Last March 2018, Google updated G Suite by adding a new activity dashboard to Slides, Docs, and Sheets. It allows you to see the accounts that viewed a certain document and when they opened it, allowing you track individual contributions to a group project. Here are two ways to set it up.
Allow display views inside and outside your business
Your activity dashboard typically allows only internal collaboration without any access to other details. As long as your G Suite administrator enabled view history, you can determine which of your teammates has read your shared Google documents.
The tech giant takes this feature a step further by allowing you to view when people outside the office opened your files. For this to work, you have to…
- Open Google Slides, Docs, or Sheets
- Select Share
- Type in the email address of the person outside your business
To ensure security, you can only see the view history for people outside your business with whom you explicitly shared the file. This means you don’t have access to external viewers if you chose to share files via Public on the web or Anyone with the link.
Do keep in mind that view history is available only once you received an initial notice from your administrator and had the chance to edit privacy settings.
Limit activity dashboard view monitoring
If you’re using the most updated version of G Suite with the activity dashboard, your administrator can change the settings by:
- Logging in to in the Admin console where you’ll be redirected to the Apps section
- In the Apps section, press G Suite option
- In the G Suite option, select Drive and Docs
- Once there, click on Activity dashboard settings
Within the settings, you can adjust the Access to Activity dashboard to determine whether or not users can see the activity dashboard. You can also modify Users’ view history if you want to monitor only files and accounts in your business, all user views, or none at all. If you’re unable to decide, we suggest allowing people to have access to the activity dashboard and enabling view tracking for all users.
Google constantly adds new features to their G Suite platform, so stay in touch with us to know how you can use them to boost business operations and productivity. Give us a call today and we’ll introduce you to a suite of Google tools that can take you another step toward achieving your business goals.
