Google Docs Download

One of the most challenging things in a work environment is managing all of the versions of different documents and spreadsheets. When you walk into a meeting, you are never quite sure if you have the latest version of the meeting agenda.

Or worse, if you are working with multiple colleagues spread across different offices on a document, you can end up with a mail box full of emails and different versions of the document attached to each email. Not being able to clearly know who has made what change can lead to chaos and duplication of work. Thankfully, with google docs, all this becomes a thing of the past.

How it works

Google docs is provided as part of the internet company, Google’s suite of services for businesses called G-Suite. This is available in a number of easy monthly subscription plans that start from as little as $5 per user. To access G-suite, you first need to set up your company’s web domain on Google. This means that your emails will now be routed by Gmail. In this case you can set yourself and everyone on your team up with an email address that has the following format: [email protected].

Once you have set up your domain on G-suite, you can navigate to your Google drive. Think of this as the shared, online filing cabinet for your organisation. Each individual in your company will see their own Google drive, this will include files they create, shared files that are visible to everyone in the company, and files that have been shared by others external to the organization.

Types of files available

Within Google drive you can save all kinds of files, this includes pdf documents, jpeg images, or other commonly used file formats. You are only able to create and edit google docs files within the system. There are three kinds of documents that you can create, edit and share, they are:

• Google docs: this is the word processer in google suites, it functions like Microsoft Word and allows you to create written documents, such as memos and reports.

• Google sheets: this is the spreadsheet application within Google suites, it functions like Microsoft Excel and allows you to create and manipulate large datasets, you can create tables and charts and apply formulas.

• Google slides: this is for creating slides and presentations, it is similar to Microsoft PowerPoint.

The key advantage of the google docs applications over their Microsoft counterparts is that they have superior version control and enable editing in a live environment. They are designed to maximise collaboration across work stations and geographies.

G-suite also comes with other tools such as Google hangouts a video conferencing service, and synchronised calendars. Because all these tools are accessible from the same drive as google docs, you can set up conference calls, follow up times all from within the document you are working on. The users will be notified via email.

Controlled Access

Individuals can create a local. If you download the Google drive app, you can log into your account from all of your devices and access your files. The Google drive app is available in iOS and android.

When you create a document in Google drive, you are automatically assigned as the owner of that document, and it is by default private to you. You can very simply share it with other people in your company, entire departments or the entire team by adding them. Adding someone to your document is as easy as typing their email address and sharing the document with them. You are able to control the level of access that someone has to your document: they can comment, view or edit. If you need to change the ownership of your file or folder, you can do that and reassign the role to someone within your company.

For company administrators, you are able to delete users and control global file access for all the files created on your domain. This means that if someone resigns or is fired you can immediately turn off their access to your company documents, this will delete all files on your drive even if the person had saved the folder on their computer. You are able to reassign any files they own to yourself or to another user in your company.

Easy To Share And Collaborate

With google docs it is easy to share and collaborate on files. Here are some features that enable this:
• You can tag auser in the comments of a document, if say you have a question about a section in the document. The user you tag is able to see your comment, action the change and mark the comment as closed once they are done.

• Live editing: multiple users can view the same google doc live in the web browser and in real time all other users can see who is also in the document and making changes at the same time.

• Version control and tracked changes: the system tells you who the last person to edit the document was and when they made changes.

If you would like to share a document with someone outside of your organization, there are two ways to do this. The first is easiest if they have a gmail or google hosted domain email account, simply add that email address to your file list, and they will receive an email notification. They can then comment, view or edit the document depending on the access you grant them. The second is best if the person does not have a Gmail account, you need to share a link to the document with them and ensure that you have enabled the public settings on the document.

Conclusion

For smart collaboration, clear version control and tracked changes all in a live environment, google docs is unrivalled. You and users in your company can create documents such as memos, letters and presentation files online. You can make live edits that are immediately visible to all users.

Duplication is eliminated because changes made simultaneous are recorded and visible to everyone on the document. You are also able to view prior versions of the document, optimizing control. Finally you can easily share the documents with different people within and outside your organization, as well as convert to different file formats.