Google Workspace includes a full suite of productivity tools. Here's everything you get with any Business Account and how it's used.
Gmail
Gmail is Google's email service, but you probably knew that. Business accounts get guaranteed uptime, custom addresses, and extra storage for user accounts. Syncs with Apple Mail, Outlook, and Thunderbird.
Drive
Essentially, Google Drive is Google's cloud-based storage solution for your business. You can upload and share files across your entire team or select members. Your team members can also work in Google Drive, saving their computer hard drive's disk space.
Meet
Google Meet is Google's video conferencing software (like Zoom or Skype). It has most of the standard features a business needs, like screen sharing and recording. The main benefit of using Google Meet is how easily it syncs with Google's other features like Calendar and even with other productivity software like Slack.
Calendar
Google Calendar allows team members to track, add, accept, edit, and change events on a shared team calendar. Team members can create secondary calendars, as well, for specific functions. So only the marketing department, for example, will see things in the marketing calendar. Google Calendar syncs with Apple Calendar.
Docs
Think Microsoft Word but with the advantages of auto-saving to the cloud, so that no computer malfunction will cause you to lose your work. Many also prefer Google Docs to Word because its UI is a bit more user-friendly for most tasks related to word processing.
Sheets
This is Google's version of spreadsheet or Excel. It has all the same features you might know from Excel with the added benefit of auto-saving to the cloud. And it's actually much easier to create graphs, tables, and charts with Google Sheets.
Slides
As the name implies, this is Google's slideshow software (a la Powerpoint). It's simple, easy to use, and comes with various clean templates to get you started. One benefit of Google Slides is the ease of sharing it with team members who can collaborate on it.
Keep
What is Google Keep? Google Keep is a very basic note-keeping and alerts software that can be incorporated into your other tools. You create a pinboard of notes and alerts, which can be set to alert you periodically as a reminder or on a specific day. It's very minimal at the moment, but we expect it to get better.
Sites
Google Sites is a very basic website, wiki page, or blog builder for your small business. If you're looking to establish some web presence quickly, then this is a good option. Google also makes it easy to purchase your custom URL.
Forms
Want to do a survey or collect information that can be auto-transferred to a spreadsheet in Google Sheets? Forms is an easy-to-use and make survey/questionnaire feature that collects data from participants and can store that information in either Google Drive or Sheets.
Currents
Google Currents is Google's version of Slack or internal communication tool and manager. It allows team members to chat with one another, create channels for collaborative work, set project deadlines, etc. Your small business may still prefer to stick with Slack, and the good news is that the Google tools work great with Slack, as well!