Google Workspace: The Basics

Want to quickly learn the basics of the Google apps that we use at Barton?

This page will give you an understanding of what you’re looking at overall when it comes to the Google Workspace of apps as well as the names and how to access the websites.

One of the main reasons we love Google Workspace is that it’s free for use at home and you can access it all on any device that has an internet connection. On our last check (January 2019), if you wanted access to the Microsoft Office suite you would need to pay £6 per month to install it to just one computer.

Once you’ve built up your understanding of the Google Apps it’s worth remembering that here on the IT Intranet site, we regularly post updates about new features that you can use in the Google Workspace.

Anyway, let’s start here with search, icons, names and web addresses (It’s not as bad as it sounds). If after all of this information, you still need a little extra help, feel free to pop by the IT Office and we can give you a hand.

Icons – Basics

Below is a little table of icons that you’ll see across the range of Google apps with a little description of what they are used for.

Account

In the top right corner of any Google page (Search or Calendar for example), click to see which account you are logged in as. If you have a profile photo this icon may not appear.

Apps

Click to see a list of all the Google apps and easily switch between them.

Settings

Quickly edit the settings of the app you have open.

Search

Search for content within this app.

Main Menu ☰

Press to show a main menu that is otherwise hidden. Mainly shown in applications on mobile devices, not too common on computers. Commonly known as the ‘hamburger’ icon. Shown as 3 horizontal lines.

More •••

Click to see more options. Google use the three vertical dots however some other companies do use three horizontal dots.

Expand ⌄

A small arrow pointing down, it may be filled in. When pointing down it is showing you there is another menu to expand, when pointing up it means you can hide a menu.

Icons – Apps

Generally Google use the same 4 main colours as identified by their company Logo. Blue, red, yellow and green. You’ll most likely see either the full Google text or a G showcasing all the 4 colours. They also throw in a bit of purple and grey every now and then, as well as slightly different shades of these colours.

Below we’ve got the main Google Icons that you might see, these icons are the same across the Google websites and the apps on your mobile device. This isn’t every Google App but more of a showing of what is most used here at Barton. In total there are over 55 different logos that Google use across their products, you can see a definitive list by going here on Google.com.

Hover your mouse over the icons to see the name of the application.

Names

Let’s start with the name that ties everything together, and we don’t mean Google! Just like Microsoft have the Office suite that includes Word etc, Google has a name at the top of the tree, that name is Google Workspace or Google Workspace for Education.

The names of individual Google Apps pretty much explain what they do, such as Sites for creating websites, or Maps for navigating. We use Docs, Slides and Sheets in place of Microsoft Word, Powerpoint and Excel respectively.

The full and proper name of most of the Google Workspace apps has the Google name before it, such as Google Docs. However, we do tend to remove the Google name to shorten it so you may hear us talking about a Slides presentation or a Sheets document. Not all apps have Google before their name though, you wouldn’t say Google YouTube or Google Gmail.

Web Addresses

The Web Address or URL is what you navigate to and see in the top of your web browser (which is hopefully Google Chrome). It generally is started with http:// or https:// and commonly suggested with www. however adding www. to the beginning of a web address isn’t needed anymore. You can literally just type in the main part of a URL to go to it, like google.com or bbc.co.uk for example.

One of the easiest ways to switch between Google Workspace apps is to use the Apps icon in the top right corner of Google Workspace pages, as shown in the Icons – The Basics section at the top of this page.

Google have put in a lot of work to make it as easy as possible to access their pages, all you need to know is the name of the app, then just add .google.com on to the end and hit Enter.

Once you’ve done that a couple of times, you won’t even need to add .google.com on to the end, you’ll be able to just type the name of the app and auto-fill will automatically add the rest on for you.

Take a look at the example below, as soon as we start typing sheets, drive or forms the rest of the link is automatically added so we can just hit Enter and go straight to that page. Some of the apps aren’t necessarily at that web address but once you type it in and try to go to it, Google will route you to the correct location.