Overview of our communication & collaboration tools

What is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace (formerly known as Google Apps and GSuite) is a collection of productivity and collaboration tools and software offered by Google. We do not use the full package but mainly the following applications:

• Gmail

• Google Calendar

• Google Drive

• Google Docs, Spreadsheets & Slides

How do we use Google Workspace to communicate and collaborate?

For each of the applications, you will find a more detailed explanation of how we use it at oikos International below.

Gmail

This is the place to communicate with our partners, external project members and everyone else. The webapplication of Gmail (mail.google.com) provides some basic mail management tools. It's possible to add your mail address to any local mail client you might prefer. (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.) Please find the information on how to do that with an online search, as it would be a lot to cover in this user guide.

For requesting a new email, please think of the following aspects:

1. Is it a personal email account and therefore connected to a name or is it a functional account and connected to a role or a circle/team/squad?

2. If it is functional, do you know of another mail address which is basically the same but it would be great to have several possibilities for easy contact points? (i.e. contact@, info@ and office@)

3. If it is functional again, how many people do need access to that mail address at a time? One or more?

4. If more, would it be great if all the people ever joining the bunch see the history of some discussions/mail conversations or do you just need the arriving mails being distributed to several people without any thoughts about mails in the past?

Google Calendar

Google Drive

Google Drive --> to store and share files with each other as well as with external people who are not members of oikos International.

Our Shared Drives atm

Structuring your Shared Drive, best practices and questions to follow:

• Use a numbering system

• Try to use less than 10 folders as the basic structure of your Shared Drive. Aiming for 7 makes sense? 😉

• Sort ALL files in the folder system and not let them float around somewhere

• We have a SHARED drive for a purpose. Avoid storing files in your personal Google Drive if they are relevant for other people in the organization

• Take advantage of the option called hyperlinks. When you need the same folder/file on multiple places in your drive, to avoid making copies that could create confusion, use hyperlinking.

1. Is the document ....

Google Docs, Sheets & Slides

Tagging people: When to tag them and what to look out for