Wonders of Workspace
After starting out for paying customers only, Google’s new project is now available for everyone to use
IT’S not often we talk about work on these pages, but this week is different, because Google has opened up its new Workspace project to all its users, not just those who pay for it.
With more than three billion users of its apps and services, that’s a big deal. Workspace, in other words, is no longer just for work – it’s a whole new world of productivity that might just help you get anything done.
Let’s rewind to last year when Workspace was officially launched for Google’s paying business customers. In response to the pandemic, Google wanted to find a way to help users work together better remotely.
With lots of businesses relying on Google apps like Gmail to get things done, that meant big changes to the core of how the system works.
The main effort was directed at bringing all the apps together into one space, and allowing richer, deeper collaboration with others.
On the communication side of things Workspace allows you to see all your Gmail, Chats (one-onone text chats), Rooms (chats with multiple participants), and Meets (video calls) in one browser tab.
You can immediately see what’s going on across the whole thing, and your Chats, Rooms and Meets can take over the rest of the browser window, much like Gmail has always been able to do.
The richer and deeper collaboration this allows comes when Google’s productivity apps come into play – you can now share Docs, Slides, and Sheets within Chats, Rooms, and Meets, and work on them with the other participants. In real time.
It all, of course, ties in with the other elements of Google’s world, including Calendar, Tasks, and the Keep note-taking app.
The system is also evolving quickly – Google already has plans to rename Rooms and Spaces over the summer and add new features.
Another feature is the ability to tag other users and files into various elements of Workspace apps using @ mentions.
When in a Google doc, type the @ symbol and a “smart chip” will appear with suggestions of files or people you might like to include in the conversation.
While it all sounds very productivity focused, that’s not how Google sees rolling it out to everyone – they see it as a way for families to keep in touch, for groups to organise themselves, and for people to collaborate remotely in a way that hasn’t been possible before.
Google has also realised that the pandemic has created a new wave of entrepreneurs, as those who might have had a little bit more time on their hands have focused on their side-hustles a bit more.
That’s why there’s a new tier of business offering – Individual, which obviously offers all you can do with Workspace but adds other features like smart booking services for meetings, pro video calling, and better support.
That’s not coming to the UK in the first wave of the rollout, but when it does later this year it’ll cost around a tenner-a-month.
You can try Google Workspace right now if you’re an individual free Google account user with Gmail – just go to your Gmail settings and switch chat on.
If your workplace uses Google apps for its day-to-day needs, you may very well already be using it.
It’s such a big change, though, I expect most businesses will have work to do to get their users up to speed with how it all works – it can be confusing, although it’s confusing in a consistently Google kind of way.
If you ignore the buzzwords and tech speak and just dive in, it all becomes pretty clear pretty quickly. Its usefulness and usability are more or less only really revealed when you have a go and see what’s really possible.