Google Smart Chips Quickfire Guide

Danny Denhard
4 min readFeb 20, 2022

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Google Docs Smart Chips Are Really Smart & EASY. Here Are Some Of The Best Smart Chips I Have Found That Will Save You Time & Energy.

Styling: Heading

In Google doc you can now trigger almost anything useful with the @ simple and then type the command. If you type @ + heading you will see not only the styling but links to files (your documents in drive) — making styling easy and referencing docs saves time & less emailing.

Title and Subtitle

The same works for @ + title.

This works if you already have content written out so type in front of the title on the tag and the styling will change. Likewise, you can insert a link to a file with the naming convention

Mentioning Colleagues

My personal favourite is mentioning someone @ + name will give you numerous options, it will convert that mention into their name and prompt you to provide access. Super easy and allows you to quickly add access.

File

Adding @ + file allows you to look at files and folders, also works really well in calendar events. This is super useful if you are trying to embrace asynchronous communication or communicate better through documents.

Date & Dates

Also works with @ + date, this is great when keeping internal notes and documentation. You will start to adopt this quickly with calendar events and creating a timeline in documents. Emails can be reduced by effectively managing via Google Docs

Tables & Table Smart Chips

I personally love a table in a document, everyone should understand a table and is a great way to structure your work and future workflow.

You can do so much within @ + table command. You can style quickly and then add multiple smart chips inside of a table with @ + commands.

As you will see below, this is probably the smartest way to leverage smart chips together.

Notes & Styling

Many people who take notes in meetings worry about styling, @ + list will be a really quick chip you will use.

“Break”

A little bonus is adding in commands like @ + break that adds in quick page components and will even pull in calendar events.

The latest Google chip is dropdown. Ideal for progress updates and predefined updates. Enter @ + dropdown.

You will have the ability to create a new dropdown chip or re-use an older dropdown chip. Great for teams to stick to naming conventions.

Final Look

If you would like to reuse a dropdown chip type @ + dropdown and then select the already configured chip (see pic below unnder “configuration”)

All in all this is a great update and aligns well with Notion (product recyclement with some improvements will help Google Docs and Drive compete).

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Danny Denhard
Danny Denhard

Written by Danny Denhard

Fixing the broken world of work through Focus The Strategy + Culture Consultancy. Ex Marketing & Growth Leader. Ex Crowdfunding business leader.