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If you have a hybrid workplace or simply conduct much of your business's work in the cloud, there’s a good chance you’re using Google Workspace. Even if you’re familiar with the popular cloud-based platform, you can probably further leverage it to boost productivity and efficiency across your team. From simplifying and securing hybrid work to providing access to all your documents and files across devices, Google Workspace can give your business a much-needed productivity boost. 

 

Below are a few of the most popular Google Workspace applications and tips for making this technology do more of the leg work. 

 

Google Drive 

Google Drive is designed to store, synchronize, and share files. It’s an extremely effective tool for keeping your business files organized and easily accessible, if you know how to use it. 

 

The biggest piece of advice we can give is to take the time to organize your drive with primary and secondary folders. You can make it much easier to quickly find what you need by creating a few primary folders, such as “Active Projects”, “Archived Projects”, and “Project Leads.” Then you can create secondary folders within those with intuitive, searchable titles. This will save precious time for you and your team when you need to quickly locate a specific document.  

 

Google Docs, Sheets & Slides 

Within Google Drive, you can collaborate on projects in real time with your fellow team members, regardless of their office location. Google Docs has editing features that allow team members to submit comments or make edits directly in the document. It also saves automatically and makes it easy to see past versions. Sheets works much like Excel but the learning curve isn’t as steep, although the functionality is a bit more limited. You can also integrate Sheets with Google Forms, automatically transferring data from your Forms into a spreadsheet. Slides allows any team member to create stunning presentations using the many free templates (or you can create your own).  

 

Need a quick cheat sheet for collaborating with Google Docs, Sheets & Slides? Check out this blog post. Although it’s focused on Google Docs, the collaboration features can also be applied to Sheets and Slides.    

 

Google Meet 

If you use Gmail, Google Meet is an easy way to launch a video chat with your clients or team members. Simply open your Gmail account, click the dot grid in the upper righthand corner to see all your Google apps, and launch Google Meet. From there click “New Meeting” to either instantly launch a meeting, create a meeting for later, or schedule a meeting in your Google Calendar.

 

Google Calendar 

Keeping track of meetings, deadlines, and daily to-do’s can be overwhelming, but an organized calendar can help. With Google Calendar, you can create multiple calendars, both shared and private, to help organize your meetings and tasks. You can also integrate your calendar with other tools like Zoom and Trello, instantly scheduling virtual meetings onto your calendar and adding the week’s tasks.

 

One of our pro tips for ensuring you never miss a meeting is to automatically schedule default reminders that will apply to any meeting on your calendar. From Google Calendar, click the gear icon in the top right hand corner and select “Settings.” Next go to “Settings for My Calendars” and select the calendar you’d like to apply reminders to. Scroll down to “Event Notifications” and  click “Add Notification.” Here is where you can select how far in advance of a meeting you’d like to receive a reminder. You can add multiple reminders so that you’re notified the day before and then an hour advance and ten minutes in advance the day of.  

Google Keep 

Google Keep is a great place to take and store notes from internal meetings, brainstorm sessions, client kickoffs, you name it. Capture all your thoughts in one place and easily transfer them to Google Docs if you need to create a more official document to share. You can also take notes via voice command using Google Assistant. Worried about losing a note? Organize your notes in Keep using the handy label function and then use search to quickly find any note in seconds. 

 

Gmail 

Gmail has endless options for organizing your inbox. You can use different colored stars to label messages based on priority and create custom labels to organize your messages based on topic, sender, or content. 

 

Automatic filters are perhaps the best way to keep your inbox cleaner and easier to navigate. Use filters to set rules around how emails should be sorted as they arrive in your inbox based on your own specified categories and labels. These filters can be set based on subject line, email address, and To create a filter, go to “Settings” and select “Filters and Blocked Addresses.” Next select “Create a New Filter” to see what specifications you can use to automatically organize your emails. 

 

Want more Gmail productivity tips? We recommend checking out this comprehensive blog post from Email Analytics. 

 

Take the time to take full advantage of Google Workspace

Google Workspace has so many tools to offer your team — it’s just a matter of discovering them and all their helpful features. Set aside time to identify areas where your team could improve their productivity and then explore Google Workspace to find the right tool for the job. There are probably multiple places where you can implement a shortcut or use an automatic workflow to help further streamline your operations and free up time and creative energy for your top priorities. 

 

Featured Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

 

Related reading: 

Slack vs Teams: Choosing the Right Collaboration Tool for Your Business

How to Organize Your Digital Life for Productivity and Peace of Mind

How to Remove an Employee from Google Workspace Without Losing Data

 

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About Pagoda Technologies IT services

Based in Santa Cruz, California, Pagoda Technologies provides trusted IT support to businesses and IT departments throughout Silicon Valley, the San Francisco Bay Area and across the globe. To learn how Pagoda Technologies can help your business, email us at support@pagoda-tech.com to schedule a complimentary IT consultation.