Need-based training goes a longer way than generic training

"Time and time again, I have run into companies where despite general Google Workspace training sessions made available to employees, users kept having difficulties with using the tools efficiently in their own work as well as in collaborative work, causing them to grumble about how bad the tools were compared to the old tools they used to use. In some situations, the grumbling got so loud that the company considered moving away from Google, back to their old tools!

🤔 It got me thinking: if the people went to the training, what made them so disillusioned with the tools?

I thought back to my own past of having been at the receiving end of software training, a good long while ago: Adobe Dreamweaver (a web development tool to create websites). I was surprised at how little I remembered about what I had learned in that training. 

Why?

🛟 The answer lies not in whether or not I got trained, but a lot deeper in human learning: whether or not, and how soon, I applied what was taught. Learning, or the retention of the material taught, is NEED-BASED: if you have the need to learn something and can immediately apply it in your work or life, you retain the knowledge much better than if you are taught something just because at some point you might use it.

Remember the saying "use it or lose it?" It's the same concept. You learn something, but if you don't put it to use immediately, you will not remember it. 

📅 At that time in my life when I got trained in Dreamweaver, I did absolutely no web development. The most I had to do was occasionally find my way around html code enough to correct translation issues or parts of missing html tags. And I could do that in a plain text editor; I didn't need Dreamweaver for it. Was the training interesting? Sure! Dreamweaver was "cool" at that time, and I remember feeling that I had learned a lot. But not using it meant that I retained, at best, just some jargon.

💎 That is why when I started KloudGem, I decided that our training is going to be much more than "just training." 

💎 We CONSULT with the users or teams to first understand their workflow needs so that we can then laser-focus on fulfilling those needs, and teach how to do exactly what they are trying to accomplish day-to-day.

💎 And when we do GROUP TRAINING, we train only on features that are available and used at the given company, so that the material fills a need and can be immediately applied." — Gabriella Laszlo, Founder, KloudGem

Send conditional notifications to your team members from Google Sheets tables

While each person can set notifications for themselves in Google Sheets, the more powerful notifications are the newer Conditional notifications in Google Sheets tables, because they allow you to set up email notifications to be sent to your team members when a cell has specific data in it, for example if their name is entered.

💎 Watch the video to see how to set this up.

❓ Have you tried this? What do you think?

Need help with Google Workspace? Schedule a Discovery Session:

https://www.kloudgem.com/contact-us 

KloudGem tips: 

https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter 

Put AI Avatars to work in Google Vids

Do you spend countless hours re-recording videos, or are you camera shy? Maybe you just don't feel like getting camera-ready today? Let Google's friendly AI avatars help you out!

While showing your face in business videos can foster a stronger connection with your audience, clients, and prospects—especially for small business owners who are often the face of their brand—I understand that it's not for everyone.

Today, I want to talk about how to put AI avatars to work for you in Google Vids.

💎 Watch the video to see how to get your AI avatars to speak the words you wrote.

❓ What do you think?

Need help with Google Workspace? Schedule a Discovery Session:

https://www.kloudgem.com/contact-us 

KloudGem tips: 

https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter 

Don't waste time checking files, get notified!

You are working with a team and you are waiting for your team members to update the status of their tasks or 

you keep looking in the project files to see if they have been filled out. 

Now, especially if you are a project manager, you likely do this daily, or even multiple times a day.

Did you know that you can save all that time by getting notified by email when updates are made to your files?

💎 Watch the video to see how to set this up.

❓ Have you tried this? What do you think?

Need help with Google Workspace? Schedule a Discovery Session:

https://www.kloudgem.com/contact-us 

KloudGem tips: 

https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter 

Infinite version history in Google files

Has it ever happened to you that a file got changed (either by you or someone else) and now you wish you could go back to the version from a week ago?

You can do that in Google files. Today, we dive into the wonderful world of detailed version history in Google files.

💎 Watch the video to see how you can find what was changed in a Google file, and/or revert to an earlier version.

❓ Have you tried this? 🔎

Need help with Google Workspace? Schedule a Discovery Session:

https://www.kloudgem.com/contact-us 

KloudGem tips: 

https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter 

Protecting information vs. enabling users to do their jobs

As an organization's IT Department, it is your job to protect company information, BUT... 

...PROTECTING information and ENABLING users to do their jobs at the same time is really a balancing act. 

If we look at the big picture:

• A company exists to make money and at the same time, contribute to society.
• The company can only meet or exceed revenue targets if the employees' IT tools let them work efficiently. 
• Working efficiently often means working with external clients, partners, or vendors.

🔒 Your IT Department might be inclined to protect information by minimizing shareability outside the walls of the company. While this optimizes security, if it prevents people from working with external contractual parties, this will affect the company's earnings and will result in dissatisfaction with IT and the Google Workspace ecosystem that you worked so hard to deploy.

🔥🛠️ Moreover, employees are creative. If the company doesn't provide the approved channels they need to get their jobs done, they are likely to use unapproved software and personal Gmail addresses and other channels for sharing content with external contractual partners. This will result in IT entirely losing control over information flow; it will open up the company to information leaks — even permanently open leaks.

🔥🔓 In this way, too many protective measures can actually undermine the originally intended protection and CREATE the exact risks you were trying to avoid.

📃🔒 Companies need to formulate and enforce policies that protect information AND at the same time enable employees to do their work. 

💎This information management area is KloudGem's strong suit: we have worked cross-functionally with IT, IT Security, Legal, Operations, and user teams to formulate optimal policies for internal and external collaboration, while keeping information security and control over the flow of information front of mind to minimize said risks. 

🤝 This is the area where company policies and tech can strengthen one another to achieve the desired results. The key is coordinated internal cross-collaboration, with continuous improvement in mind.

Be a detective in Google Drive

If you need to find out details about a file in Google Drive, like who it's shared with, who created it, when and who modified it last, how big it is, etc. Do you know where to look for that info?

In this video, I'll show you a tiny but mighty little icon in Google Drive that holds all the info about a file. This is another tool for Sherlock Holmes when it's needed.

💎 Watch the video to see how you can find out about the history and activities that happened to a Google Drive file.

❓ Have you tried this? 🔎

Need help with Google Workspace? Schedule a Discovery Session:

https://www.kloudgem.com/contact-us 

KloudGem tips: 

https://www.kloudgem.com/follow-resources/newsletter