Teach Yourself VISUALLY Google Workspace. Guy Hart-Davis
Google Workspace gives you access to several apps for chatting and conferencing online, including Google Chat, Google Hangouts, and Google Meet. The capabilities of the apps overlap considerably, which means you will need to determine which app is best suited for the type of communication you plan to use.
Google Chat is a chat app that includes features such as rooms, which enable you to get a group of people together for a chat, and bots, which help you assign tasks and schedule meetings. From Google Chat, you can also start a video meeting in Google Meet.
Google Hangouts is Google’s all-in-one app for chat, audio calls, and video calls. Google Hangouts is available to anyone with a Google Account.
By contrast, Google Meet is available only to Google Workspace users. Google Meet is a business-grade videoconferencing app that enables you to pack up to 250 users into a single meeting. Google Meet also includes features that Google Hangouts does not, such as recording your videoconferences and taking polls; recording and polls are available in Google Workspaces editions except Business Starter Edition.
Chapter 11 briefly discusses Google Chat, Google Hangouts, and Google Meet.
Google Keep
Google Keep is an app and service for taking and managing notes. You can create straightforward text notes, notes with images, notes with drawings, or lists of items. You can use labels to organize your notes into different categories, and you can turn a note into a reminder by adding an alarm to it.
When you need someone else to work on a note, you can add that person as a collaborator. If you need to create a document from a note, you can send the note to a Google Docs document in moments.
Chapter 11 shows you how to create notes using Google Keep.
Google Forms
Google Forms enables you to create a wide variety of online forms, from a job application to an order form, and from a self-marking quiz to a registration form for an event. After creating the form, you can preview it and test it before sending it or otherwise sharing it with its respondents, the people whose answers you want.
When the respondents submit their responses, Google Forms collects the data automatically, letting you browse the data as a summary, by individual response, and by the responses to each question. You can also export the data to Google Sheets for your own custom analysis.
Chapter 12 explains how to use Google Forms.
Evaluate Google Workspace and Choose an Edition
If you are considering Google Workspace as a solution for your organization’s needs, you will likely want to analyze how it stacks up against its main competitors, such as Microsoft 365 and LibreOffice. You should also determine whether your organization can safely and legally store all its data online.
Assuming you go for Google Workspace, you need to decide which version, or edition, to get and work out how much it will cost. As of this writing, Google offers four editions — three Business editions, with varying prices and features, and one Enterprise edition for larger organizations.
Compare Google Workspace with Its Main Competitors
As of this writing, Google Workspace has two main competitors: Microsoft 365 and LibreOffice.
Microsoft 365 is Microsoft’s subscription-based plan for its Office productivity apps, cloud storage on OneDrive, collaboration with Microsoft Teams, and email and calendaring using the Outlook client and the Exchange Server software. Microsoft 365 is a full-featured offering that competes head to head with Google Workspace. For example, Microsoft Word competes with Google Docs, and Microsoft Teams takes on Google Meet, Google Chat, and some collaboration features of Google Drive. To learn more about Microsoft 365 and what it costs, go to www.microsoft365.com.
LibreOffice is a free office suite, the successor to the popular OpenOffice.org. LibreOffice includes apps that compete with those in Google Workspace; for example, LibreOffice Writer competes with Google Docs, and LibreOffice Calc competes with Google Sheets. However, LibreOffice does not offer features such as storage or conferencing, so it is not a direct competitor for Google Workspace. To learn more about LibreOffice and its capabilities, go to https://libreoffice.org.
Assess the Viability of Storing All Your Organization’s Data Online
Before committing to Google Workspace, assess whether your organization can realistically store all its data online. This is pretty much a requirement for using Google Workspace, because the apps are designed to store their files on Google Drive, enabling them to be accessed from anywhere and making it easy to share them both with people inside your organization and with people outside it. But online storage can also increase security threats to your data. Beyond those threats, you should consider any compliance issues that storing the data online may raise; these issues vary by region and by business area, and you may well want to get legal input to make sure you understand them fully.
Google Workspace enables an administrator to use its Data Regions Policy feature to choose the data region in which Google stores your organization’s data. As of this writing, the choices are United States, Europe, or No Preference.
Choose an Edition of Google Workspace and Determine the Cost
Next, decide which version of Google Workspace will be best for your organization. Google offers four versions, which it calls editions: Business Starter Edition, Business Standard Edition, Business Plus Edition, and Enterprise Edition.
The first part of the decision — Business or Enterprise? — is easy. The three Business Editions have a maximum of 300 users. If your organization has more than 300 users, your only option is Enterprise Edition.
If your organization has 300 users or fewer, you can choose among the three Business editions. The following table shows the key differences.
| Cost Per User | Storage Per User | Video Meetings Max | Meeting Recording | Shared Team Drives | Chat Outside Organization | Enhanced Security Features |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $6/month | 30 GB | 100 people | No | No | No | No |
| $12/month | 2 TB | 150 people | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| $18/month | 5 TB | 250 people | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Using this information, you can quickly determine which edition