A better web-powered workspace for today's workplace

Monday, November 16, 2009

Nearly two years ago, we launched Google Sites to make it easier, faster and more affordable for employees to create and collaborate in rich, dynamic sites, even without any technical background. We’re seeing companies large and small gravitate to Google Sites, shifting away from legacy on-premises workspace solutions.

Our customers really tell the story best. Ron Brister, Senior Manager of Worldwide IT Operations for Serena Software, says, “We’re moving our project workspace collaboration to Google Sites because it requires less expertise and administration than Microsoft SharePoint, and it’s easier for employees to use. Better ease-of-use directly translates into more fluid information-sharing, which helps our teams move faster and cross-pollinate good ideas.”

Luke Leonhard, Web Services Manager for Brady Corporation adds, “Google Sites is a very efficient way for our teams to aggregate and share information together. With our old IBM Lotus Quickr solution, it took seven clicks and three page refreshes for employees to publish new information internally. Google Sites makes it just two clicks. Because Sites makes it so easy, coworkers are sharing information more freely than ever before.”

Bill Behrman, Stanford University Associate Consultant Professor adds, “Typically, public information officers create press releases and other content in Word documents, email these to their Web people, and wait for the Web folks to update the website. With Google Sites, the Santa Clara Public Health Department public information officers were able to directly and instantly publish and update content on the web. This brings critical information to local residents without delay, and government agencies don't need to worry about their servers being overwhelmed with website traffic.”

Today, we’re helping companies move to Google Sites even more quickly with templates for sites like employee intranets, project tracking sites, team sites, employee profile pages and more. Templates give you a head-start with page layouts, navigation links, embedded gadgets, content, themes and other site attributes. Employees can submit their own templates to a private gallery for colleagues to use, so the gallery will become even more useful over time.

Example template: employee intranet site


If your business is ready to move beyond traditional collaboration hardware and software, learn more about Google Apps (which includes Google Sites). You can try Premier Edition free for 30 days, or contact our corporate sales team to begin exploring a larger deployment.

We also invite you to join us on Thursday, November 19th at 10:00 a.m. PST (1:00 p.m. EST) for a web seminar on Google Sites. You'll learn how your business can efficiently collaborate with Google Sites, including how to use the new site templates features. Register here.

Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager, Google Apps team

4 comments:

Dr. Laraine said...

This sounds like both a productivity booster and a joy to use. We will have someone attend the seminar.

luckylou said...

I have a problem with the limited permission levels of Google Sites. If you have a file upload page, the only permission level that allows users to upload files is the same level that allows page editing and deleting other user's uploads. Even if you restrict your site to trusted users, someone could decide to see what this or that button does and then your site is messed up or someone else's uploads are deleted. That's not going to work for a lot of people, especially at a business level. More specificity in permissions would be appreciated.

I'd also like to be able to manage user accounts for sites instead of having to rely on users outside our Google Apps Premier for Domains domain to create their own Google IDs. I know I can already control which users have access, but it doesn't work very well telling a client they need to go through some signup process before they can access the site we're asking them to visit. If I can do that in advance it would be so much better. What often happens is they end up sharing one ID and then that opens up abuse or even just realization of the included Gmail account, etc. for that one user and it just gets weird.

D said...

And how do I do in order to use the template above? I can't find the template anywere in my Google Sites account.

Triston said...

Did the seminar discuss the impact Wave will have on Google Sites?

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