Google’s ‘smart chips’ now let you view other apps’ project data inside Google Docs

You can now embed third-party app “smart chips” into your Google Doc after the company announced yesterday that the feature is now available for both Google Workspace users and those with personal Google accounts. Google announced it was opening the feature to third parties last year as part of its ongoing “smart canvas” revamp of its office suite that has brought other features like a pageless layout to Google Docs.

To use third-party smart chips, you’ll first have to have an admin or user install the app’s add-on from the Google Workspace Marketplace. Then, you can simply grab a share link from the third-party app source and paste it into your doc. From there, you’ll be prompted to hit the tab key, which pops the smart chip into the doc and lets you preview the app’s info and work status, so people collaborating within a Google Doc can quickly see where that project’s progress is without leaving the document.

How the chips are implemented depends on the developer. For instance, according to the apps’ Workspace Marketplace pages, Figma “allows users to pull interactive previews of Figma and FigJam files into Google Docs, so that teammates can easily reference the latest designs and project work in context,” while the Atlassian Cloud add-on can let you attach relevant Jira issues so you can track them inside a working Doc.

I tried it out and was able to get the integration up and running with Figma in a matter of just a couple of minutes — it was pretty cool. Once the link was pasted in, I just hovered over the Figma link, and after a moment, it popped up with a preview image of the project, along with who created it and when it was last updated.