Our favourite Google Drive hacks

mycommunitynet
Mar 20, 2015
2 min read

Here at MyCommunity we’re in love with Google Drive. For a startup, the system has everything we need to juggle projects and work collaboratively. Here’s what we love most:

The app

Downloading Drive as a desktop folder is the most natural way to do things, with the app functioning in the same way as Dropbox and other cloud systems. If you’re creating documents using Google Docs, Sheets or Slides, Drive automatically saves files in native formats which can only be opened via Drive in your browser. This creates a sticking point for offline working. If you’re hooked up to the web, however, the system works well and has recently been upgraded to host and preview Adobe Creative Cloud files, which is good news for design teams.

Embedded presentations

Embedding slideshows in the pages of your website can be a good way of presenting services or product info in a digestable format. Making an embed look clean and retaining high image quality can be tricky, however, particularly if you’re using free webapps like Slideshare/Haiku Deck.

Google Slides presentations can be quickly and cleanly dropped into Wordpress, Wix, Weebly and other webpages without loss of resolution. Having created your presentation, go to File > Publish to the Web > Embed and you’re away.

Google Sheets for card-based project management

Trello’s card-based project management system is a great way of keeping tabs on the status of ongoing work, particularly if you spend your time juggling a range of tasks. It’s easy to build a similar card-based system using Google Sheets, which all the members of your team can contribute to using Drive’s standout shared document feature.

To do so, divide your project process into columns in a Sheet document. In the rows, add a name for each sub-project then share the document with your colleagues, making sure they have permission to edit the document. Once a task is complete, any member of the team can drag a sub-project across rows with the move visible to all members of the team. Hello Trello!

Conversations by Hangout

Where would we be without an easy way to share funny cat videos with the team? Google Hangout Chats are a great way of sharing interesting content and links to documents without recourse to email. If you’re working on Mac it’s possible to integrate your account with iMessage, although this can confuse your Apple Contact book when a colleagues’ Gmail address doesn’t match the one used for their iCloud account. On mobile, the Google Hangout app is useful but can be a drain on battery life (which is true of Google Apps for Work more generally).

There you have it: our favourite tips for Drive for business. How do you use Google’s cloud system? We want to know! Share your tips below or via Twitter @MyCommunitynet.