Google 'Keep' Revamp Now Lets Businesses Collaborate

Credit: Google

Note-taking apps can be your best friend: You can quickly jot down ideas, create lists, save images and perform other tasks on the spot, to help you stay organized and at the top of your game. But many note-taking apps are either too complex or have too few features for small businesses. The new Google Keep strikes a good balance that makes it a great choice for small business users.

Whereas previously, Google Keep was only good for note-taking and creating lists, Google recently updated it with a brand-new look and several features to help users better collaborate and easily find what they're looking for. Now sporting the new Material Design user interface (UI), Google Keep also features sharing capabilities and new ways to keep your life and business under control.

Here's what the new Google Keep has to offer business users.

Material Design

The Google Keep revamp comes with Material Design, Google's new UI that the company is pushing across devices and Google apps and services. Material Design first appeared on Android 5.0 Lollipop and features clean lines, bold colors, a simplified layout and a more intuitive user experience.

In addition to a much more visually appealing UI, this redesign helps users stay organized. You can now color-code notes, lists and other content, making it easy to find and edit them as needed.

Sharing capabilities

Before the update, Google Keep was a one-dimensional app that focused strictly on taking notes, jotting down ideas and creating lists. Now, Google wants to take it a step further by offering collaboration capabilities. 

Google Keep's new sharing capabilities make it easy to not only share your Google Keep content, but also to keep everyone updated in real time. For instance, say you send your team a list of to-dos for a project. You're not just sending them a plain old list that requires calls and messages back and forth to see how everyone is doing — as you and your team members finish and check off items, everyone who has access to the list will also see others' progress in real time.

Here's how Google Keep sharing works:

• Quickly and easily share content by clicking on the Share button and adding recipients' names.
• Recipients get a mobile and email notification about the share, which appears immediately in their Google Keep account — no confirmations required.
• Senders can also control who has access and assign privileges to shares, such as the ability to view and edit content, invite additional collaborators and remove team members.

Search and organize

Note-taking apps like Google Keep are a blessing and a curse. It's great that you can just jot down ideas, create lists and save content on the spot, but after some time, browsing through all that content can be a pain. Google Keep aims to solve that problem with an enhanced search feature.

Google Keep's simpler search function is more intuitive, helping users save time by giving them the ability to stay organized and easily find what they are looking for. To make searching easier, users can filter notes by attributes, such as note color, type of content (list, image or audio, etc.), shared content and whether they've set up reminders in their notes or lists.

Cost and availability

Google Keep is available for free on Google Play for Android-powered phones running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and up. For those who don't use an Android device, Google Keep is also available as a Web app and Chrome app.