CentricMinds SaaS Intranet now with G Suite Integration

Why G Suite integration?

Teams who use G Suite enjoy the power of real-time collaboration, the flexibility of just needing a web browser to do work and the security provided by Google. But the user experience of Drive is still twentieth century. A rabbit warren of folders, visually opaque interface and no ability to customize the user experience. Content management has evolved beyond the simple folder hierarchy and now encompasses the complexities of web content, social engagement and personalization. CentricMinds enables teams to create powerful internal communications, exposing your content from G Suite to drive engagement and deliver personalized content experiences for your team.

Once you’ve connected your Google Service account with your CentricMinds instance, the G Suite integration provides your team with the following.

Google Drive

CentricMinds allows you to configure and map Drive folders within the CentricMinds Drive. Once your Google Service account is in place, you can display Drive folders and their contents within your CentricMinds Intranet. Clicking on the file title will retrieve the document from Google Drive and display a file preview. Users can also click on the download link to retrieve the selected file from Google Drive (including the conversion of a Google Doc to an MS Word document format, and a Google Sheet to an MS Excel document format if required). Users can also choose to preview different versions of G Suite documents from within CentricMinds Drive. As your team continues to collaborate on Docs, Sheets and Slides, all versioning activity will be synchronized and displayed within your CentricMinds Intranet.

Once your Docs, Sheets and Slides are exposed from within CentricMinds, you can then leverage the tools of the CentricMinds Intranet environment. Add tags to build dynamic document collections, create workplaces for promoting G Suite content and display G Suite content within Intranet web page content.

Google People Directory

In the same way CentricMinds integrates with Microsoft Active Directory to display user profiles, the integration with Google People Directory will display team profiles within the CentricMinds Team Directory through the synchronization of groups. Uniquely, CentricMinds can support the display of profiles from three sources; CentricMinds User Accounts (users created and managed natively within CentricMinds), Microsoft Active Directory accounts and Google People Directory accounts. Once accounts are synchronized with the CentricMinds Team Directory, you can then apply additional metadata like Location, Professional Expertise, Associated Projects and more.

Google Calendar

CentricMinds provides Event & Task Management tools that support synchronization with Google Calendar. Create an Event Calendar and display events from your Google Calendar alongside events created and managed within CentricMinds. Users can also create events within CentricMinds and synchronize them back to your Google Calendar. You can also create forms and associate them with events and tasks, and also associate media like videos with events as well.

How do I start?

Getting started with the CentricMinds Intranet and G Suite integration is easy. In order to connect your G Suite account with CentricMinds, you’ll first need to have a Google Service account.

Step 1. Create a Google Service account for authorizing your G Suite account with CentricMinds by following this article.

Step 2. Create a free 14-day trial of CentricMinds.

Step 3. Once you’ve logged into your CentricMinds Intranet trial, navigate to your account by clicking on your profile in the top right of the screen.

Step 4. From the left-hand menu, click on Your Integrations.

Step 5. You will see the Google Drive integration presented at the top of the screen. Copy and paste the contents of your service accounts’ private key. This will be a JSON file received from the creation of the Google Service account.

Step 6. Click on Save.

Step 7. Share one or more Google Drive Folders with your services account.