Activity dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, & Slides updated w/ Google Material Theme

Abner Li | Oct 29 2018 - 12:26 pm PT

Earlier this year, Google introduced an Activity dashboard in Docs, Sheets, and Slides that allowed users to easily keep track of file history. Like Google Drive, it’s now gaining the Google Material Theme with a redesigned interface on the web.

The Activity dashboard is especially useful for shared documents and other files. It allows the owner to see whether the people a document has been shared with have seen that file through a read indicator. It’s particularly aimed at cutting down the need for you to manually ask follow-up questions on whether a particular edit has been reviewed.

For example, a user can check if a coworker has seen a file already and alert them that it’s been updated. Or an account manager can judge the best way to follow up with a partner, depending on whether that partner has viewed the materials they previously sent.

The new interface leverages the Google Material Theme with tabs now located in the navigation drawer, and using the new tab indicators. Sections include View time, Viewer trend, and Privacy settings, with admins able to determine whether this feature is rolled out to a domain.

Slightly reorganized, the first page allows users to see the read status from people the document was shared with, as well as all the users in an organization.

Meanwhile, in Viewer trend, users can see a graph view, similar to that of a blog CMS or Google Analytics. Users can specify the time range and see daily viewers on a graph. This is one of the insights that Google planned to add earlier this year.

The new Google Material Theme activity dashboard will be rolling out to existing users with this functionality.