Q: What are the key steps to solving this problem? A: 1. Upgrade to the Business Standard plan to access essential business features like Shared Drives and Meet recording. 2. Configure SPF records during initial DNS setup to prevent emails from ending up in spam. 3. Use the Drive desktop application to seamlessly manage files without filling up local hard drive space. 4. Utilize Shared Drives to protect company data and ensure the business, not a contractor, is the sole owner of all files.
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
Choosing the Right Plan and Setting Up
When you decide to take the plunge into Google Workspace, it is highly recommended that growing businesses opt for the Business Standard plan [03:54]. While the Basic plan is an option for sole operators, the Standard plan provides two critical features:
Business-Owned Shared Drives
The Business Standard plan is required to set up Shared Drives (formerly Team Drives). These company-owned drives are crucial because they ensure that the business retains ownership and control over all files, even if a staff member or contractor leaves [04:10]. This prevents a major problem where a contractor might delete files from their personal Drive that your business needs to access later [08:14]. Shared Drives protect your data by making your business the sole owner and controller of file deletion permissions [08:42].
Automatic Meeting Recording
Another key feature of the Business Standard plan is the ability to easily record Google Meet meetings [04:40]. Not only does Google automatically transcribe these meetings, but the full video recording is also automatically saved directly into your Google Drive [04:46]. This is vital for security, record-keeping, and ensuring that important decisions or agreements from a meeting are easily accessible in the future [05:08].
Essential Setup and Productivity Tips
The technical setup for Google Workspace involves following a wizard and modifying DNS records. While you can get help from experts, there is one crucial technical step to remember: setting up your SPF record [05:34]. The Google wizard may not always flag this, but getting this record correct is essential to ensure your business emails don’t end up in your clients’ spam mailboxes [05:45].
Once you’re running, maximizing your use of Google Drive is key. Be sure to download the Google Drive desktop app to your computer [06:40]. The modern Drive app works smarter than old systems like Dropbox; it automatically stores files locally that you need, while keeping older, archival data safely in the cloud [07:02]. This allows you to back up all your data without filling up your computer’s hard drive space [07:23]. Finally, leverage Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides for real-time collaboration with colleagues, making use of suggested changes mode and full revision history to work seamlessly on documents without overwriting others’ work [07:42, 09:02].
Watch: [2024] Google Workspace Beginners Guide | Tips on Getting Started (from an Expert)!
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Full Video Transcription
From Gmail to Google Docs to Google Meet to Drive, Google is packed with productivity features, but most small business owners are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. I want to share with you some of my best tips to help you get the most out of Google Workspace so you can stay productive and get more done.
What is Workspace? Google’s made things a little bit confusing. If you’re right now using a Gmail account, you’re probably already used to using these tools. Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive all work the same way in a Gmail account as they do in a Workspace account. The only difference is with Google Workspace you can bring a business domain name. Now Google have made it even more confusing by calling some of their consumer Gmail accounts Workspace, but we’ll leave that story for another day. We’re talking about the business version of Google, formerly called G Suite, now called Google Workspace, which is a business suite of tools that let you bring your own domain name, your own email addresses into the Google ecosystem for a professional business suite of collaboration tools. In this video, we’ll first cover an overview, then how to get set up, and finally, once you’ve got the keys in the ignition, how you can get on the road.
What’s Google Workspace? Well, as I said earlier, it’s Google’s business version of their Gmail suite of tools. You get all the basics you’re familiar with: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, with all the apps right, Docs, Slides, Sheets. It also gives you access to Google Meet and Google Chat, which you can use in the consumer edition, but Google Workspace is more business focused. You see, there’s some features like the administration panel, which lets you manage users. It lets you manage Chrome policies, so anyone connecting to your business resources via a Chrome browser, you can set individual policies for those staff members. It lets you have business features inside Google Drive, like the ability to set up business Shared Drives where you own the data inside those files. You see, these business tools are designed for businesses, whereas the consumer version of Gmail is just designed for consumers who maybe want to share some family photos and back up their computer to an online space. Google Workspace is a serious business tool, and we’ve implemented it into literally thousands of businesses all over the world.
Now once you’ve registered your domain name with Google Workspace, what it means is you can use that business email address across the Google ecosystem. If you want to manage your business profile in Google My Business, now moved into the management of Google Maps, well, you can do that with your business account. If you’re running a YouTube channel to upload your business videos, well, you can use your business account for that as well. Signing into most Google services via the Google authentication button will let you use your business account, so if you want to log into Canva a little bit faster, you’ll be using your Google Workspace account from now on. Email sending and receiving to your Workspace account won’t look any different to any other email system. If someone’s on a Mac or a PC or even a Chrome device, they’re just going to see your business email address, and once you configure things correctly, they’ll have no idea that your emails are actually coming from the Google Workspace ecosystem.
