Google Workspace loves sharing. The highly integrated suite was designed with collaboration in mind, bringing together all the different ways teams communicate into a single hub. Making meetings, sending emails, and sharing files - Google's flagship connectivity apps are constantly refining their features to enhance their sharing capabilities.
At the center of it all is your Share button. This much-used tool now does much more than just adding users to a file, enhancing integration between Calendar, Gmail, Docs, and Drive. Read on for a summary of what's new with your Share button this month, and how it will transform the way you work.
Google's latest sharing updates
1) You can now share files with meeting attendees directly from Docs
You're taking a meeting with your marketing team and need to send them some client feedback so they can review it before you chat. Previously, this would be a matter of sending everyone an email with a link to the file or adding them to the document by tweaking your sharing settings in Docs.
Thanks to a recent update, neither of these are necessary. You can now share the file directly to your calendar so it's attached to the event and automatically shared with all participants.
- Open the Doc and click on the Share button in the top right of the screen
- Type the event title in the pop-up window and select it once it appears
- Confirm the list of meeting attendees
- Select their access level (editor, commenter etc)
- Select 'Attach to Calendar event'
- Hit send to notify participants via email
This feature began rolling out in mid-January and will be available to all Workspace users.
2) Dropdown options in Share button
This is one of those small changes that will have a big impact on regular Workspace users.
Users working in Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings will now be able to click the Share button to quickly access the 'Copy link' feature and pending access requests. When another user requests access to the file, file owners will see a notification dot on their Share button. Clicking this will bring up details of who wants to see the file and whether they want to view it as a commenter or an editor.
3) Share time stamped links to video
You have to send a video to a colleague because there's some interesting information in there you want them to see. Unfortunately the relevant part is ten minutes, buried in a two-hour video.
Google now lets you share time stamped links that go directly to specific times in a video. You simply send the URL to your colleague, they click it, and it'll begin playing right where you want it to - whether that's 28 minutes in, or 3 minutes before the end.
To use this feature:
- Open up your Google Drive
- Click on your video to open it
- Pause the video at the time you're looking for
- Click the Share button and select 'Copy link to this time' from the dropdown menu
- Click 'Send the link'
This will copy the URL to your clipboard. From there, you can paste it into an email or a document and send it to your colleague.
Sharing time stamped links is available to all Workspace users and is currently rolling out to rapid release and scheduled release domains.
As a Google Cloud Partner, UpCurve Cloud can help you make the most of your Workspace, unlocking Google's collaborative features to improve your company's productivity and drive growth. Whether you're looking to train your employees, upgrade your Workspace applications, or better integrate your existing IT architecture with the Google Cloud Platform, we can help. Book a consultation today to talk to our experts and take your workflows to the next level.
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