Do you have experiences to share from Google Docs, Microsoft Office Live Workspace, or Zoho?

Have you used free online collaboration and document sharing tools like Google Docs or Microsoft Office Live Workspace (OLW)? What about other tools like Zoho, OpenGoo, or Writeboard? What are the differences?

How have you used these tools? Have you used them to share documents that are being edited and reviewed by multiple people? What about using them to share content for an event or conference? Do you share calendars and schedules with these?

Tell us what you think about the tools you’ve used and what you’ve liked or disliked about them.

We just wrapped up a webinar giving an overview of Microsoft Office Live Workspace but haven't (yet) conducted similar webinars on other products like this. Check out the archived recording and presentation if you're interested in learning more about OLW.

Here's one article and a previous forum discussion about online file-sharing for distributed groups, that might add to the discussion.

Share your experiences with any of these (or other) online document sharing and collaboration tools so we can learn from each other!

We have been using Google Docs for a few years now and it is becoming more and more useful - and more and more essential for our organization.

But how does it actually work..Can u plz explain...??

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Sara, can you be more specific about what tool you are referring to? Please also take note of our community rules & standards.

Thanks,

Megan

I have always been unwilling to use Google Docs because of their copyright policies. Now, in trying to post a reply, I have researched it again. Maybe it is not as bad as it used to look; I still find it too obscure for me to be comfortable with Google Docs:

The first item in Google Docs Terms of Use <www.google.com/google-d-s/terms.html> is Terms of Service

Google Docs Terms of Service:

"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services."

The second item in "Terms of Use" is "Additional Terms," the first part of which replaces Section 11.1 with this:

"You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Service. By submitting, posting or displaying the Content you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through the Service for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its Privacy Policy."

Google Docs privacy policy says, in pertinent part:

"Files you create with Google Docs may, if you choose, be read, copied, used and redistributed by people you know or, again if you choose, by people you do not know. Information you disclose using the chat function of Google Docs may be read, copied, used and redistributed by people participating in the chat. Use care when including sensitive personal information in documents you share or in chat sessions, such as social security numbers, financial account information, home addresses or phone numbers."

We've used Google Docs. The really strong point is the ability to have anyone, anywhere get access to the most up to date version of a given document. Nevertheless, I would never recommend it for any organization that has a lot of people sharing a lot of documents, or anyone who really needs to create polished documents.

Although things are improving, Docs still doesn't always use standard keystrokes, and, worse, functionality leaves something to be desired. In some case, things can be done, but it's just too hard. For instance, why do I need to go to print preview to see where page breaks are? Outlines, bulleted lists, headers and footers and tables all have quirks and limitations that I don't find in other word processors. I didn't find these issues because I went looking for them, but because I tried to do things that I normally can do in other products. 

Worse is the way organization, sharing and permissions is handled. There is no way to create some sort of directory structure that is common to everyone who needs to use the shared documents. There is also no way to create groups of users so I can, for instance, share a particular document with everyone involved in project x, and the next document with everyone involved in project y. I cannot tell you how many times people didn't get access to a particular document because the person who created the document missed her when putting together the list of people to get access.

I'm keeping an eye on Docs, because Google clearly has the technology and know how to solve the last problem, and that could make are really big difference to organizations.

It looks like Google Wave is poised to take overt this market. I haven't been able to try it yet, but the internet seems abuzz over it.

Yes we have been playing with Google docs for a few months in an attempt to managed the shared development and editing or manuals , process docs etc . It has not really worked for us, ok if we shared a few docs but it became clumbersome with more. Not always easy to use . Its in the cloud as well which is ok but I worry about security and reliability Looking at sharepoint now