How to Use Google Workspace for Project Management

I have to start with a bit of not-so-great news: There is no direct way to use Google Workspace for project management.

But note that I said direct.

That’s because many Google Workspace apps can support various aspects of project management. And, if you want to track your tasks and progress for a bigger project, you can always integrate Google Workspace with a third-party project management tool. 

In this guide, I’ll explain how that works and show you some good examples of project management tools that integrate with Google Workspace.

A complete help desk, inside Gmail?

Keeping turns your Gmail into a fully featured help desk. It's not magic, but it feels magical.

See How in 2 Minutes

It’s a lot to cover, so let’s begin.

How to use Google Workspace for project management

Well, I suppose the answer is pretty simple.

If you’re already using Google Workspace as a solution for your office productivity suite, then it’s only logical to want to keep all of your activities within the platform.

• This would save you time switching tools and contexts all the time.
• You’d have constant access to your data, too.

You can do that – use Google Workspace for project management – in two ways.

You can use the various capabilities of the suite to manage different aspects of projects. By far, this isn’t the most reliable or robust method. But it can work.

Or you can use dedicated Google Workspace project management integrations to connect third party capabilities with the suite, and create a powerful project management system.

For example, Popular project management apps like Asana or Trello integrate with Google Workspace. What’s more, you can access many of their features without leaving the Google interface.  Other tools, like Keeping, work as add-ons to Google Workspace, meaning that, in this case, you continue using the familiar interface, whereas the integration only expands the current capabilities of Google Workspace.

I know it’s a lot to take in already, so let’s go through each option in turn.

Features of Google Workspace that help manage projects

As I mentioned before, Google Workspace doesn’t have a dedicated project management app. However, it does offer certain capabilities that make managing smaller projects possible with the suite.

#1. Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage system that enables you to host your files in the cloud and control who has access to them.

This makes it a perfect solution to store all digital assets relevant to a project:

• Documents
• Graphics and visuals
• Videos
• Snippets of copy
• and more.

Also, Drive allows you to share folders so you can ensure that everyone involved in a project has access to all the files they need.

#2. Google Calendar

Google Calendar is just that, a powerful calendar and scheduling tool.

Granted, its primary use case is to display appointments and other items on your schedule. But you can also use it to schedule project milestones, due dates, and more.

Once again, it’s not a perfect solution for keeping track of a project. Certainly, it’s not ideal for larger projects.

But it can help you manage smaller projects and ensure that everything is done on time.

#3. Google Meet

An essential part of project management is scheduling meetings, and more and more frequently these meetings will be remote. Google Meet has been designed to allow you to schedule video conferencing, with more participants available on the higher-paid plans. When scheduling meetings in Google Calendar, you have the ability to include a Google Meet link for attendees. 

You can share your desktop, video and presentations with attendees of your meetings. It’s comparable to Microsoft’s Teams, so you’ll be familiar with the concept if you’ve used alternative tools. Google Meet simulates face-to-face meetings for today’s remote teams. 

#4. Gmail

Finally, no project can move forward without everyone involved being able to communicate and exchange messages about it.

Most project management tools solve this by include the ability to comment and share messages on tasks.

Google Workspace, on the other hand, has Gmail. And let’s face it; it’s the tool you probably are using to manage project-related communications already.

BONUS: Since Gmail is equipped with powerful options for organizing your email with labels and icons, you’ll benefit from using Gmail for managing your project email. Specific projects can be labeled clearly and removed from your main email inbox to help you get closer to inbox zero. 

Best project management tools for Google Workspace

The other option is to integrate Google Workspace with dedicated project management tools.

We’ve already discussed how this method works. So now, let’s take a look at some of the best tools you could use to manage projects with Google Workspace.

1. Keeping – Shared inbox tool for customer support

Keeping (disclaimer – this is my tool) is a dedicated shared inbox tool for Gmail.

With Keeping, your customer support team can manage their work, projects, and individual customer inquiries directly within Gmail.

Sometimes called a “help desk”, Keeping makes it easy for organizations to collaborate on their support@, help@, hi@, or any other email account accessed by a group.

Keeping creates a new section inside our users’ Gmail accounts through a Chrome Extension. Once installed, users can access their shared mailbox in their personal or work Gmail account. Every inbound email to their shared mailbox is converted into a “ticket” that can be assigned, tracked, or prioritized.

How Keeping Helps Manage Projects with Google Workspace

Keeping is a Gmail add-on. This means that it expands Gmail’s functionality with additional features that help customer support teams better manage their projects and customer inquiries.

