Do more with WORKetc CRM’s Google Drive integration and these clever add-ons.We rolled out a significant new feature to WORKetc CRM’s Google Drive integration a while back, giving users access to Team Drives from within the WORKetc CRM environment.
In the spirit of that update, here’s a curated list of seven add-ons for Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Sheets that extend the suite’s capabilities.
Read on and check these add-ons out.
DocHub
Google Drive by itself has limited PDF support. Sure, you can upload, share, and view a PDF, but if you need to edit it you’ll have to convert it into a Google Doc and lose most if not all of the original file’s formatting.
If you work with a lot of PDFs, you can remedy this issue by using DocHub, a multi-purpose add-on that lets you open and edit PDF files from Google Drive.
DocHub lets you insert text, draw boxes, add comments and highlights, merge and reorder pages, and insert images, among others. You can also create and edit PDF forms.
These editing features are limited compared to the full Adobe Reader suite, but it’s enough for what is arguably DocHub’s most important feature: it lets you sign PDFs and send out PDFs for signing.
Aside from letting you send a PDF to be signed by a single person, you can also send out a PDF with multiple signatories, specify who needs to sign and where, then send the document as a Sign Request.
For those concerned with keeping a paper trail of PDFs they sign and send out, DocHub records authentication details when a PDF is signed and makes this info available to all parties of the document, giving you a legal audit trail.
There’s a free version of DocHub that limits documents to 2,000 and eSignatures to 5 per month. For $4.99 per month, you can spring for DocHub Pro and get unlimited documents, eSignatures, saved signatures, and sign requests plus lets you send and receive up to 35 faxes per month.
Easy Accents
I only know one special character alt code: alt 164 for “ñ”. Now that I use a laptop without a dedicated numpad daily, I lost my quick and easy way to enter this or any other accented characters when I need to.
The Easy Accents add-on solves this problem for me. It allows users to easily insert accents for different languages directly from a side-bar in their Google Doc.
Just pick a language and a list of special characters will load in your Google Docs sidebar. Clicking on a character will insert it into your document. Holding Shift while you click inserts a capitalized character.
Easy Accents comes with common accented characters used in Spanish, French, German, and more languages.
If you’re only after the language-specific characters, the add-on is largely free to use.
There’s a $1.99 per year premium version that lets you set a default language, create custom character sets, and includes common math and math logic characters.
There’s also a separate Easy Accents add-on for Google Slides.
MathType
And speaking of math, adding mathematical equations to a document is always a pain.
MathType tries to cure this headache by making it easier to create and insert mathematical equations into a Google Doc — perfectly handy for teachers, students, statisticians, analysts, and the like.
To create and add an equation, just find the MathType option in the Add-ons drop-down menu and start editing. The add-on also recognizes handwritten input if you have a touchscreen device.
Editing an equation in MathType.MathType requires a monthly subscription of $49.95. Kinda steep, but the subscription does cover the Google add-on, an Office add-in, and the MathType desktop app.
If you’re only occasionally inserting math equations into your documents, it’s not a recommended buy, but a definite must-have if your job has you regularly working with equations.
For those more inclined towards chemistry, there’s also a separate add-on from the same company called ChemType that deals primarily with chemical equations.
Lucidchart Diagrams
Google Docs isn’t really built for diagramming and flowchart building, but with the Lucidchart add-on, you can quickly create and insert any flowcharts, diagrams, or even wireframes that you want.
This add-on lets you quickly create, edit, and add new Lucidchart diagrams to any document you’re working on. The creation and editing process still takes place in Lucidchart’s own online app, but the add-on does make it easier to add diagrammatic graphics in Google docs.
Once you connect your Google Drive account to Lucidchart (just use the same Google account to sign in to both tools), you’ll get a sidebar in Google Docs that lists all of the diagrams you’ve created and saved in Lucidchart. Simply click on a diagram to insert it.
Lucidchart comes packed with a lot of pre-made diagramming templates and stencils. It also allows you to collaborate on diagrams with your team, download diagrams, publish them on social media, and import files from apps like Visio, Gliffy, and Omnigraffle.
The downside here is that Lucidchart is a paid app. A basic single-user account is $5.95 per month and a Team account starts at $20 per month with additional costs for each additional user.
If you’re strapped for cash, though, I highly recommend checking out draw.io. While it doesn’t have all the fancy bells and whistles that Lucidchart does, this open-source diagramming app is completely free to use and has its own Google Drive add-on.
Search & Navigate
In case you haven’t noticed, Google Docs has a cool little outline tool that helps you quickly navigate between headings in a single document.
The Search & Navigate add-on takes this quick navigation idea and runs with it.
Instead of letting you jump from one heading to another, Search & Navigate extends the functionality by letting you navigate to specific headings, images, tables, and even search results with one click.
The Search & Navigate sidebar.Headings, images, and tables are added automatically to the Search & Navigate sidebar as you add them to the document.
Using the Search & Navigate sidebar to search for specific keywords presents the results by paragraph, so you can quickly understand the context of a specific instance of a keyword in the search results.
The add-on also lets you add manual bookmarks to your document for faster navigation. Just highlight any text then click the “+” button on the Search & Navigate sidebar to add a bookmark.
It’s incredibly useful especially when you’re working with very long documents. And best of all, it’s Search & Navigate is free.
Awesome Table
As useful as spreadsheets are, combing through rows and columns of data just doesn’t excite most people.
The Awesome Table add-on adds a bit of extra oomph into your Google Sheets by letting you turn them into more enticing and interactive graphical views that you can then embed on your website without giving out access to your native data set.
So instead of going cross-eyed after sifting through rows and rows of data, your users can more easily digest whatever data you want to present to them.
Awesome Table comes with a template library that includes such visualizations as slideshows, announcement lists, FAQs, product catalogs, filterable Google Maps views, and directories.
And once you connect it to Google Drive, you can then use Drive’s native sharing capabilities to share and collaborate on projects with other people.
Awesome Tables’ G Suite Marketplace listing notes that it’s free for up to 1,000 pageviews a month, but there’s no mention of any additional pricing on their website. You can check out a live demo here.
SuperMetrics
Here’s an indispensable tool for marketers: SuperMetrics, a Google Sheets add-on that automatically pulls metrics from PPC, SEO, social, web analytics, and other marketing platforms and plugs them straight into a Google Sheet.
You don’t have to worry about manually exporting data from every single marketing platform you use and then consolidating them all into a cohesive Google Sheets report.
SuperMetrics supports Google Analytics, AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Bing Ads, AdRoll, Instagram, SEMrush, DoubleClick, and even your own database.
The add-on also comes with a bunch of pre-built templates and visualization options.
And since it’s connected to Google Drive, you can use Drive’s sharing capabilities to share your reports with whomever you need to.
It’s a very useful add-on for marketers and CEOs who want to dig deep into ad numbers, but it does come with a price: $149 per user per month for the Super Pro account, which allows you to pull data from all of SuperMetrics’ supported data sources.
There’s also a free Basic account that allows for unlimited reports, but the only data source available on this tier is Google Analytics.
Once you’ve checked out the add-ons above, don’t forget to try WORKetc CRM’s Google Drive integration and the new and improved Gmail add-on to make both Google Drive and Gmail do more for your business.