So if you’re ready to take the plunge, let’s get you set up on Google Workspace. Now some of this is a little bit technical, and I will say if you’re not comfortable modifying DNS records or following technical instructions, it might be better to have someone help you with this. If you’re interested in engaging our professional Google certified team, well, click the link down below. We’ve got very reasonable setup fees, including for sole operators, so if you’re just starting out and you’d like some help, I recommend you do that. We also have guides on our channel on how to set up your DNS correctly, so if you’re looking for an in-depth tutorial to check every single setting, check out one of those videos on our channel. To get started, you want to head to the Google Workspace website and get signed up. Google will give you a trial, and you can use that to test out how everything works, but keep in mind that if you switch your DNS records so your domain name starts sending emails into Google, well, you’re going to have to find a way to back those up if you decide to cancel the trial and not proceed. There are different plans available for Workspace, and the minimum plan that I would recommend for business owners is the Business Standard plan. The basic plan is maybe useful if you’re just a sole operator and don’t need to interact with anyone else, but the Business Standard plan gives you some really cool features. One of those is the ability to set up Shared Drives, which means you can have company-owned drives that you share with any contractors outside the business or any staff inside the business that you control, meaning that if someone else wants to delete a file, you have to give them permission to delete files. And that’s very useful when you’re working with a contractor or someone outside your business who may be creating files for you, but may not be as diligent as you at keeping tabs on which files need to be kept and which files need to be deleted. Second great feature the Business Standard has is the ability to record your meetings. If you’re using Google Meet, you can hit the record button, and not only will Google transcribe those meetings for you, but it will keep a video recording of the whole meeting and it will place that video automatically into your Google Drive. Now, I love that feature because having manually used Zoom a long time ago, I had to manually render the recordings after each meeting, or I had to pay for additional cloud storage as I was recording each one of my calls. Nowadays it’s more and more important to record our calls because of what’s said on a meeting may come back to bite us at some point in the future, being that we’re in a very litigious society right now. So my preference is to record everything, and having that recorded and automatically placed in my Google Drive means that I’ve automatically got as much data as possible saved as my Google account can handle. Now the tech side of the setup is pretty straightforward. You’re following the wizard and you’re making small changes to your DNS records. There’s one thing I want to make sure that you remember because the Google wizard doesn’t always tell you about it, and that’s SPF. Now, this is a setting that you need to set in your DNS, and you want to make sure you get it correctly, because if you don’t get this right, well then your emails might end up in people’s spam mailboxes and we don’t want that. Click the link down below for a guide on how to get that done.
Once you’re signed up, let’s talk about using some of my favorite apps. Now, jumping into Gmail, it’s going to look pretty familiar to using your existing Gmail address. You want to set your signature and set up your mailbox and your folders how you like it, but some of the great features of Gmail really come to life in a Google Workspace account. You see, you can switch on Google’s AI and suggestion tools, which will use all the data in your account to suggest replies to emails, to remind you if you’ve sent an email and need to follow up to someone, and it also gives you the ability to automatically have composition support added to that email as well. You can quickly reply or even have Google help write your emails for you, which is a feature that I love. We’ve got lots of videos on the channel with tips for Gmail, make sure you check those out. Next up, let’s talk about Drive. Now when you first get started with Drive, it runs in the browser, but you want to make sure you download the Google Drive app to your computer. Once you’ve done that, it’ll synchronize a folder between your computer and Google Drive. Now, in the past, it used to work like Dropbox, meaning that every file in the cloud had to live on your computer as well, and you had to tick or untick the folders that you wanted to synchronize. Well, Google Drive now works a lot smarter than that, and it will automatically store files locally on your computer that you need, but files that you haven’t used in a while, it’ll remove them from your computer and just store them in the cloud. Now, if you go to open a file that’s not currently downloaded, it’ll automatically download it in the background, and then you’ll be able to easily watch it when it’s finished downloading. What that means is that you have a seamless experience between your cloud-based files and your local files that are living on your computer. It means that if you don’t have much hard drive space, you’re probably not going to fill it up with all of your files, and it means that you can safely back up all of your archival data into your Google Drive online for safekeeping or retrieval at some point in the future.
