Spotlight: Great public templates in the template gallery

Three months ago, we opened up the template gallery to everyone. Since then, we have seen a lot of great templates that cover many different use cases, from fun and imaginative to purely functional. We want to share some with you.

First, let's take a look at one template contributor, Jenny Blake, who has created a number of templates to help you think about your career and your life in general.

Template: Life checklist template
Genre: Life planning
We all get very wrapped up in our busy lives and forget to think of the 'big picture'. This template makes it easy to remember and keep track of what's important in your life.

Template: Professional development strategy
Genre: Career development planning
The path of our career is extremely important and having the right plan is essential to success. This template helps you create a step by step plan from six months down the road to the more long term future. It will help you better understand your goals and where you need to go in order to get to the next step in your career trajectory.

Template: Job interview one sheeter
Genre: Career development-interviewing
Have you ever gone into an interview and weren't prepared for a certain question? The best way to avoid this uncomfortable situation is to be organized and prepared. This template should cover all the basics and helps you better know and articulate your story when interviewing for that important position.

Here are three additional templates highlighting a variet of use cases.

Templates: A 2000 purple calendar, January 2010 monthly calendar
Creator: on-lineordering.com
Genre: Organization
With 2010 just around the corner, choose from 6 different 2010 calendar colors to start organizing your year. If you prefer to organize your life month by month instead of a yearly glance, simply upload the January 2010 template below when the New Year hits and you'll be able to have a month by month look at what's ahead.

Template: Maths planning template
Creator: James Mansell
Genre: Lesson planning
For all you math teachers or teachers of any subject really, this is a lesson plan template which will guide you through a days lesson from beginning to end on a weekly basis.

Templates: Paper writing outline #1, Paper writing outline #2
Creator: Lutz Hohle
Genre: Paper writing
Whether you're writing a book or a paper for school, these templates provide a nice outline for many types of writing, including ways to reference citations and headings to break up the various sections of the writing.

If you like what you see, click on any template above and choose 'Use this template'. This will create a copy of the template and store it in your docs list so you can use it and share with others.

Do you have a Google document, presentation or spreadsheet you think others could use as a starting point? Contribute it to the public template gallery.

Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Docs User Operations

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Public Template Gallery submissions now open to everyone

Since we launched the public template gallery last year, people who use Google Docs have been asking for a way to share their own templates with all Google Docs users by uploading them to the public gallery.

Today, we've opened up the template gallery to the public and added a "Submit a template" link in the top right corner of the gallery page. If you have a great spreadsheet for planning a family vacation or a tried and tested form for collecting customer feedback, you can now submit your template to the gallery and anyone using Google Docs will be able to try it out.

Templates can be documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and even forms. Other people can preview your templates, and then click "use this template" to create their own copy for personal use. They can also rate your templates to help other users find the most useful templates.

Once you upload a template to the gallery, you can also embed your template (with a thumbnail image) into your own website or blog.

As before, the public template gallery makes it easy to sort and browse the templates by category, usage, rating, and document type. Do you have a document, presentation, spreadsheet or form that you want to add to the public template gallery? To get started, follow these steps:

1. Go to the "Google Docs Template Gallery"
2. Click the "Submit a template" link
3. Select the document you want to add to the template gallery, enter in a description, choose an appropriate category and click "Submit template"

If you're using Google Apps, check out this blog post about sharing templates within your own organization. We look forward to seeing what you create and upload to the gallery. If you have any feedback on the public template gallery, please let us know at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Docs.

Posted by: Valerie Blechar, Software Engineer

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New Template: 2009 College Basketball Tournament Bracket

The first round of the 2009 NCAA Division I men's college basketball tournament starts tomorrow. For many of us in the U.S., it's a time when we root for our favorite college teams and engage in some friendly competition with co-workers and college buddies to see who's going to win the National Championship in Detroit.



In preparation for this year's tournament, I used my 20% project time to create the tournament bracket template above, all within a Google Docs spreadsheet. To make this spreadsheet work, I created a GoogleTournament function that lets you look up a plethora of information about the NCAA tournament including team names, records, seeds, scores, game times and even the location of a game. Every time you check out the spreadsheet (and if you're like most college basketball fans - multiple times each day) you'll see the latest results.

Since you can add collaborators to your spreadsheet, it's easy to engage in some friendly rivalry (i.e. trash talk) right within the spreadsheet. The template includes 10 blank brackets that each of your friends can fill out. No need to print out and fill-in blank paper brackets. There's one sheet that shows whose picks are the best.

If you are brave enough to share your picks with the world, you can publish your sheet or the entire spreadsheet. When you're in a fan forum discussing the tournament, you can just refer to the published spreadsheet to show off your picks.

Not satisfied with my basic spreadsheet? Create your own using the GoogleTournament function.

Posted by: John Danaher, Software Engineer

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New Templates: Embedding spreadsheets in your website

Did you know that you can publish a spreadsheet and embed it in your website or blog? An embedded spreadsheet is a perfect way to display an event calendar, team checklist, or your favorite list of things. Publishing a spreadsheet is really flexible. You can choose which parts of the spreadsheet to share with the world: all sheets, certain sheets, even a range of cells. Any changes you (and other collaborators) make to the spreadsheet will be visible to your website visitors.

To make this easier, we've recently added five spreadsheet templates to the templates gallery that have been formatted nicely for websites. Special thanks goes to Jon Wittwer of Vertex42.com for creating these templates:

1. Embedded Schedule



2. Embedded Calendar



3. Reading List



4. Countdown Timer



5. Quote of the Day




Each template has a link to instructions for how to publish and embed the spreadsheet. For more ideas on how to embed spreadsheets, see Jon's list of over 20 ideas for embedded spreadsheets.

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager

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Meeting your New Year's resolutions? We'd like to hear from you

About a month ago, people around the world made a New Year's resolution. Common resolutions include losing weight, eating right, managing debt, or saving money. Since we launched our templates gallery last year, I've been closely watching the number of people using each category of templates in the gallery.

Since the beginning of the new year, usage of personal finance templates has jumped more than 40 percent over normal usage. Resumes templates have also been popular -- understandably so -- given the state of the worldwide economy.

You are busy creating budgets, getting fit, and updating your resumes.

And I'd like to hear how it's going...

• Are you sharing a workout spreadsheet with your training buddies to track progress as a group?
• Have you created a budget to get your financial house in order?
• Have you made progress in your job search by creating an online resume or CV?
  

Willing to share your story (and possibly be featured on this blog)? Tell us your story. I look forward to reading all of them.

Posted by: Andrew Chang, Marketing Manager

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