How Google Apps for work encourages collaboration

In this day and age it's more important than ever that teams can collaborate anytime, anywhere. Google Apps for work provides a range of tools to organisations that makes it easier than ever for staff, clients and anyone who needs to, to work together.

IM, VOIP and video conferencing

Instant messaging (IM), voice calls (VOIP) and video conferencing are all tools which enable your teams to communicate from almost anywhere at no cost, providing you have an internet connection. Google Apps for Work provides these tools as standard. And Google Hangouts allows everyone in your organisation to communicate in real time with group messaging. All these tools work across mobile, desktop and tablet, enabling your teams to discuss projects and ideas together seamlessly.

Video conferencing with Hangouts on desktop also has remote desktop and screen-sharing features. This means that individual team members can not only discuss ideas but present ideas. It also comes as standard with Google Apps for Work, so you don't have to pay more for expensive video conferencing software.

With the Hangouts app being available on the Apple App Store and Google Play, employees can be reached regardless of location - again internet connection permitting.

Drive, Docs and Sheets

Google Apps for Work comes with Google Drive. This is a suite of office apps which allows you and your teams to work together on documents and see each others edits live, because it's in real time. No longer will you have to email attachments to one another and merge many sets of changes. What's more, Microsoft Office documents are compatible with Google Drive, and can be converted to Google Docs formats, so there are no worries in moving backwards and forwards, as you need to, from one system to another.

The great thing about Google Docs, is they work in your web browser. So the software is always the latest version and always up to date, just like your files.

Google Drive is available everywhere: desktop, mobile and tablet, across Windows, Android, OSX and iOS. And files can be synced across all your devices so Google Drive can be used for desktop applications on your Mac and PC. For example, if you are creating a graphic in Adobe Illustrator on the iMac at work but need to finish it at home, you can save where you're up to and the updated file will already be on your Windows PC at home, enabling you to continue where you left off. If you've started a presentation on your work PC but need to add a few finishing touches before your meeting, it's no problem. Simply load up the presentation on your iPad as you travel and do what you need to do.

Google Drive for Work also supports the majority of file types, and can search and preview most file types, so there is likely to be no need to buy extra software. Drive is clever, it even scans images for words. This means that text documents, scanned in manually and saved as photographs, can also be searched. And, there are hundreds of third-party applications that work in Google Drive.

Gmail, Calendar and Google Maps

As you would expect with Google Apps for Work, Gmail comes as standard. Gmail is one of the world's most popular email clients; it has built in spam filtering and is integrated into Google's other products.

Gmail is available anywhere on the go from any web browser and has apps on iOS and Android. Being a product from Google it also integrates into Google Drive and Google Calendar. From Gmail you can save attachments into Google Drive, request meetings and schedule video conferences. You can also delegate your Gmail to another employee, for example, a colleague who needs to access your email, without having to open up your entire account.

Google Calendar can share your calendar with the people you need it to, to read or write entries. Maps are also integrated into Calendar, so when scheduling appointments you can add a place, or address to your appointment, allowing you to quickly get directions and ETAs based on traffic, and public transport directions. It's also easy in Google Calendar to create and share team calendars.

Google Sites

As part of the Google Apps for Work suite, comes Google Sites. With this you can build an intranet for your company without needing to know a single line of code. It's also possible to build team sites, making it easy to share ideas and resources in one central place.

As Google Apps for Work is all under your domain, it means you can share Google Sites externally with a URL. For example it could be YourOrganisation.org/ProjectABC or YourCompany.co.uk/ProjectXYZ.

For more information on Google Apps for Work, click here. Or, if you would like to contact us you can either call or email Dawn on 01226 736673 or dawn@cultrix.co.uk. Dawn will be happy to help you. And, if you'd prefer, you can request a callback here and we'll contact you.

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