Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Web 2.0 Tools – Google Docs

This week I decided to try Google Docs for a collaboration project to write a Computer Security Policy for our church. There are three of us on the committee and it seemed like a good idea to jointly work on the documents together.

The first step was to upload the files to my Google Docs folder. This seemed like a simple enough task. It turns out that there where 11 files for this project with each file having to be uploaded separately. Not believing that Google would make you do this, I kept trying to select multiple files, but the interface to Google Docs would not allow it. So after uploading 12 files (lost track and ended uploading one file twice) I was able to copy them into a separate folder. Again, only one file at a time. At this point I was starting to get a little impatient, but I continued. The next task was to share these files. So logically I though that I could just share the entire folder. Again I was wrong, each file must be shared individually, a pattern was beginning to form. This required that I email an invitation to each member of the group for each file. I think that you are starting to get the picture, 11 files meant 11 email invites. After about the fourth invite I decided I better see how well the collaboration tools actual worked before I spammed everyone’s mailbox.

So the next task was to actually edit one of the documents. Since these where boiler plated security policy documents form the SANS Website, I need to do a global find and replace. I quickly learned that this not a supported feature. So after manually cutting and pasting I notice the font type and size where different. After spending 10 minutes trying to get the font right, I decided just to cut and past into MS Word. Even this operation was less than perfect resulting in some of the formatting being lost.

So after spending the best part of an hour, I have to conclude the experiment was less then a success. The concept is great, just that the implementation is less than perfect. It may work well to act as a central repository, but the features of the word processor are inadequate to allow productive work. I would have to give Google Docs a C-. One could say what do your expect for free.

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