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We really like the way how document collaboration works in Google Drive and would love to have an option to integrate such functionality into our environment.

Our setup consists of 5 clients (all Macs of different kinds, iMac, MacBook Pro) and a Mac Mini which functions as server (OSX Server). All machines run OSX Mavericks.

We are always struggling how to work together on documents which are also saved at the same time in their respective folders on our server. Most of the time our users just mail the documents around which of course isn't efficient at all.

Since we couldn't find a good collaboration software to use, some kind of document-lock would be another option that there will be no lost work.

Any thoughts? Thanks up front.

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  • If you could tell us what kind of business application use, what kind of business function about your org or business model about your office. Someone can provide more information. At least, you can refer this site google.com/enterprise/apps/business, lucidchart.com/pages/tour also you can get the information on youtube easily.
    – Juza
    Mar 1, 2014 at 4:54
  • I really thought I provided most needed information. Since I was talking about Google Docs I thought it would be clear, that we are talking documents, spreadsheets and presentations here. And as stated above: no, Google Docs is not the option as we would like to integrate the documents into our server environment.
    – Tim
    Mar 3, 2014 at 12:36

4 Answers 4

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+25

Common Application: Documentation, Spreadsheet, presentation and so on.

  1. Google Apps(Google Docs, Spreadsheet, Calendar, Mail, Slide and so on)

Other common Application: Flow chart, Business Process, Floor plan, Org chart, Mock, UML and so on.

  1. lucidchart https://www.lucidchart.com/

Development Code repository and so on

  1. GitHub with google Drive(Might be worked but not final answer) https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/qLdqw7--YlY

Business Application and others:

You can find more suitable application such Accounting and project management application at https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home%20/

Local Vendor:

You might want to contact local vender to get help at http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/partners.html

Printing:

You can print your Google Docs out to your office printer via internet using Google Cloud printer after you make gmail account for it. please check at http://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/howitworks.html And, Even it's legacy printer it's possible to implement. please refer at
https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1069693?hl=en

Security:

Account authentication: You can keep Google account more secure with Google Authenticator which provide you to have one time password(passcode) with your current password. And you can use it for GitHub authentication also. So, You can keep your account authentication securely. The solution is called Multi Factor Authentication(MFA or 2FA).

Google Authenticator at http://www.google.com/landing/2step/?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-na-us-sk&utm_medium=ha

GitHub with Google Authenticator at https://help.github.com/articles/about-two-factor-authentication

Transmission: SSL/TLS

More about security stuff of Google Apps at https://support.google.com/a/answer/1360111?hl=en&ref_topic=29818

But if you want to implement data encryption of Google Drive, You must find application at https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home%20/.

Other(Network):

Your dedicated network goes to internet will be one of most important part to collaborate your work among your member or your customer. So, You must keep maintaining the stability of network by backing the configuration up of router/firewall before you configured and updating the firmware. If you use wireless LAN in your office, you should use WPA2-PSK-AES with unique SSID, unique key, passcode these are not related to your personal information and company information. Also, You should not use default setting of Wi-Fi device. and, You should document about the necessary settings and contact point of support center to get work smoothly when there is an incident such failure of network. These should be kept securely. If you are not going to manage them by yourself, You should get support from local vendor. This is just security essential matter.

Recovery plan:

  1. Setup your Smartphone for your dedicated Network and do excise synchronizing the data between Google Drive in case mis-synchronization operation happen.

Out of scope:

  1. Setup synchronizing the data between Google Drive at Google and shared drive on such OS X server is not necessary because these data will be kept on your local drive therefore it will be synchronized after the issue is fixed. But if you want to synchronize the data between Google Drive at Google and OS X server, you just make one more account for the server like you create your google account on your mac. but, It might cost from operational view point.

P.S. If you could tell us what kind of business application use, what kind of business function about your org or business model about your office. Someone will be able to provide more suitable information.

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Google has business solutions that might be able to solve this problem. At my company, we achieve exactly what you're asking for with Google Docs. We can see who is viewing/editing and even (for spreadsheets) what cell they're pointing to. You can get pricing info at http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/pricing.html

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Could you specify what kind of documents you're working with? If it's code, or documents in plain text, you could install gitlab [http://www.gitlab.org] on the server.

[would have just left this in a comment, but it won't let me yet]

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You could try installing EtherPad on one of the machines and run it through the built-in local webserver.

It has an Apache License and a lot of activity on github.

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