conversation topic, which always have history on. Depending on organization-level history controls, space history settings may be changed by space managers. New messages sent after the upgrade will respect applicable organization-level history controls configured by administrators.
  • Users might need to close and reopen Chat in order to get access to the upgraded spaces.
  • Messages sent after the upgrade will have the same experience as the existing in-line threaded spaces.

No Action Required During the Spaces Upgrade in Google Chat

You can learn more about in-line threaded spaces, and you can always contact us with your questions at info@cumulusglobal.com.

About the Author

Chris CaldwellChristopher Caldwell is the COO and a co-founder of Cumulus Global.  Chris is a successful Information Services executive with 40 years experience in information services operations, application development, management, and leadership. His expertise includes corporate information technology and service management; program and project management; strategic and project-specific business requirements analysis; system requirements analysis and specification; system, application, and database design; software engineering and development, data center management, network and systems administration, network and system security, and end-user technical support.