SSE Riga provides several tools that can help student to collaborate remotely. Below are tools and services you can use to work on group assignments, prepare for the exam in study groups or simply make a presentation for upcoming session. They are divided in 4 categories - file sharing, messaging and remote meeting, schedule meetings and deadlines and remote collaboration.

File sharing

Google Drive and shared drives

Google Drive is a cloud storage and file sharing service. All SSE Riga students have access to Google Drive. Besides web version, service is also available as Mac/PC application and iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and Android app.

For guides and more information about Google Drive, visit Google Drive training and help.

Google Drive includes shared drives feature. Files shared in shared drive belongs to a team instead of an individual member. If team member leaves, the files still stay in the shared drive and can be accessed by other team members.

For more information about shared drives, visit What are shared drives?

Tips and tricks for Google Drive and shared drives:

• Avoid sharing files with e-mail groups such as year1@sseriga.edu, year2@sseriga.edu and others because these groups are constantly updated and can change during the semester.

• Make sure that you share the right files with the right people. Do not share any personal information or private files in shared folders.

• Separate or otherwise mark shared Google Drive folders from private ones. You can use folder naming or folder colors (visible in web version and in mobile app). This will help you to understand the purpose of the folder as well as identify if the folder is private or not.

• To access shared information faster, you can use Add shortcut to Drive option in the menu. This will add a shortcut of the document or folder in your drive.

Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides

Google Drive includes services that allow you to create and edit documents online - Google Docs (text documents), Google Sheets (spreadsheets) and Google Slides (presentations). These online tools allow you to do all the common tasks you expect from the office suite such as Microsoft Office, iWork or LibreOffice. Besides that, with Google tools you can collaborate on a document together with your team in real-time.

For guides and more information about Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, visit File storage, collaboration & docs.

Tips and tricks for Google Docs, Sheets and Slides:

• As Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are online tools, all changes made in the documents are saved automatically. So you do not have to worry about missing some last minute edits.

• All aforementioned tools have option to make comments in the document. This is useful if you are have a group work and want to make suggestions or ideas to other group members.

• Microsoft Office documents can be opened in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides and documents created with Google Docs, Sheets and Slides can be saved as Microsoft Office files. But keep in mind that transferring between the different formats might cause some formatting differences.

• Google Docs, Slides and Sheets have the possibility to view and revert to previous versions of the document. To access Version history click on Last edit was... located at the top middle or go to File, then click on Version history.

Schedule meetings and deadlines

Google Calendar

Google Calendar allows you to schedule your meetings, appointments, reminders. You can create multiple separate calendars, to divide different kinds of activities, activities with different groups of people etc. Separate calendars can be color coded and hidden, so you can clearly see the most important events.

For guides and more detailed information about Google Calendar, go to Google Calendar training and help.

For information about SSE Riga schedules, visit How To - Calendars and Schedules.

Tips and tricks for Google Calendar:

• Each calendar in Google Calendar can be shared with other people. While sharing you can also set up permissions for that calendar, for example, to allow others see when you are busy but no other details, allow group members to see all planned events and their details but not make any changes to events or allow all members of the team to make changes and manage team calendar sharing.

• When creating event in Google Calendar, you can also add Google Meet meeting to that event. Step by step guide can be found in How To - Video Meetings section.

• Google Calendar has Trash feature, where you can find your deleted events from the past 30 days. You can find more information about Trash in Delete an event page.

• Google Calendar provides different calendar views - day, week, month, year, schedule view and 5 days view. You can choose the view depending on your needs in the top right corner by selecting the desired one from the list.

Google Chat and Meet

Google Chat

Google Chat is a simple messaging application. It is integrated in Gmail but is also available as standalone app or web app. Similar to WhatsApp etc. it allows you to have 1:1 chat or chat with a group of people.

For guides and more information about Google Chat, visit Google Chat training and help.

Tips and tricks for Google Chat:

• As with other messaging tools, you can send files and emojis in Google Chat. This can help you to give feedback on idea or share the recent progress on the assignment.

• Google Chat allows you to create group chats as well as rooms. Groups chats are for ad-hoc messaging between a few people while rooms are for messaging between a team. You can read about the differences between group messages and rooms here.

• If you would like to make a video call, it will be created with Google Meet service. All members in the chat will receive a link to the meeting.

Google Meet

Google Meet is video conferencing platform. Google Meet lets you organize video conference calls, voice-only calls and/or screen sharing. Google Meet supports up to 100 participants in a single conference call. You can connect from any computer or phone with a modern web browser or from Google Meet app on Android and iPhone/iPad.

For guides and more information about Google Meet, visit How To - Video Meetings and Google Meet training and help.

Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams is communication and collaboration tool that includes chat, video conferencing, calendar and file storage. Teams is a tool that is deeply integrated with other Microsoft solutions such as OneDrive and Outlook.

You can download Microsoft Teams from Microsoft Teams page or visit Microsoft Teams page for online version.

For more information and guides about Microsoft Teams, visit Microsoft Teams help & learning.

Tips and tricks for Microsoft Teams:

• All of the group activities are done in the Teams section. Here you can create your group/team and create various channels for that team. Channels are good for specific topics.

• Each channel has posts and files tab. You can add additional tabs as well like wiki tab where you can have study plan and deadlines or list of assignment contents and dedicated person for each of them, or Word/Excel tab where you can view and edit the report directly in Teams.

• If needed, you can start a meeting or schedule a meeting from any teams channel. To do that, click Meet or click on the arrow next to Meet for more options. For more information, visit Start an instant meeting in Teams or Schedule a meeting in Teams.

• All files can be found under Files. In channel Files tab you will find everything that has been shared in the specific channel but in the chat Files tab you can find all files shared in that specific chat. In the Files section (located at the left side menu) you can find all files, which have been shared and uploaded in Microsoft Teams including files from chat and teams. Files section also includes all cloud storage services you have added to the Microsoft Teams.

• For discussions in smaller group you can use Chat section. Chat has similar possibilities as Teams section. You can have files tab as well as other tabs added to the chat, and you can make video or audio call directly from the chat.

• Calendar contains all of your scheduled meetings in Microsoft Teams. It is helpful when you need to track meetings from several teams and channels. Please keep in mind that this calendar is not synchronized with Google Calendar so it may not show all your events and activities.