Is there a way to create a folder tree of all Shared Drives as an admin?

Question

Google Drive is quite impressive for a web app, but it seems to be optimised for search, not spatial navigation so it's painfully slow for myself and colleagues trying to navigate, especially if we don't know exactly which file or folder we're looking for.

To help them out, I would like to create a "site map" of each Shared Drive, basically just a tree view so they can see the overall folder structure and jump straight to a specific folder, even if it's 5 or 6 folders deep. The tree might look something like this:

Shared Drive Name (4 files)

• Folder 1 (0 files)
  • Folder 1a (12 files)
  • Folder 1b (13 files)
• Folder 2 (1 file)
• Folder 3 (3 files)
  • Folder 3a (12 files)
  • Folder 3b (9 files)
  • Folder 3c (15 files)
  • Folder 3d (6 files)

I have a working proof of concept that I was thinking I could run daily/nightly but it falls down on Shared drives that I don't have access to. I can list the drives as an admin, using Drive.Drives.list({useDomainAdminAccess: true}).items;, but I can't list the contents.

Is there a way to do the equivalent of useDomainAdminAccess: true on Drive.Files.list? Is there another workaround? I'm wondering if I need to first check if I have access to the drive... if I don't I could then:

• give myself view access to the Shared Drive
• create the file list
• remove my access again

I think it would work, it just feels like an ugly hack so I'm wondering if there's a better approach?