Google Docs is a great way to keep your work organized and accessible. However, if you’re like most people, you may not have the time or resources to integrate it with Outlook. That’s why I’ve created this guide to show you how to do it in just a few minutes.

Harmony for Google Docs is an exciting new plugin for Outlook 2007 (a version for Outlook 2010 is in the works).  It lets you integrate your Google Docs account with Outlook via a sidebar.  From this, you can find any of your Google docs or upload a new document, and then you can open the document to view or edit it in Outlook.

Getting Started

Download Harmony for Google Docs (link below), and install as normal.  Make sure Outlook is closed before you run the install.

Next time you open Outlook, the new Harmony sidebar will automatically open.  Enter your Google Account info, and click Sign In.

Now, all of your Google Docs will show up in the sidebar.

Double-click any file to open it in Outlook.  You may have to sign-in to Google Docs the first time you open a document.

Here’s a Google Doc open in Outlook.  Notice that everything works, including full editing.

All Google Docs features worked great in our tests except for the new drawings tool.  When we tried to insert a drawing, Outlook had a script error.  This was the only problem we had with Harmony, and could be due to an interaction between Google Drawings and Outlook’s rendering engine.

Harmony makes it easy to find any file in your Google Docs account.  You can search for a file, or sort your files by type, recentness, and more.

You can also easily add any document to Google Docs directly from Harmony.  You can drag and drop any document, including one attached to an email, to the Harmony sidebar, and it will directly upload to your Google Docs account.

And, when you’re writing a new email or reply, click the Show Documents button to open the Harmony sidebar.  From here, you can add documents as usual and share it with email recipient.

Conclusion

We previously covered a similar app OffiSync which combines Google doc features with MS Office. However, Harmony makes it much easier to use Google Apps along with Outlook.  This gives you an easy and efficient way to collaborate on documents with coworkers, all without leaving Outlook.  And, if your company uses SharePoint instead of Google Docs, Harmony offers a SharePoint edition that integrates with Outlook just as easily!

Link

Download Harmony for Google Docs (via cnet)