If you haven’t yet made use of Google Docs, well, get ready to be impressed. Google documents, spreadsheets, and even their slide presentations will allow you to edit in real time with your colleagues or with people outside your business as well. All you need to do is send them an invitation via a link or via an email address and someone can collaborate with you on a document. One of the things that I love about Google Drive is the ability to set up shared folders that are company-owned. It means that if someone’s outside my business and they want to share a file with me, if they place the file into the share drive, they’ll receive a prompt to change the ownership to my business. You see, there’s a big problem that happens with Gmail when someone is working for you, and they create a file in their Gmail account and share that file with you, well, they remain the owner of that file, and what happens is quite often a contractor who’s done work for you in years past will be cleaning up their Google Drive because they’ve run out of storage space. They’ll delete some files from their drive, and then poof, they disappear from your access. What that means is you may have a risk of losing business data, so making sure that you set up Shared Drives inside your Google Drive, and you have to be on a business plan for this, it’ll protect your data, making sure that you are the sole owner and the sole person who has the permission to delete those files. Check out some of our other videos on how to set up your Google Drive permissions. Now, I already mentioned Google Docs, but I want to highlight a few more cool features. In every document, there is a full revision history which shows you every single change that’s happened to each document. What that means is at any point you can go back in time and find every single keystroke that changed on that document. If you’ve ever worked on a document for a couple of hours and then had your computer crash and lost the file or lost the changes to a save, or you’ve been working on a file with someone else and they’ve overwritten your changes, well, this is an absolute godsend. Google is automatically saving every single change to every one of your documents, and there is an unlimited history on the number of revisions that Google will save to your Google documents. The other feature that I really love inside of Google Docs is the ability to suggest changes. It means that if you’re working on a document with someone and you don’t necessarily want them to change it, but you’re open to their suggestions on what could be different, well, you can give them commenting access and the ability to switch to suggested changes mode. That lets them make some changes that you have the authority to approve or deny, and that’s a great way of working with different people who need to collaborate on one document. Finally, we come to Google Meet, and this has become the standard for everything we do inside our Google account. Anytime we set a calendar event and we schedule a meeting with our colleagues, it automatically is going to populate a Google Meet link that we can click with one button and be straight into the meeting. I love that you can auto-record and have that save into your Google Drive folder, it’s one of my favorite features, but Google Meet also has a bunch of other features included like the ability to run a poll, run a Q&A session, and even emoji react to whoever’s talking on the screen. The ability to have live transcriptions even to different languages just blows my mind that it’s even an option in 2023, but the other cool feature is being able to just transcribe every meeting, and that means that you’ve got everything recorded from the history of everything that you’ve had in an online meeting. Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem, and you can see that for the most part you don’t really need an IT person to manage it. You can add and remove users yourself, you can set up your Shared Drives, and you can even share resources inside and outside your company without having to think too hard or rely on someone else to do things for you. But if you’re looking for more support with your Workspace account, make sure you look around the channel and check out some of the other videos that we have in store, because we’ve been helping customers for a number of decades now with Google Workspace, and we’re the top Google partner across Australia and New Zealand for small business. If you’re looking for technology advice and support on how to make sure you get your Google Workspace running as well as possible, you’ve come to the right place. Hit the like and subscribe and I’ll see you in the next one.
[2024] Google Workspace Beginners Guide | Tips on Getting Started (from an Expert)!
itGenius 🤓 Biz Tech Experts · 179K views
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
Q: What are the key steps to solving this problem? A: 1. Upgrade to the Business Standard plan to access essential business features like Shared Drives and Meet recording. 2. Configure SPF records during initial DNS setup to prevent emails from ending up in spam. 3. Use the Drive desktop application to seamlessly manage files without filling up local hard drive space. 4. Utilize Shared Drives to protect company data and ensure the business, not a contractor, is the sole owner of all files.
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
Q: Who is this guide for? A: This guide is for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and teams (typically 3-50 staff) who are responsible for managing their IT and want to use Google Workspace’s powerful features to scale effectively.
Q: What are the key steps to solving this problem? A: 1. Upgrade to the Business Standard plan to access essential business features like Shared Drives and Meet recording. 2. Configure SPF records during initial DNS setup to prevent emails from ending up in spam. 3. Use the Drive desktop application to seamlessly manage files without filling up local hard drive space. 4. Utilize Shared Drives to protect company data and ensure the business, not a contractor, is the sole owner of all files.
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
Q: What are the key steps to solving this problem? A: 1. Upgrade to the Business Standard plan to access essential business features like Shared Drives and Meet recording. 2. Configure SPF records during initial DNS setup to prevent emails from ending up in spam. 3. Use the Drive desktop application to seamlessly manage files without filling up local hard drive space. 4. Utilize Shared Drives to protect company data and ensure the business, not a contractor, is the sole owner of all files.
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
Q: Who is this guide for? A: This guide is for small business owners, entrepreneurs, and teams (typically 3-50 staff) who are responsible for managing their IT and want to use Google Workspace’s powerful features to scale effectively.
Q: What are the key steps to solving this problem? A: 1. Upgrade to the Business Standard plan to access essential business features like Shared Drives and Meet recording. 2. Configure SPF records during initial DNS setup to prevent emails from ending up in spam. 3. Use the Drive desktop application to seamlessly manage files without filling up local hard drive space. 4. Utilize Shared Drives to protect company data and ensure the business, not a contractor, is the sole owner of all files.
Q: What is itGenius? A: itGenius is an IT consultancy that helps small businesses scale effectively by providing affordable and effective technology services, specializing in Google Workspace support and strategy. We offer both transactional support and an “all-you-can-eat” Cloud Concierge subscription.
Google Workspace is a seriously powerful ecosystem packed with productivity features that go far beyond basic email and calendar functionality [00:00]. Many small business owners, however, are only scratching the surface of what’s possible. By understanding the core differences between a consumer Gmail account and a professional Workspace account, and by implementing key features, you can set your business up for success, improve collaboration, and protect your valuable company data.
Google Workspace is the business-focused version of Google’s suite of tools, allowing you to use your own business domain name for professional email addresses [00:51]. This business version is distinct because it includes essential features like the Admin panel for user management, the ability to set Chrome policies, and business-focused tools in Google Drive [01:32].
