I often am found in the situation of being a team member collaborating on a group project for a presentation. Generally, someone in the group will become the person designated to compile the presentation slides or document segments contributed from each team member into a final document.
As the project deadline approaches, a never-ending slew of emails begin to go back and forth among team members submitting their contributions or making edits making the process even more complex. There is a better way.
Google Documents is a suite of online office productivity applications that are accessed from any computer through a web browser. It is available online at docs.google.com.
Instead of using the trusty Microsoft Office suite many have become so accustomed to, Google has developed a replacement that can be run from any computer.
Google Documents supports four main types of documents: text, presentations, spreadsheets and forms.
Text documents are similar to what you would normally use Microsoft Word for. Standard formatting, printing, and content manipulation tools are available, making your content creation endeavors a simple task.
Presentations are slide-based documents, similar to that found in PowerPoint. When it is time to present, simply open the presentation on the computer from which you are presenting and select “Start Presentation.” Your slides will then begin full screen.
Spreadsheets are similar to what you find in Microsoft Excel and support advanced features such as functions and formulas, making calculations a snap.
Finally, forms allow you to create data input documents that you can email out to collect input from others. This might replace the less well known Microsoft InfoPath component of Microsoft Office.
These tools are more than just documentation creation tools. Documents created and saved in Google Docs format are stored on Google servers. This means you can access and work on the documents from any computer with an Internet connection.
If you need to work on the documents while offline, you can install a program called Google Gears, available at gears.google.com, to enable offline support. If you have a long airplane ride, your online office suite can go with you.
The best part is found in the collaboration tools. Google docs can be shared with others. This means anyone with a Google docs account can view and edit documents you share with them.
For group projects, simply create a project document and share it with your teammates. When they login to Google docs, they will see the newly created document and will be able to edit it.
If more than one person is working on a document at the same time, changes are sent back and forth in real-time. This means that if you are in the middle of a paragraph and someone is adding a paragraph above you, you will see the words as they type them in near real-time.
While Google docs addresses many of the features Microsoft Office and similar productivity suites target, it does lack some of the more advanced or complex features traditional Office users may be accustomed to. For example, there are only a limited number of fonts in the documents system. Document styles are also preset, limiting how the document can look and feel to set of standard formats.
Additionally, because it is run from within your browser Google docs sometimes feels slow or sluggish. Although it is a lightweight system overall, the fact remains it is running within your web browser.
If Google docs doesn’t fit your needs, you may find that other similar solutions work better. Zoho offers a suite of web-based document tools. They have over 20 products in their portfolio generally targeted at small and medium businesses. Zoho is available online at zoho.com.
Moreover, the next big release of Microsoft Office to be called Office 2010 is expected to have many new features targeted at web-based use. The Office team at Microsoft is also developing a browser-based component called Office Live intended to complete with Google docs, or at least extend the Microsoft Office experience onto the web.