Hacking the New Google Drive Features 2017
st-tech.pro Guide: How to Use Google Drive
After Google’s slew of announcements at Google Cloud Next ’17 earlier this year, we’ve seen tons of new Google Drive features added to the platform.
Powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing — Google is clearly focused on enhancing Drive to better fit the needs of its spectrum of users.
Google Drive Explore Feature
Google Drive’s addition of the Explore feature utilizes machine intelligence and NLP to bring added functionality to Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
Google Docs
The little star at the bottom right of any Google Doc is your new best friend. The computer is able to turn your raw data (text, images, links, and anything else you’ve attached to a doc) into information that it then searches Google for.
The Explore AI feature makes it incredibly easy to insert what it finds in the form of research quotes and related images into your document. You can also dig through your own Google Drive for other files you want to reference or include.
Google Slides
The computer in Slides interprets your raw components and attempts to arrange them in the best way for visual comprehension.
This is a fancy way of saying that this AI feature designs your Google Slides in a professional and pleasing way depending on the content you add (as you add it!)
Google Sheets
Download or create data in Google Sheets and check out what Explore has found. Select that tab next time and you’ll see that the AI feature has found patterns, trends, and insights from your data.
Structure it and turn it into visualizations, or even just highlight the patterns in the Google Sheet itself for analysis. This can save your soul and your time when data mining.
Using Google Drive Search
Searching for something used to be one of the worst parts about using Google Drive. Rest assured, Cloud Search has *finally* been updated with natural language processing.
NLP allows you to search as you speak, rather than looking for exact keywords and phrases from a file’s metadata.
The first thing you’ll notice that’s different about search is its ability to filter by file type. This makes life much easier if your Drive is as full as ours is.
Cloud Search for GSuite
One of the new Google Drive features is built-in to GSuite. Prepare for upcoming meetings with Assist Cards that automatically integrate Google Drive files and GCal events. Search for a Contact in Cloud Search and pick up where you left off with someone on your team. The integration between Drive, GCal, and Gmail is unique and useful for GSuite users.
Cloud Search brings a whole new range of capabilities to Google Drive. The most impressive? The ability to ask questions and get structured answers. Cloud Search uses machine intelligence to run your queries across all of GSuite.
Expect to see tons of tinkers and tweaks to the engine in the upcoming months as the machine learns more and more from us all using it.
st-tech Google Drive Tips and Tricks:
Keep the Activity tab open in the Details panel
If you don’t do this already, we highly recommend it! The Activity tab hides under the Info icon in Drive. Keeping the Activity tab open means navigating files easier and getting to folders faster. Click on the magnifying glass next to any item you’ve edited, created, or shared and get taken directly to its folder.
Instantly Convert Microsoft Uploads
The hidden gem that most don’t realize exists lies within Settings in Drive. If you work out of both Microsoft and Google Drive files, turning on the conversion option saves you the time of manually converting every item you upload yourself.
Here’s how to turn it on:
View/Create Google Keep Notes in Docs
Google Keep is officially a part of GSuite and Drive as the latest rollout includes the notepad. Navigate to Tools and select “Keep Notepad” for access. You can also right-click anywhere in Docs to save highlighted text to Google Keep or just drag and attach notes into Docs.
The best part is the automatic link Drive generates and attaches to the note. So next time you’re in Keep, you just click on the Doc attached to what you had highlighted for reference.
Assign Action Items by Commenting with @Username
We were surprised one day when we were commenting on a Google Doc and the option to Assign Action Item to one of our team members popped up. Now, it’s something we use everyday to assign team tasks and delegate work.
When you assign an action item in Google Drive, that person receives an email notification that they have a new task. They are sent right to the file you commented on from the email so they know what it was you were referencing. This has become a necessity in many startups and small businesses with growing teams.
Google has brought something seriously special to the new Google Drive. It’s incredibly helpful, easy to use, and has quickly become a tool to depend upon.
Use Add-Ons for Google Docs
1) Turn docs into blog post drafts and update as you go with the WordPress Add-On for Google Docs. This takes a step out of the upload process if you’re like us at st-tech and write your post drafts in Drive then transfer them over to WordPress.
2) Try the add-on, Styles for Docs, for cohesive styles that include headers, subheaders, and more. This is great for collaborating on recurring professional documents with groups and teams.
3) Shorten long and ugly URLs with the URL Shortener Add-On for a cleaner document. Integrated with goo.gl, you can even get Analytics data on link clicks and a QR code for easy return.
We covered a ton of topics in this post and we’d love to hear your feedback. Let us know here or on Twitter what you think about the new Google Drive features we discussed.
Drop us a line at editors@st-tech.blog if you have a specific feature you want to know more about or something you want to see added to this list :)
