Chrome Unboxed | Guest Contributor
To date, any time someone requests access to view or edit a document, make comments, and so on, users receive an email, a Google Chat ping, and even several of these on their phones. You can approve or reject these requests everywhere aside from the place it makes the most sense to do so – the document. It seems like a common sense thing, right? Allow users to handle these right at the source? Well, the ability to do so was previously added in beta, and is now expanding to more Workspace users.
“Securing document approvals can be difficult when collaborating with multiple stakeholders and competing priorities. This feature makes it easy to secure those approvals and see who has approved them.”
Google wants this update to make it easier for you and your organization – even those outside of it who you interact with – to be notified in sync with you when there are edits made to a document, or when the latest version of a doc is re-approved. Additionally, when all reviewers have provided their personal approval, the file gets locked and can’t be edited so that everything is kept fair and integrity is maintained.
You may be wondering why integrity would need to be a factor for Google Docs. Well, many times, companies utilize the service to send and sign legal documents or to gain other formal approvals. If someone signs or modifies a document to show their approval of specific terms, you wouldn’t want someone going in later and changing things to make it seem as though you’ve agreed to something else, right? Google Docs is highly collaborative, and by its nature, it’s very open to edits. This changes in environments where it may be necessary to lock down those freedoms.
Anyways, once a document is set for approval, everyone involved will get a Gmail, Chat, and or browser notification as previously mentioned. The document host or owner can also set a due date before which approval is needed, which is a welcome feature.
As you would expect if multiple users are requested to approve a document, it will only be considered approved after the last person does so, and if any one person rejects it, the entire document is rejected for everyone. If anyone makes a change before everyone approves, then they will all need to re-approve, and once all approvals are in, the document is locked.
This feature is rolling out for both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains right now, and will continue to do so over the next few days.
Visit CTL Google Workspace for Education to learn more on how to take advantage of the latest productivity features.
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