Google Drive is more than a file-sharing platform. It allows you to streamline your work in ways you never thought were possible. I’m sure you already know that organization within your business is crucial for success. That is why we are always looking for new ways to make organization easier in our business. Dealing with messy files and folders is of no help to you, your colleagues, or your clients. Instead, it keeps you unproductive and negatively impacts your business in so many ways. Fortunately, Google Drive can be of great help in this area, especially when it comes to improving workflow in a business. This suite of apps has tons of features that can help the whole team be more effective at handling their workload. Google Drive allows you to organize your folders on a cloud platform starting with 15GB worth of space, back up files, share files, etc. You can also share your PDFs, audio, photos, slides, and important work files in one place. You can maximize your productivity on Google Drive by tapping into several handy features. This article lists 7 of them.   THE 7 FEATURES FEATURE #1. SHARING FILES WHILE CONTROLLING ACCESS Google Drive has robust sharing capabilities that allow for work collaboration. All you need to do is click on a file or folder you wish to share and create a shareable link or invite others to access that file. What’s more, every file and folder on this platform has its own sharing link that’s highly customizable. You can also determine user permissions for each item which means you can control whether the person with access can only view, make comments, or edit the document(s). Additionally, you can add a time limit for file or folder access. To do so, follow the steps below:
  1. Select the user who has access to your file or folder on Google Drive.
  2. Locate their email address and hover over to the right-hand side. A clock icon will appear.
  3. Enter the expiration time.
  FEATURE #2. PUBLISHING FILES TO THE INTERNET Google Drive is among the best platforms out there for publishing files online. You and your team can access the uploads from anywhere in the world so long as you have an internet connection. A great thing about published files is that they sync to all devices that use the Drive app. This means the files you uploaded to your computer will be visible on your phone app and vice versa. All it takes to access those files is signing into your Google account.   FEATURE #3. VOICE TYPING If you need to upload a written file on Google Drive, you can use Google Docs and dictate the text instead of typing. This will save you a lot of time when working with both short and longer files. So, how can you use this feature?
  1. Navigate to “Tools” on your Google Docs file.
  2. Click on “Voice typing” from the dropdown menu.
You can use words such as “period” and “next line” to let the recorder know how to organize your speech. Once you’re done recording, proofread your text to finish.   FEATURE #4. ASSIGNING TASKS TO EMPLOYEES WITH COMMENTS Google Docs makes it easy to tag a person and assign them a task for a specific file section. Whether they need to revise, proofread, manage sources, or rearrange their work, you can easily let them know what they need to do by adding comments. Here’s how you can do this:
  1. Open the file that needs task assigning on Google Docs.
  2. Use your mouse to highlight the part that needs reworking and right-click on it.
  3. Select “Comment” for the Comment section to appear to the right of the highlighted text.
  4. Type “+” or “@” then a person’s name to tag them in that comment. You can also tag people by entering their email addresses.
The tagged person will then receive a notification about this action and be invited to open the file.   FEATURE #5. USING TEMPLATES Google Drive supports free templates for all account levels. You can use Google Sheets, Docs, or Slides, all loaded with hundreds of templates for different project types. To choose or look for templates, open the tool and click on “Template Gallery” or use the search box to find templates that fit your project. You can also access these tools from your Google Drive – go to the homepage, click “New,” and select the file type you want to work with (slides, docs, or sheets). Then choose “From a template” to choose between templates offered by Google Drive. Additionally, you can use Google Forms templates to design event invitations and surveys, all in a matter of minutes. Simply visit Google Forms and choose from the template gallery. You can choose between Contact Information, RSVP, Party Invite, Event Registration, and other templates.   FEATURE #6. SORTING YOUR FILES BY SIZE Google Drive sorts your uploaded files and folders by recently added or modified files by default. This is useful because it gives you quick access to files you work with often. If you want to free up some Google Drive storage, you may want to sort the files according to their size and delete the ones you don’t use often that take too much space. You can do so by following the steps below:
  1. Navigate to Google Drive and click on “Storage” at the bottom of the left-hand side menu.
  2. From here, you’ll see a list of files sorted by size, with the largest ones first on the list. Click on an unnecessary file and remove it from your Drive by clicking on the Trash Bin icon.
Make sure to delete this file from the Trash folder to clear up space on your cloud.   FEATURE #7. DOING ADVANCED SEARCH Let’s say you’re searching for documents with specific keywords appearing in multiple files. In this case, you can use the advanced search on Google Drive. The platform allows you to filter your results by location, file type, owner, shared with, date modified, and more. All you need to do is click on the “Search Options” icon on the far right side of the search bar.   GET THE MOST OUT OF GOOGLE DRIVE Organizing your files is crucial to making you and your employees more productive in running your business. In this aspect, Google Drive more than proves its worth. Google Drive is a great tool that comes with numerous features to help you organize your files and folders, share them with the world, assign tasks, exchange valuable information, and more. The seven features mentioned above will help you streamline your work processes and make file creation, sharing, and search more straightforward. If you’d like to learn more about how Google Drive can help you improve your business, we would be happy to tell you more about it. Contact us today for a consultation at /contact/.   Article used with permission from The Technology Press.