This post is part of App Awareness, our month-long series where we spotlight a different Google Apps Marketplace application every day in April. This week, we’re focusing on applications that make collaboration easier and provide seamless document management. The applications we chose to highlight demonstrate excellent integration with Google Apps, and we either use and love the product or know a lot of other people who do. Have a favorite Marketplace app of your own? Tweet it to @bettercloud.

Smartsheet – Manage Projects and Collaborate Online

Smartsheet turns traditional spreadsheets into collaborative project management tools. The application’s myriad features include collapsible sub-tasks, which keep complicated projects organized, automated task alerts and reminders to keep collaborators up-to-date on their newest assignments and summary reports across all project sheets, giving users full insight into project progression.

Google Apps Integration

Smartsheet’s deep integration with numerous features of Google Apps make the product so useful. In fact, the product’s heavy integration with Google Apps is one of the reasons that Smartsheet was selected as a founding member of the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps.

Smartsheet allows users to attach Google Docs to any task row, so all aspects of the project are kept in a centralized location. Integration with Google Contacts allows users to share their projects with any contacts and collaborate in real time. Additionally, the ability to message collaborators keeps projects on time. Smartsheet can sync task assignments with Google Calendar, another fool-proof way to keep your project on schedule and once a task row is updated, collaborators receive a notification via Gmail, where users can update the project from within the email.

Why We Like It

We use Smartsheet to manage long-term projects that have a lot of moving parts and involve several different people. In fact, we’re using Smartsheet to manage ‘App Awareness Month.’ We’re able to create rows for each week and sub-rows for the applications featured each week. Once tasks are assigned to individual collaborators, we set deadlines and reminders to keep the project on schedule. Once a post is complete, we attach the Google Doc to the appropriate task row. Finally, once Docs are approved for publishing, it’s marked down on the Smartsheet project and task owners are automatically notified.

Smartsheet offers multiple pricing plans ranging from $15.95 per month to $149 per month depending on your needs. To install the application, visit the product listing in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Stay tuned for more of our favorite Apps in the Google Apps Marketplace!

Can you guess tomorrow’s app?
Hint: We use it to diagram processes for application development

About App Awareness Month

At BetterCloud, we’ve seen first hand the impact Google Apps can have on a business: extreme cost cutting, streamlined management processes, enhanced collaboration and mobility and much more.

During our time as an independent software provider focused 100% on the Google Apps platform, we’ve interacted with thousands of organizations using Google Apps and we’ve discovered one common trend: knowledge and awareness of third-party applications that extend and enhance Google Apps is extremely limited.

This April, we’re devoting the BetterCloud blog to educating Google Apps users on the wide array of applications available for Google Apps today. These Google Apps extensions not only enhance native Google Apps functionalities, but bring a diverse range of services from CRM, to expense management, process and systems management and more to your Google Apps environment. More importantly, adding these applications to Google Apps allows you to retire expensive legacy software licenses and creates a more cohesive organization.

Disclaimer: The companies appearing in this month-long series have not been contacted nor consulted regarding their inclusion. Our choices are based solely on reader suggestions and our experiences with the applications.