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IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY WITH GOOGLE APPS

Suzann Holland

You may already use Gmail or other Google services in your personal life, but the Google Apps suite is a great set of tools to manage the many different types of tasks that a library administrator is responsible for. Once you are comfortable with the interface, you may be quickly tempted to leave Outlook behind. Should you choose to do so, the suggestions in this chapter can help you improve your productivity dramatically.

GOOGLE VIA FORWARD

If you are part of a large organization, you may already have an e-mail/calendaring system in place. If you cannot choose your e-mail provider, use Google Apps anyway, using the following steps:

1. Choose a domain name. Perhaps your name is available, as in FirstnameLastname.com.
2. Set up Google Apps account mapped to the domain name.
3. Create an e-mail address. Remember, each e-mail address is considered a user and costs $50 a year. Consider Work@FirstnameLastname.com or Firstname@FirstnameLastname.com.
4. Forward your work e-mail (direct and any others you are responsible for checking) to the newly created e-mail address.
5. Under Settings, add your work e-mail account. This enables you to send mail using that address. Make it the default.
6. Verify that the setup is correct by sending some test e-mail to and from your work e-mail account through the Google Apps interface.

YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR

You will want to use the paid version of Google Apps for two reasons: it is customizable for your domain, and you receive better technical support. Google guarantees 99.9 percent uptime for their Premier Apps customers, in addition to 25 GB of e-mail storage space. The Google Apps Premier edition is $50 per year, per user.

A text expansion program does even more to improve your productivity with Google Apps. Text expansion programs allow you to create abbreviations for longer text snippets or even whole paragraphs. When you type the abbreviation, the program automatically expands it to the corresponding longer phrase. Consider TextExpander for Mac ($29.95 at www.smileonmymac.com) and Texter for Windows (free at code section of www.lifehacker.com).

Use your text expansion program to facilitate the setup of certain helpful Google Mail filters. For example, create a keyboard shortcut for “File to @Waiting” and insert it at the bottom of e-mail that involves something you have delegated or need an answer on before you can move to the next action. Set up a filter to recognize “File to @Waiting” in outgoing e-mail and label those messages with a “Waiting” designation. To check to see if you need to follow up on anything, just hit the “Waiting” label and you will see a list of all items you are waiting on.

Other helpful labels may include “Logins & Licenses” (a great way to track software registration numbers and log-in credentials not often used), a “Task” label to track simple to-dos you e-mail to yourself, and a “Personal” label to ensure that e-mail that is not work related can be quickly identified and dealt with differently. Use your imagination and create labels that fit your ways of working.

STAFF DELEGATION

Use Google Calendar to quickly track who has been assigned to a particular task and when the task is due to be completed. Begin by creating a separate calendar (Google Calendar allows you to create multiple calendars that you can show or hide with a single click) titled “Staff Deadlines.” When you assign a task, create an all-day event named with the staff member’s initials and the task. For example, if you assign John Cooper to submit a department budget by March 5, your entry into the Staff Deadline calendar might read “JC—Dept Budget.” Assigned more than one person to work on a task jointly? Add an extra set of initials before the hyphen. Conversely, if you assign the same task to be separately completed by more than one person, create a separate event for each person.

In the days leading up to the March 5 deadline, you will see the notation on your calendar and remember to expect the task to be completed. Once John turns in his budget report, simply click on the calendar item and delete it. Has the due date come and gone? If you set up a new standard for immediate follow-up, staff members know that you are serious about due dates and will likely let you know in advance if they run into obstacles that might delay completion.

STAFF SCHEDULING

Google Calendar does not work for actually constructing the schedule itself (unless you have a very small staff), but it is fabulous for tracking schedule requests. Each separate Google Calendar within a single account may be assigned a private URL. The URL for the Schedule Requests calendar can be shared with employees for personal use and bookmarked on staff computers for quick access.

An employee’s request for a week’s worth of vacation can be easily noted as “John VAC” with a block that can be stretched for whatever days are involved. Other notes, such as “John APT 4pm” and “John off EVE” quickly convey the necessary information.

Require that all schedule requests be submitted via e-mail. This provides a record of the request as submitted in the event of later questions. When you approve a schedule request and add it to the calendar, hit reply and insert a standard message, such as “Approved and posted! Please verify that the online approval calendar is correct,” using the text expansion program. Set up a filter to recognize that message, and label your replies with the designation “Schedule.” This makes tracking down an old request for verification especially simple.

COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT

Utilize Google Calendar to help manage any materials selection areas you have. Create all-day, repeating events in Google Calendar to ensure that important tasks are attended to on a regular basis. Some suggestions:

• Add a repeating event for May to get a copy of the local high school yearbook.
• Designate certain times of the year to review particular collection areas. In Dewey-classified libraries, take a Dewey class in each of ten months. Skip two months of your choice—perhaps December for the holidays and June for the end of the fiscal year.
• Keep track of serial books such as price guides, almanacs, and test preparation guides.
• Add a repeating event for December to get tax preparation titles and ensure that forms are in stock.
• For media collections, consider how many items you would ideally purchase in a given time period. For example, if you want to add five Blu-rays each month, add a repeating event to “Order 5 Blu-rays.”

Many e-mail and calendar systems can be adapted to help boost your productivity. The suggestions presented here are tailored to the Google Apps suite because of my experience with its features and its flexibility. Whatever you use to track your library management tasks, let the system do the recall for you. Carefully consider the questions who, what, when, and how often. Automate your task-based actions so that you can quit thinking about them. You will find additional energy to devote to the most skilled and rewarding duties of your position.