April 26th, 2007
Google Apps To-Do Item #329: Fix navigation on error messages
I'm building a to-do list as though I was the product manager for Google Apps — a list that's based on my usage of the product. For more information on how this project got started, go here. And here is the growing to-do list. And there aren't 329 items on the list yet. The idea is that the list is probably pretty long and I'm missing a bunch of items. So, I pulled "329" out of the air.
Here's what happened. Today, my multimedia producer Matt Conner attempted to share a Google Docs document with me. To start collaborating over a Google Doc document, the first thing the creator of the document must do is issue an invitation to the other users that will involved in the collaboration. The invitation is sent through e-mail and it contains a direct link to the shared document. Through the Google Doc interface, Matt issued an invitation to me, but he mistakenly sent it to my CNET e-mail address. Unfortunately, my CNET e-mail address is not associated with any of my Google accounts. When I received the e-mail in my CNET inbox and clicked on the link, my browser dove into Google Docs (and by way of the cookies on my machine, it did so under my existing Google account) and I was immediately denied access to the document since my Google account and my CNET e-mail address are unrelated to each other. The net result was the error message below (note: the screenshot was doctored for fit and security by obscurity…"david@gmail.com" is a fictitious Google account).
So, what's wrong with this picture? Well, now that I'm signed into Google Docs and I'm on a Google Docs page, there should be a way for me to easily navigate to my Google Docs home page (the page where all of the documents I have access to are visibly listed). Such navigational linkage appears on other Google application pages (Gmail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Calendar, etc.). So why not here too?
