Improve collaboration in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides with Activity dashboard

G Suite makes it easier for users to collaborate efficiently and effectively. An important part of collaboration is deciding how and when to follow up with others.

To help inform these decisions, G Suite introducing Activity dashboard in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. It’s a feature that lets users with edit access see who has viewed the file and when they viewed it.

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.

As of March 7th, G Suite administrators have access to new Admin console settings to control the Activity dashboard feature for their domain or the organizational units (OUs) within it.

On March 21st, end users will begin to see Activity dashboard in Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

Understand when user viewing data will be visible

A file’s Activity dashboard contains viewing data, which is information on who viewed the file and when they viewed it.

The viewing data that’s shown in the dashboard depends on both your organization’s Admin console settings and a user’s individual settings:

• As an admin, you can determine whether viewing data from your organization’s users is shown in Activity dashboard. Specifically, you can choose to make viewing data for your organization’s users visible, not visible, or only visible within your organization.
  See the “Review and change your organization’s Activity dashboard settings” section below for more information.
• If you make viewing data visible for your organization, your users can still choose to exclude their individual viewing data from showing in Activity dashboard via their personal privacy settings. If an admin makes their organization’s viewing data not visible, your end users won’t be able to choose to share their viewing data.
  See the “End user controls for Activity dashboard” section below for more info.

Users with edit access to a file and who belong to the same domain as the file’s owner will be able to see that file’s Activity dashboard and any viewing data which is available in it.

When Activity dashboard becomes available to users, they’ll see a notification in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides that explains the feature and their control options.
Activity dashboard will only show viewing data for a user after they see this notification. It will not display any activity from before they saw it.

All users will have access to privacy settings that allow them to control whether their views show up in Activity dashboard at any time.

For more information and to change settings, users can see the Activity dashboard Help Center article for users.

Editions:

Activity dashboard access: Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, Education, and Nonprofit editions only. Users will be able to see the Activity dashboard for a file if they have edit access to that file.

Activity dashboard viewing data visibility settings: All users have access to privacy settings for Activity dashboard, as data from users in all G Suite editions can appear in the dashboard.