Bussoli

I have been casually using Google docs since it first came out. When it was first released it had a very limited feature set when compared to Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. It was really "neat" that one could edit documents online via a web browser and also collaborate with others quite easily. Additionally one could rely on the autosave feature and the excellent revision management system that Google deployed.

All of these feature were good but none of them pushed me to move anything except personal documents into Google Docs.

That was until the new forms feature was released. Suddenly, I saw new possibilities that would help me in many critical situations at my workplace.

For instance, as the Product Manger of a line of products being developed overseas with a remote remote sales staff, it would routinely fall on me to act as the "bridge" between Sales Inquiries and quotes from the manufacturing facility. This workload has been a burden as it usually involved simply passing email requests and responses from sales to manufacturing and then back to sales. I tried creating a "master" excel document but each of these solutions always seemed to fail due to the act of passing of the document back and forth.

I needed to automate as much of my tasks as possible and forms would allow me to do so. So I created a Workflow around a master Google spreadsheet.

Through Google Forms I'm able to have the Sales team submit quote requests which are immediately imported into the spreadsheet without allowing them any access to the quotation spreadsheet. As each quote request is submitted, Manufacturing is automatically notified and able to quote quickly which is ultimately back to sales within a 24 hour time period.

This has reduced the number of transactions that I have been required to do for each sales request. Keep it up Google Docs. I'm now exploring migrating other processes your way!

Solution: Google Forms. With the ability for anyone to sub