Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Riding the Google Wave On To Docs

I wrote substantially about how impressed I was with Google Wave and how I shifted my entire case management system over to Google Wave.  As you may be well aware, Google Wave is ending.  I know I was   teased - ridiculed would be a bit harsh -- by some colleagues over the fact that my choice was apparently a bad one.

Yet, I don't regret my choice from moving from TimeMatters to Google Wave.  Everything that Wave offered I needed.

1.  Real time collaboration with my office staff.
2.  One convenient and flexible space for storing information about each case.
3.  Small group management
4.  Word Search capabilities
5.  Tagging for quick search
6.  Cloud storage and accessibility
7.  Revision history and dating

Well, we rode out Google Wave to the end and I still want all those things.

Fortunately, I still have them all in Google Docs.  The Wave technology was incorporated into Docs to allow for real time collaboration.  Google Docs is as flexible as any blank document.  Sharing collections in Docs allows us to assign small groups to selected cases.  The search abilities are Google-esque, maybe because they are Google.  Since it is a blank document, our form document has a place for tagging.  Google Docs is even on my mobile phone and all the revision and history for each document is available.

In short, Wave was nothing more than Google Docs.   I'll write more on how we are using Google Docs for case management in future posts.