Tag: Google Workspace

How to stop getting Google document requests to edit from users outside your organisation from publicly viewable files. (Updated Feb 2022)

G Suite – Paid editions, Gmail, Google Sheets, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Drive

Recently, I had updated all the course materials in a learning management system (Not Google Classroom. Sorry Google) to only use Google Workspace files like Docs, Sheets and Slides for students to access.

For me, this was a pretty logical step. It allowed course creators to update their files live when they had to correct errors or make minor changes quarter-to-quarter or year-to-year. Administratively, it meant that files did not have to be accounted for, deleted and updated every time a change was made.

The Problem

While time-consuming, the changeover went well as we changed all of the student resources into Google files. We set all the files to be accessible to anyone with the link can view (The organization does not have student accounts on the same domain as the staff).

Google sharing settings

However, in the back of my mind, there was a problem I knew I needed to address. The dreaded request for access to edit. With over 3,500 students on the program and hundreds of files for them to access, it would be a huge pain if some of these students clicked that view and requested edit access.

Google Docs View Only - Request Edit Access

There is no way to prevent users from not being able to do this within the document’s share options. Likewise, my organisation may want to allow requests inside the domain (for example name@yagisanatode.com is okay, but name@gmail.com is not).

The Solution – Gmail Filters

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Google Workspace Group Email Reply Settings: How to reply to the group or just the sender of the group in Gmail

Gsuite: Groups for Business, Gmail

Note: This post is for those who have Gsuite admin permissions. 

GSuite groups are a great bulk email tool. They can be used:

  • To send announcements to a group.
  • As a collaborative email for teams to communicate with each other.
  • As an internal or public facing support email.
  • To send emails and notifications to groups that may require a response only to the sender.

Surprisingly, all these reasons for using group emails all have different priorities and expectations for receiving and replying to emails.

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Google Sheets: How to create a task completion check sheet. (Updated Feb 2022)

Google Sheet: IMPORTRANGE, IF, TODAY, conditional formatting, tick box, alternating colors, protect sheet and ranges, share sheet 

Sometimes you have teams, staff or students who all need to complete reports and tasks by a certain date, but you need a way to keep track of when the reports are complete so that you can compile them later.

The following tutorial is a simple tick box-based Google Sheet that the user ticks when they have finished writing their quarterly report. I use something like this in my day to day to keep track of a number of reporting processes.

This is very much a follow-along guide for Google Sheet Beginners to help develop some basics skills and think about how to design Sheets for the workplace. Feel free to read what you need or skip to the end for a link to the google sheet for you to make a copy of.

Here is what we will complete by the end of the tutorial.

Task completion check sheet google sheets

If the user’s tick box had not been ticked in Column ‘C’, Column ‘D’ will automatically report Overdue in red and Column ‘E’ will report the number of days overdue.

There is a space set aside for administration to note the reminders that they have sent to the user and the last date the reminder was sent. Admin can easily copy the emails and send a message to those staff who have not completed their report by the deadline.

Let me walk you through the workflow for creating this:

Continue reading “Google Sheets: How to create a task completion check sheet. (Updated Feb 2022)”

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