The One Thing You Should Know About Google Forms

One aspect of Google Forms trips up almost every user I talk to: the URL.

You see, most Google files have a URL that you can just grab from the address bar and link to or paste into an email, and as long as the file is shared with them, people will be able to access it.

Google Sites and Google Forms are outliers: both of these tools differentiate between editing URLs and published/viewing URLs, and it matters which one you send to your audience.

Today, we will focus on Google Forms:

Tips for end-users and small businesses:

A Google Form's editing URL ends in the word “edit” and its published/viewing URL ends in “viewform”. If you send the editing URL to someone who is not meant to edit the file, they won't have access; and if you grant them contributor access, they will be able to change your content.

So how to know what to send in Google Forms?

Editing URL:

When you are editing a Google Form, and you check the URL in the address bar, you will see the word "edit" in there. That is an indicator that it is meant only for you and your collaborators, with whom you are creating this Form; it is not for public consumption. You won't be able to have your target audience fill out your Form at that URL.

Published URL:

You can get to your published URL, the one you can send to your audience, in one of two ways:

1. Click the eye icon in the top rightish corner. You will know that you have the published URL form the viewform in the URL.

OR

2. Click the Send button. Don’t worry. Contrary to what it may sound like, the Send button is not going to  immediately send your form. It will give you several sending options. If you go to the link tab, you will be able to access the "published" URL in long or short form. And you can copy either of them.

💎 KloudGem 1: Have your Google Form send you an email when someone fills it out: 

In the editing view, click Responses, then the 3 dots in that view, and select Get email notifications for new responses. (Each collaborator will need to set this for themselves if they are interested in getting alerts.)

💎 KloudGem 2: If you use Google Workspace and you want people who are not part of your domain to be able to fill out your Form, you will have to make that adjustment in the Form Settings.

Tips for mid-size companies and large enterprises:

💎 Apart from the URL mystery and the tips above, you would also want to train your users on how to maximize your company's utilization of Google Forms with the settings for automatically collecting email addresses on your domain, as well as the more complex if-then logic, and the ability to turn the Form on and off.

Need a Google Workspace expert for your organization's digital transformation and change management? Contact me for a free first consult: https://www.kloudgem.com/get-in-touch/contact  

Do you know someone who could use these KloudGem tips? Feel free to send them this link: https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter

KloudGem website: https://www.kloudgem.com

The Flexibility You Were Waiting for in Google Sites, and Then Some!

 Yet another long-awaited feature surfaced recently: flexible text editing in New Google Sites. 

Tips for end-users and small businesses:

Previously, you were tied to the main theme you chose, one font, and a single accent color in your New Google Sites, which helped with the cohesiveness of the look and feel in your site (just in case you were not born a web designer), but didn't allow you to call out certain pieces of text very easily. That has changed in several ways:

💎 You can change font size in a more granular way, while still maintaining a selected style status of Heading, Subheading, etc.

💎 You can use strikethrough formatting.

💎 You can apply other colors of your choice to parts of your site’s text -- in addition to your theme's accent color.

💎 Better yet: you can choose from Google's full array of fonts -- which is even more than you got in the Classic Google Sites.

💎 And as in any file editor, you can also adjust line spacing,

💎 As well as use indentation.

With these features, now anyone can build a simple website with confidence and ease -- without the need to know or write a single line of code. It feels like editing a text document or a presentation!

Because the core of what I do is to empower people to DIY their tech, this feels like a giant step forward in New Google Sites, enabling you to DIY your website.

💎 As a bonus, Version history that you might know from Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, is now a feature of New Google Sites under the 3 dots in the upper right-hand corner. This gives you the confidence that even if you make a mistake, you will be able to revert back to a previous version any time.

Tips for mid-size companies and large enterprises:

If your organization is using the Google file editors in Drive, but not yet using Google Sites, you may want to tie the ability to create Sites into your content and file management strategy: you can surface team- or company-specific information in a way that's more relevant, visual, and more approachable to people's roles, needs, or objectives -- all while e.g., restricting the sites' visibility to just your organization or even just to specific people internally (without the need to open up external access -- unless that is a business need).

💎 As an added bonus, New Google Sites behave like any other Google Drive files, so they can live in team folders or shared drives.

💎 Ensure that users not only share the Site itself, but also share any embedded content that shows up in the Site, as needed.

Need a Google Workspace expert for your organization's digital transformation and change management? Contact me for a free first consult: https://www.kloudgem.com/get-in-touch/contact  

Do you know someone who could use these KloudGem tips? Feel free to send them this link: https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter

KloudGem website: https://www.kloudgem.com`

A Long-Awaited Feature Finally Arrived in Docs!

Google Docs has for a while now seemed to be the stepchild of the Google file editing tools: all the other tools got many bells and whistles to make them comparable with their older Microsoft counterparts: Google Slides received easy-to-use cross-linking features; Google Sheets gained more and more formulas, connectors, and a very powerful version of the Explore feature which makes data wrangling and visualization easier. Google Forms evolved. Even Google Drawings got some all grown-up accessories.

But not Google Docs. Docs has long been a trusty, yet simple word processing tool that never got super cool features. Until now.

Recently Google Docs has started adding features. One of the features that has been really sought after by Google Workspace (and Gmail.com) users I work with is the ability to have a mixed page orientation (portrait and landscape pages mixed) in a single doc.

In case you can't tell :), seeing this feature roll out has made my day! So I wanted to make sure you know about it, too.

I know many a person who said that they wanted to love Docs for its simplicity, but they needed Word for creating files with mixed orientation pages. Now those users can do that in Docs.

Tips for end-users and small businesses:

Now that this mixed page orientation feature is live in Google Docs, let's see how to apply it:

1. In a Google Doc, select the text, table, or image where you want to change the orientation of the page.

2. Right-click (on a PC) or 2-finger click (on a Mac) and

3. Choose Change page to landscape/portrait from the menu that pops up.

OR

1. In a Google Doc, select the text, table, or image where you want to change the orientation of the page.

2. Go to the File menu,

3. Select Page setup and change the orientation of the page. 

💎 (Using this method, you can also change margins for part of a document.) 

Tips for mid-size companies and large enterprises:

As this feature can be very useful in simplifying processes and will reduce the need to create multiple files with different page styles, you will want to make sure that your users are trained on how to use the mixed page orientation feature.

Need a Google Workspace expert for your organization's digital transformation and change management? Contact me for a free first consult: https://www.kloudgem.com/get-in-touch/contact  

Do you know someone who could use these KloudGem tips? Feel free to send them this link: https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter

KloudGem website: https://www.kloudgem.com