My bridge buddies and I constantly argue over whose turn it is to bring beer and snacks, so I want to create a simple spreadsheet that people can use to sign up for stuff, but I don’t really want to have us email it around because we’ll lose data. I’m a big fan of Google Docs so I’m thinking that a shared spreadsheet would be the way to go, but I don’t want to have a password required. Just a secret URL that they can use instead: if you know the link, you can edit the spreadsheet. Doable?
I thought Bridge was supposed to be a pleasant, sophisticated game. Are you sure your group of buddies isn’t involved in a Texas Hold-Em tournament or something? Not that it matters, because what you’re asking about is actually an interesting, rather generic question and one that’s just as applicable to a church group, school, family reunion, neighborhood pot-luck or any other time when you want to have a group of people simultaneously editing or signing up for specific slots.
Google Docs is perfect for this too, and while you can create a simple document in the Google equivalent of Microsoft Word, it’s more interesting – and often easier to figure out – if you can create a spreadsheet with its individual cells and quick way to visualize multiple slots for signups, etc.
For a lot of people, passwords are confusing too, so I get that part of it. Though, really, if you can play Bridge, you can type in a password. 🙂
I logged in to my Google Mail account, then clicked on “Documents”, then while I was fiddling with the spreadsheet for a school event signup form, here’s what I did…
There are a few ways to get to the privacy and settings information for a given document, but immediately adjacent to the name of the document Google Docs shows you the current security status of the document:
You can see that by default the spreadsheet is set to be “Private to only me”. That’s not what I want, so I’ll click on those words to change the security status:
A click on “Change” shows me the different options there are for a document in Google Docs:
As I’ve highlighted, I’m going to choose “anyone with the link” rather than make the signup sheet completely public. I’m not 100% sure of the difference, but suspect that there’s a way you can see what public documents I have made available and if I chose “public” this shows up too, whereas choosing “anyone with the link” means it won’t be listed, but it’s still editable for anyone who knows the URL.
In addition to making it visible to people with the link, I also want to make it editable by anyone who knows the link for the spreadsheet too, and to accomplish that, I need to check another box lower down in this window:
Click on “Save” and it shows the secret URL:
I’ve blurred out the specifics of the URL for my school signup sheet, but you get the idea. Now you can simply copy and paste that URL into an email you share with your poker, uhm, bridge playing pals and you now have a neat signup form that can be tweaked and modified whenever you want!