The Cantilever Handbook
The Cantilever Handbook

Google Workspace

Overview

Google Workspace is our flexible “backup” platform for when we don‘t have a better platform to handle a specific need. Most days you won’t need to interact with it aside from checking your email.

Use For...

✅ Creating collaborative documents with Docs

✅ Managing your calendar

✅ Creating Slides presentations, Sheets spreadsheets, etc.

✅ Sharing large files with clients

✅ Legal paperwork and signed document storage

Don’t Use For...

⛔️ Anything that could be done in another tool better, such as project management, databases, storing code/design work, etc.

Why we use it

All the Google products are rock solid. Gmail is an industry leader, Google Drive is great, Calendar/Docs/Slides/Sheets are all quite good. We like to use more specialized tools like Notion, but there are plenty of cases where a good old Google Doc is required.

How we use it

  • Every team member has an email address. Most days you won’t get internal email. You may be on client threads or handling inbound email traffic depending on your role.
  • Every client has a Team Drive in Google Drive. This contains their contract & SOWs along with project files that don’t fit neatly into any of the other platforms.
  • We use Google Docs for our discovery reports and other detailed writing, particularly when a high degree of collaboration is required.

Golden Rules

  • You are expected to be on top of your Google calendar. If you are invited to an event and accept, we expect you to be there.
  • Don’t use a Google Workspace product when another product in
    🧰
    Our Toolkit
     could accomplish the same task better
  • Email is a backup communication channel at Cantilever. Check it once a day and you should rarely have anything critical in there aside from client communication.
  • Calendar:
    • Use Focus Time blocks to give yourself space on the calendar to handle your tasks. Make sure to avoid having too many meetings in the week, and push back on requests to preserve your schedule.
    • Make sure your free/busy information is up to date so that people can confidently use it to schedule with you.

Guidelines

Calendar

Google Calendar is a key tool for us. Keep a close eye on your calendar, and integrate it with Slack. Calendar has a great Zoom integration which allows you to add Zoom calls to invites very easily.

See: