You’ll soon be able to use Google Meet directly in Docs, Sheets, and Slides for face-to-face editing

Do you know that little chat box in Google Docs that allows you to collaborate and discuss in real-time with your coworkers what you’re typing out? Do you or have you ever used it? No? Me either. In fact, I often forget it’s there. Instead, I’ll often head over to Discord, Slack, or Google Chat to communicate strategy or vision regarding that document, but the experience feels so disjointed.

Sometimes, I’ll hop in a Google Meet call to clarify some things face-to-face with the individual I’m collaborating with. However, this still remains a separate experience from the document we’re working on. Well, not anymore! Today, Google announced that it’s going to allow you to begin calling people using Meet directly from a Google Doc, Sheet, or Slide! Wait, what?

Yep, video calls in a document. Who would have thought that was a good idea? Google continues to trailblaze with Workspace, thinking up new and innovative ways to connect people while we continue to wrestle with what it looks like to have a hybrid meeting environment. 

In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to start a Meet call and “bring it to” Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. I presume that starting the call outside of the Doc and then screen sharing the document itself using Meet’s in-built tools will cause the left-hand sidebar that the company has become all too comfortable to launch in the editor. As you can see in the image above, you and your cohorts will then appear there for native collaboration.

What this ultimately means is that you won’t have to screen share and then minimize the Meet call to go and edit the document, trusting that everyone can see what you’re doing since these experiences would be separate Chrome windows or tabs. Instead, everything will be naturally presented together in one window.

This is pretty darn cool, and I can’t tell you how excited I am about it. To be honest, I never even thought that these two services would be used together in this way. This is just another way that Workspace continues to surprise me, and I can’t wait to begin using it.