Cloud computing, the act of storing data on remote servers, has allowed for greater writing collaboration. Churches can enlist a variety of members to put together church publications, saving work in a shared document. Imagine the office administrator creating a template in Word, Google docs, or Dropbox Paper, and sending out an e-mail reminder with the share link for church leaders to simply type or paste in their contribution This would free up the office administrator for other tasks that would further facilitate good communication with the congregation.
The following programs were recommended by Melanie Pinola from Zapier.com:
- Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google sites: Share and edit publications with this free, web-based program, with android and iOS compatible apps
- Microsoft Word online: Collaborative documents in a web-based program, android and an iOS apps are also available, create a free profile to explore these options
- Dropbox Paper: This free web only program accommodates a variety of media: images, video, audio, files from Dropbox and Google Docs. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. While it works with your Dropbox account, Dropbox Paper documents don't count against your storage quota. The downside is that there are no apps or offline access to the collaborative documents.