A brilliant tool for collaboration that I have recently started to use more and more is Google Docs. First launched in August 2005 and expanded to include the Spreadsheet in June of 2006 Google Docs is a great way to share projects that you are working on. Recently in our office we have needed to have a few “living” documents, documents that we have needed to have multiple people in multiple locations working on the same parts. In the past you have had to save the document, forward it around, make some more changes and before you knew it there were 15 revisions out there and some one just made major revisions in both version 14 and 15. With Google Docs not only do you have only one version but multiple people can be working on the same document at the same time, with the changes being reflected in real time!
Not only does this work well for sharing a document with others around the world, but it also works great in a small office.
When proofreading a document, or even writing meeting minutes. With the live updating of the document, you can truly have a collaborative experience.
Have you ever needed to have a form filled in that you wanted to have a number of people fill in, then share the results with others? Using it like a survey for example. Google Spreadsheet has a form generator that you can customize to your needs, distribute to who ever you want, even embed it on your own site, and then you can share the spreadsheet as a read only, or fully editable. For fun I have created a simple Google Form – that you can find HERE and you can view the back end spreadsheet HERE that updates live.
The more I use Google Docs the more I learn and discover.
What is your favorite aspect of Google Docs?
We will do a follow up post on Docs in a few months, once we play with it some more. I keep finding cool things, and it is hard to narrow it down and focus on just a couple of features! Please share your favorite bit, or ask us for more detail on a particular function and we will happily dig into it and learn more and report back!