Google Docs and Sheets on Android now support add-ons

Google is giving you one less reason to think of the Docs and Sheets mobile apps as simple document viewers. You can now install powerful add-ons for Google’s mobile office utilities.

What are add-ons for Docs and Sheets and why do you need them? These Android add-ons allow third-party applications to better integrate with Google’s productivity apps.

For instance, if you’ve ever wanted to sign a document or import CRM data into a Doc or Sheet file, now you can with the Docusign and ProsperWorks add-ons. You can also harvest text from outside documents thanks to Scanbot’s OCR add-on, and feed it into your Drive documents or use AppSheet to export Sheets data to an app you’re building. All of these changes will then be reflected across your Google Drive account, automatically.

These add-ons, along with several others, are available now for download in the dedicated collection on Google Play. You can also install these add-ons from Docs and Sheets’ add-on menu.

Google initially teamed up with eight partners on building out integrations for third-party software and the mobile versions of its office tools, but has an open invitation calling on devs to bring more add-ons for mobile. If you’re interested in building integrations between your app and Google’s mobile office products, you can learn more at Google’s Developer website.

So, will add-ons encourage you to work more from your mobile devices, or would you still rather reserve the real work for when you’re in front of something with a monitor, mouse and keyboard? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.