On April 24, 2012, Google Drive was launched, ushering in a new era of syncing and storage. The Google ecosystem has attracted more than a million active users by allowing users to store data in the cloud, share files, and collaborate on papers, spreadsheets, and presentations. Google services are generally more secure and less expensive than competitors, in addition to delivering new collaboration capabilities. I mean, who doesn’t like clouds?
Google Apps has a file storage service called Google Drive. Google Drive is a part of a huge, complete ecosystem that is sometimes indistinguishable from Google Docs. Google Drive, like Box and Dropbox, allows you to accomplish a lot of things, but what are some of the things you might not have considered? What are some of the most interesting options? Of course, Google Drive has a fantastic search engine that is revolutionizing how users access files. Remember those massive, sophisticated, nested hierarchical file storage systems? They’re no longer necessary. So let’s have a look at some of the other interesting things you can do with Google Drive!
You can save layered maps to Google Drive or make one in Google Drive. You can save many pieces of data in layers this way. Consider the following scenario: you’re attending a conference. The conference organizers may be willing to tour you around to some excellent restaurants, cool breweries to meet up with, and where all of the conference events are held.
Keep up with what’s going on by looking at recent items.
It’s difficult to communicate change to a company. It’s simple to search your recent things for a document you want to edit. Looking at what anyone has altered is an innovative way to watch for change in organizations, especially when just a few people (e.g. Human Resources) have access to certain papers.
To get back to the important stuff, use the starred items.
By bookmarking a website, you can make it your favorite. You can also bookmark a Google Drive file that you need to access frequently. However, you may also Star a file, which adds a third dimension to file access. You can only see your Starred files, sort them by the last time they were changed, and execute change control or change management on them quickly.
Users in the organization can share files.
Since the dawn of networked computers, we’ve been transferring files between users over a network. As a result, there’s nothing new here. However, because all of the files in a Google Drive account are stored in “the cloud,” you can share them quickly with others, and once shared, recipients will receive an email notification that the files have been shared. You can also share files with users from other businesses without requiring them to connect to your network via VPN or perform other time-consuming and technical chores in order to view them. The user will need to verify because they will be accessing a Google Drive account using the email address used to transfer the files. Keep in mind that a misspelled address can result in a file being shared with the wrong person!
Do not allow documents to be shared outside of your company.
You can also block the ability for users in your domain to share files outside of your domain because of the risks of sharing files with email addresses that may or may not exist, and because enterprises are increasingly concerned about data leaking outside of their control.
A desktop client should be installed.
Desktop clients serve to bridge the gap between the native experience of having files on your computer or on a file sharing and accessing data through an internet experience. You can use the desktop client to access files even if you’re not at your desk. However, doing so severely limits the native experience of accessing files through Google Drive, as they lack many of the features offered through the web client.
Construct a Google Form
Many of the surveys you’ve completed have almost certainly been Google Forms. A Google Form is essentially a series of fields that end users fill out on a web page. Ask questions, provide a set of responses or open text fields, and embed the form on a page to give users a native website experience. After then, all of the information is available in a Google sheet (similar to an Excel spreadsheet). Surveys, signups for the latest pizza party, and other form-based requirements have never been more affordable or simple.
Make a list of everything!
You can use Google Drawings to create flowcharts, diagrams, and other things that require only a drawing tool. It’s simple, but the options in Google Drawings can accomplish a lot of what many people achieve with Photoshop. You can save a drawing as a.pdf,.png,.jpg, or.svg when you’re done making or changing it (which you can embed into a Photoshop shop file or open in Illustrator). In fact, I’ve found that starting a project as a Google Drawing allows me to get more done faster and then smooth out the rough edges of a file.
While you’re working, keep an eye on folks who are using Google Docs.
I know I stated this wasn’t going to be about Google Docs in particular. However, the first time I opened a Google Doc, I was blown away by how fascinating it was to watch my coworkers typing. I could see their cursor location, view what they were typing as they typed, inquire about what was being typed into a cell in a Google Sheet, and offer comments on what they were typing over the phone or during a Google Hangout. I thought (and still think) this was a game changer.
