To date, any time someone requests access to view or edit a document, make comments, and so on, users receive an email, a Google Chat ping, and even several of these on their phones. You can approve or reject these requests everywhere aside from the place it makes the most sense to do so – the document. It seems like a common sense thing, right? Allow users to handle these right at the source? Well, the ability to do so was previously added in beta, and is now expanding to more Workspace users!
Securing document approvals can be difficult when collaborating with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities. This feature makes it easy to secure those approvals and see who has approved them.
Google Workspace Updates
Google wants this update to make it easier for you and your organization – even those outside of it who you interact with – to be notified in sync with you when there are edits made to a document, or when the latest version of a doc is re-approved. Additionally, when all reviewers have provided their personal approval, the file gets locked and can’t be edited so that everything is kept fair and integrity is maintained.
You may be wondering why integrity would need to be a factor for Google Docs. Well, many times, companies utilize the service to send and sign legal documents or to gain other formal approvals. If someone signs or modifies a document to show their approval of specific terms, you wouldn’t want someone going in later and changing things to make it seem as though you’ve agreed to something else, right? Google Docs is highly collaborative, and by its nature, it’s very open to edits. This changes that in environments where it may be necessary to lock down those freedoms.
Anyways, once a document is set for approval, everyone involved will get an Gmail, Chat, and or browser notification as I previously mentioned (You can mange these if they get too unwieldy, as I do, and can follow said the trail to approve the document. The document host or owner can also set a due date before which approval is needed, which is a welcome feature.
As you would expect if multiple users are requested to approve a document, it will only be considered approved after the last person does so, and if any one person rejects it, the entire document is rejected for everyone. If anyone makes a change before everyone approves, then they will all need to re-approve, and once all approvals are in, the document is locked. Fair is fair, right?
I’m interested in learning which of you will be utilizing this feature and how. I’m always excited to learn about the diversity of use cases for Google’s services, so drop a comment below so we can discuss! If you’re not seeing the “Approvals” button under the document’s “File” section yet, then hang tight – it’s rolling out ffor both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains right now, and will continue to do so over the next few days. Getting people to use this and default to it over other services will be Google’s next battle.
Workspace Essentials
Available
Business Standard
Business Plus
Enterprise Essentials
Enterprise Standard
Enterprise Plus
Education Plus
Nonprofits
G Suite Business
G Suite Enterprise
Drive Enterprise
G Suite for Education
G Suite Enterprise for Education
G Suite for Nonprofits
Business Starter
NOT Available
Education Fundamentals
Education Standard
Frontline
G Suite Basic
Personal Google Accounts
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.