As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly configure a shared drive for your team.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 30 minutes until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open the administration or settings guide for your storage platform and gather the platform name, current groups, existing folder structure, organisation sharing rules and retention requirements without copying passwords, access tokens or confidential file contents.
   2. Paste the gathered information into the prompt, replacing each bracketed slot, and ask the chatbot for the folder structure, permissions matrix, risks, configuration steps, test plan and rollback plan.
   3. Compare the proposed permissions matrix with your organisation's access policy and change every assumption that does not match your actual roles, groups, external-sharing rules or retention requirements.
   4. Create a small test area or separate test shared drive in the platform, then apply the proposed folders and permissions there using fictional or test accounts rather than live confidential files.
   5. Run each test in the chatbot's test plan, including viewing, editing, sharing, moving and deleting where relevant, and record whether each account can do no more than its intended role allows.
   6. Send the corrected plan and test results to the person responsible for your organisation's storage administration, then apply the approved configuration to the live shared drive and keep the rollback steps with the change record.

   Prompt

   Help me design and configure a shared drive for a UK work team. Use the information below and do not invent settings, platform features or organisation policies.
   
   Platform: [Google Shared drive, Microsoft SharePoint, or other]
   Team and roles: [list roles, such as directors, managers, staff, contractors]
   What each role needs to do: [view, comment, edit, upload, share, move or delete]
   Types of information stored: [for example, internal documents, customer data, financial records]
   Current groups or accounts: [describe them without including passwords, access tokens or unnecessary personal data]
   External sharing requirement: [none, specific partners, or allowed with conditions]
   Retention and deletion rules: [paste your organisation's rules, if known]
   Existing folders and files: [describe the current structure and any files that must not move]
   Platform and organisation restrictions: [paste relevant administrator guidance or links]
   
   Produce:
   1. A proposed folder structure with a short purpose for each folder.
   2. A permissions matrix showing each role, access level and sharing restriction.
   3. A list of risks, assumptions and questions that an administrator must resolve.
   4. Exact configuration steps for the platform named above, clearly labelling any step that requires an administrator.
   5. A test plan using fictional users and non-sensitive test files to confirm that each role can do exactly what it should.
   6. A rollback plan if the permissions or folder changes cause a problem.
   
   Keep the least-privilege principle. Do not recommend giving everyone owner or administrator access. Do not ask me to paste passwords, access tokens or confidential file contents. If the platform or policy information is insufficient, ask focused questions instead of guessing.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.