All of your files should be converted to Google Docs.
Users frequently use tools that you do not support. When you use Google Drive as part of your workflow, you can even convert supported file types to other file types automatically. This enables the standardization of various file types, making manual document handling in your workflows easier.
DriveTunes is a music management program.
DriveTunes must be manually enabled. However, once enabled, any file saved to a Google Drive account that is a song can be played to in a web browser using Google Drive.
To create workflows, change the color codes.
In this post, we’ve talked about how to use Starred files, Recent Items, and the dates a file was saved as part of a workflow. But there’s one thing we haven’t talked about: color coding a file. I’ve been doing this for years as a Mac user, even for files hosted on Apple servers. However, making information more organized for people, regardless of the platform they use to access files, is a significant improvement in how an organization handles data. Each color, for example, can be used to signify a file’s property or the state of a job that the file specifies (e.g. for a services business)
View a file’s revision history.
“Who modified that file I was working on?!?” someone has asked us all. And the fact that people edited our files has led to a restriction on who in an organization can update a file. Each update to your file in Google Drive is tracked by date and who made the change. And you can see what was added, changed, or removed from the file inside each of those. You can either revert a file to a previously saved state or create a new document and paste the deleted material into it. Another way Google is changing how we access data is that corporations are considerably less prescriptive in their file management than they were with file servers, which lost the journaled information of what was modified within a file.
To share with the rest of the world, use a Shareable link.
Because I’ve written thousands of blog articles, I have a web server with a blog on it. But what if I only wanted to show someone a simple document? For instance, a product’s terms and conditions. Alternatively, driving directions to my house. Or a declaration of love for my dog. When you don’t need to restrict access to certain persons, you can make files public and open them up to anybody in the world.
Sort your belongings into folders.
I know, I know, I said you didn’t have to access your files in a hierarchical order. You may, however, because some individuals wish to! And it’s a terrific method to keep files for certain projects, jobs, customers, and so on all in one place.
Create a web page with a folder listing embedded in it.
You may also share a folder with others, making it easy to distribute press kits, customer assets, and historical notes, to mention a few examples. You can build a file listing (as an iframe for the nerdy types) that can be inserted into a web page if you have a folder. Then you can display all of the files and their attributes to the rest of the world, which is useful for product documentation, public meeting minutes, and so on.
As part of workflows, distribute photographs.
You may also backup your photographs library to a Google Drive account if you have the Google Drive iOS app. This is also built into iCloud as a backup, but real estate agents, building contractors, and other job functions that need to quickly share photos will find the ability to backup your images to an account, sort them into a folder, and then share them with customers to be an efficient way of doing so without the use of third-party tools.
Attention: research!
Working with many browser tabs or windows can be a time-consuming and inefficient procedure. You may search for photos, video, quotes, and references from within a project using Research Tools, which are available in Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. Not only can you quickly input links and media from the research panel, but you can also add illustration information as footnotes or annotations (since you should acknowledge everything!).
Converting visuals to text with OCR
The OCR (Optical Character Recognition) feature in Google Drive allows you to search for words in scanned documents. Finding a place or a person’s name in an old newspaper item that was previously scanned and saved on Google Drive, for example. In some workflows, Google Drive’s OCR function can be used to replace considerably more expensive OCR-based software, while also offering more automation around loading documents as text into a file.
Comment on files to show that you care.
You can share photos and videos with your contacts using Google Drive. Files can be commented on, just like Google Docs. When someone responds to your comment, you’ll get an email notification. This can also be used as a question and answer format on files, or to commit refinements to the document that don’t belong there. I’ve also used comments to explain how to use files, particularly ones that are difficult to use, such as Google Sheets, Form Fillable PDFs, and so on.
Handle big files with ease.
You can transmit enormous files to folks you wouldn’t have been able to send to before using Google Drive. Receivers will need a Google Drive account, however Google Drive downloads are generally faster than other methods of transfer, and storage is free for up to 5 gigabytes!
It must be opened! It must be opened!
Users can open a variety of files using Google Drive, including.ai (Adobe Illustrator) and.psd (Photoshop) files.
