Google Platform for Management Part 2

Google platform provides a rich set of tools for management. In Part 1, I focused on Gmail, Task and Calendar. I shall continue with other tools and how it complements my activities as a manager.

Collaboration

Google documents strength is in collaboration. It is very easy to create either a Document (Word), Spreadsheet (Excel) or Presentation (Powerpoint) and collaborate with either your team members or people in remote locations. I indicated the MS Office equivalent in parenthesis for those who are more familiar with the Microsoft suite of tools.

When you share the documents, you can either give others the right to edit the document, comment on the document or just view the document.  In a meeting, the attendees can edit the document and everybody else in the meeting can view it. Comments can also be used to raise questions and highlight items for others to respond to.

Each collaborator can activate a setting to trigger to inform them of any changes in the documents. That way, they do not have to keep checking for changes in the document.

Surveys/Forms

Forms can be created to collect feedback or perform surveys. These forms can then be sent or embedded into websites. The information submitted through these forms are automatically collected in a spreadsheet and the information automatically compiled for you.

This is an excellent way to get feedback from your customers or group members. Examples of the uses include:

1. Service level from your business partners.
2. Feedback on training courses attended.
3. Feedback on events carried out for the team.

Calendars/Events/Activities

You could easily create group calendars for your team members to update their holiday plans, or other activities. This is a great way to inform everyone in the team and to coordinate leave. Companies usually create resource calendar for booking rooms and equipments.

You could also write a simple script to collect information from these calendars and populate into a Spreadsheet for analysis.

Instant Messaging

Instant messaging is useful to get quick updates from others. By default all instant messages will be recorded and filled in the chat label. This in turn can be turned into task or used to send follow up emails.

Part 1 Gmail, Calendar and Tasks
Part 3 Google Site/Blogger