Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides are getting a bunch of useful new features that should help you collaborate with teammates or classmates to get your legal agreement, project proposal, or research paper just right.
Starting today, you can assign names to versions of a Doc, Sheet, or Slide to keep a record of your progress; preview “clean versions” to see what your Doc looks like without comments or suggested edits; and accept or reject all edit suggestions at once in Docs—because ain’t nobody got time to review every single one individually.
You can also now suggest changes from an Android, iPhone, or iPad (just click the three-dot menu in the bottom right of your Doc screen to get started) and compare documents and review redlines with Litera Change-Pro or Workshare add-ons in Docs.
Google has also introduced templates with built-in add-ons. “Teams use templates in Docs and Sheets to save time on formatting. At the same time, developers are building add-ons to customize functionality,” Google Docs Product Manager Birkan Icacan wrote in a blog post. “We thought, why not bring these two together?”
Google launched five examples of this in the general template gallery, including a mutual non-disclosure agreement (NDA) template, which lets you quickly create an NDA and collect signatures using the DocuSign add-on for Docs. You can also create your own template with a built-in add-on.
“For example, create a Sheets template paired with an add-on to gather internal approvals or an invoice template in Docs (paired with an add-on) that pulls information from your CRM system,” the team wrote.
Finally, G Suite Business and Enterprise customers can now use Google Cloud Search in Docs and Slides via the Explore feature. Cloud Search uses machine intelligence to surface relevant information to help you get your work done more efficiently. Just open the Explore tab in Docs or Slides, type what you’re looking for, and Cloud Search will surface relevant details from across your G Suite apps like Gmail, Drive, Calendar, Sites, and more. So, the next time you’re creating a proposal or presentation, for instance, it should be easier to find the information you want to include in it.