On top of ticket mangement, thought, Keeping also features advanced analytics that tell you how your customer service team is performing.

This will help you plan your staffing as you can identify your busiest periods. It’s also possible to automate specific tasks within Keeping, to save you time and effort. When using Keeping, it works directly within Gmail, so you’ll have the comfort of using a familiar platform with all the functionality of a powerful productivity app. 

Keeping in a nutshell:

• Simple project management software for teams of users working on customer tickets
• Keeps customer inquiries organized and takes email beyond a typical inbox
• Works seamlessly with Gmail, so users don’t have to learn a new tool

2. Monday.com – project management software

Monday.com is one of the most popular project management tools that integrates well with Google Workspace. One of the advantages of Monday.com is that it facilitates chat with other team members, so you can conduct conversations about projects without leaving the platform. Monday.com presents your projects in visual boards so you can always keep track of a project’s status. 

Monday.com integrates with Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar, so you can easily use your favorite tools with the platform. This makes communicating, scheduling, and sharing much easier as Monday.com is designed to work effectively with external parties such as clients. 

Advantages of Monday.com

• Manage even very complex projects with boards that break down each task
• Allows clients to work as guests within the platform so you can share your work with them
• Search for any file or project in the platform, so you never lose track of your work

3. Evernote

Any project will likely intensively use email to communicate with its stakeholders, and Evernote offers powerful integration with Google’s Gmail to help you turn your emails into trackable tasks. Evernote allows you to move emails into their platform, so you never lose track of important information again. Without leaving Gmail, you can use Evernote to manage tasks or knowledge you want to remember, which can be an effective way to move projects forward. 

Moving emails out of your inbox is an excellent method of overcoming inbox overload because you can create a sense of organization in your correspondence. Evernote has been specifically designed to work with Gmail so you can manage projects all without leaving Google Workspace. 

Advantages of Evernote

• Simple yet powerful note-taking app that enables you to stay on top of projects from your inbox
• Evernote is free, so anyone can use it to manage their projects
• Offers a more robust alternative to tools like Google Keep to take the organization further

4. Trello

Most people have heard of Trello – Trello is a feature-rich project management tool that allows you to organize your tasks into boards. Trello makes project management fun by adding many power-ups to supercharge your organization and stay on top of all your tasks. To make Trello even better, it integrates with many tools in Google Workspace to help you take your project management to the next level, including Drive, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, and Gmail. 

When managing a project in Trello, you can insert Drive files without leaving the Trello app. You can turn Trello boards into a seamless Slides presentation with a single click, so you can show your work to others without investing too much effort. You can use Calendar to visualize all your tasks with due dates, so you can always keep track of upcoming deadlines. Trello and Google Workspace offer a powerful combination. 

Advantages of Trello

• Integrates with many popular tools in Google Workspace to offer a viable project management solution
• Uses cards to manage a vast range of project assets all in one place
• Makes project management fun by making tasks highly visual and engaging

5. Asana

A tool to rival Trello is the equally popular Asana, which enables teams to manage highly complex projects with a powerful array of task management features. If you want to track your work, then you need look as far as Asana which offers powerful task management. Asana provides users with a comprehensive way to keep track of project priorities and connect different tasks, highlighting bottlenecks and obstacles. 

Asana users can benefit from Asana’s integration with Google Workspace, which allows you to attach Google Drive files to your tasks and turn emails into actionable, trackable tasks without ever leaving your inbox. Asana knows that Google Workspace users are simply looking for the missing link in project management, which is why they have developed this robust integration. 

Advantages of Asana

• You can sync tasks and project deadlines to Google Calendar to stay on track
• Create custom reports in Google Sheets, so you can see how work is progressing
• Organize very complex projects and keep track of every task 

6. Everhour

An essential part of any project management is time-tracking, and Everhour offers just such a tool which enables teams to monitor how much time they are spending on each task. This can be important for client invoicing, or simply enable better productivity when you can gain insight into which activities are taking up the most time. 

Everhour is a Google Chrome extension which you can install and pin to the menu. This is useful when you consider there is no capability for time-tracking in the native Google Workspace suite. You enter your project details and start the work hours tracker to be able to log all time spent on your project. 

Advantages of Everhour

• An easy way to track the time your team is spending on each project
• Works directly within Google Chrome so you have a reminder to track each task
• Offers templates to use in Google Workspace such as the timesheet template for Google Sheets

And that’s it…

That’s everything that you need to know to use Google Workspace for project management.

Good luck!