The second thing that was tying me to my desk was a document overload. My job, like most jobs that have a desk, was loaded down with document processing. There were budgets, fliers for events, spreadsheets for process tracking, contracts, event schedules, and an assorted group of other things filling up my desktop.
I needed these documents in order to do work, so unless I was at my desk until I could figure out a way to be mobile. Mobile is of huge value to me, being on a college campus and having 2 offices within my department. I needed to be able to access my documents from anywhere on campus and even from home. Using a Windows and Microsoft based system made this impossible.
In Part 1, I explained how I had started a Gmail file folder to service my work email. This had already freed me up a bit from my desk, but I was ready to take the next step.
Gmail is tied in with Google Docs, so I decided to take my work documents and upload them into Google Docs. I avoided any documents that had any sensitive information (not many, honestly) and all the rest were uploaded into the Google Docs server. Unfortunately, I had to do this individually but it didn’t take that long.
Uploading these documents into Google Docs made my files truly accessible from anywhere that had an internet connection. They would be updated in real time to anyone that was sharing the document with me, and would be available at any place that might need them.
But what about places that didn’t have internet. My apartment internet has been rather flighty lately, and I knew I wanted to be able to work on them from there.
The next thing I did was to set up Google Docs offline. This is a service of Google that is tied in with Google Gears. Google Docs offline can be downloaded from the Google Docs webpage, by simply clicking on the arrow beside your login name (similar to reader). The Google Docs offline service will create a link on your desktop. By clicking on this link, you can access Google Docs whether you are online or offline.
The only thing that you need to do to make sure your documents are all properly updated is to log on to Google Docs from a location that has internet, and your documents will automatically synch up with any changes that were made while offline.
I set up the Google Docs offline on my laptop, a computer that has Google Gears already set up. By doing this, I made my documents completely accessible at all times, whether I need to do work at home or somewhere with a poor/no internet connection or at work.
More importantly, I don’t have to worry about where my documents are, they’re always available online.
The Google Docs system is quite good and improving. Google regularly updates their new features section, letting the user know different methods that can be used for processing documents. They have every type of file processing document that we need to make documents that a simple document processor would use. This is a real strike at the Microsoft suite!
To those of us who still need to use Microsoft, mostly for coworkers, Google can easily convert documents back into Microsoft files, or even PDF files.
