MS Office + OffiSync = Collaboration in the Cloud With Google Apps
Microsoft Office is the de facto standard for business documents. Word, Excel and PowerPoint are widely used and powerful. But, when you want to collaborate – share documents, jointly edit, get feedback, or request approvals – you usually end up with an unstructured mess of lengthy email chains and attachments. It is easy to lose track of changes, responsibility, and document versions.
OffiSync for Office 2007
The vast majority of collaboration continues to take place through email, with knowledge workers passing file attachments. The fundamental inefficiencies of this approach are creating numerous enterprise pain points. Users cannot find the most current version of content. There is very little structure available in email to drive best practices. Content artifacts — like documents and threaded discussions — are not easily reusable. And it is difficult and costly to identify content that requires special handling for compliance, security, and privacy purposes.
August 6, 2009, The Forrester Wave: Collaboration Platforms, Q3 2009 – Rob Koplowitz
Access and collaborate – all through the power of Google
OffiSync is a Microsoft Office extension that works with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010. It integrates with Google Apps and Google Docs ‘Software as a Service’ suite of applications, making it easy to install and helping you gain critical collaboration capabilities quickly and cost-effectively. By adding the OffiSync Productivity Toolbar to your Office applications, you can work in a familiar environment while collaborating effectively.
OffiSync uses the power of Google Docs for document collaboration and Google Sites for team and project-based sharing and collaboration. OffiSync enables capabilities including:
- Save Microsoft Office files in Google Docs or Google Sites in the same way that you would save them locally on your computer
- Access Microsoft Office documents online, from any computer
- Eliminate multiple document versions with automatic change updates
- Edit documents in real time
- Add collaborators by entering their email addresses or chose directly from your contacts in Google Apps
- Control permissions for collaborators to view or edit documents
- Create a collaboration workspace with multiple documents for one project
- Use Google Search in Microsoft Office to browse and insert content and images right into documents
Get the best of both worlds
OffiSync brings together the productivity of Microsoft Office and the innovation of Google’s cloud collaboration platform. The result is one seamless experience that lets users move right from document creation to real-time collaboration and sharing, removing the inefficiencies of current unstructured email-based processes.
If you are a current Google Apps user, OffiSync enables you to maximize the built-in collaboration and sharing capabilities. If you are currently relying on email and attachments for collaboration, Google Apps in combination with OffiSync can help you further leverage your Microsoft Office investments by extending productivity into collaboration.
OffiSync for Office 2003
19.5 percent of organizations reported that Google Docs was “widely used” in their workplace, up from five percent in a similar survey in December 2007. More than 97 percent of organizations reported that Office remains widely used, indicating that workers are using both tools.
1 IDC Survey August 2009
© 2009 OffiSync. All rights reserved.
1 As published in Computerworld.com http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9138157/Google_Docs_widely_used_at_1_in_5_workplaces_survey_reports