Now available with Google Apps: Google Alerts

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Alerts
No organization is an island. If you’re in business, it’s critical to be connected to what’s happening in your market and to hear what your customers are saying. If you’re in education, you need to stay on top of the latest announcements and innovations within your field. But given the immense amount of data being created every day on the Web, how can you possibly keep track of new information as it's published?

Now Google Apps customers can tackle this problem using Google Alerts with their Apps accounts. Google Alerts is a content monitoring service that notifies you when Google’s search engine encounters new content - such as web pages, newspaper articles, or blogs - that you’re interested in from all across the Web. Simply enter your search terms and Google Alerts will notify you via email whenever Google finds new results that match your terms. To avoid information overload, you can configure Google Alerts to send one email per day or per week, compressing the most important results into a brief message.


Once you’re up and running with Google Alerts, try setting up an alert on the name of your organization or industry. Use quotes if your search term is longer than one word (for example, “small business financing” or “solar power”) - you’ll get more accurate results. Then wait and see what turns up in your inbox. You might be surprised to find out who’s writing about you!

Learn more and get started
Google Alerts can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information or answers to specific questions about Alerts, visit our Help Center pages.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Alerts at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Oli Gaymond, Product Manager, Google Alerts

Note: Google Alerts may not be available in all areas.

Improving team collaboration and productivity with Google Sites

Effective collaboration has become a key driver to improve team productivity. Project teams, often located across disparate locations and time zones, produce and distribute content in different formats and platforms. Teams need to consolidate relevant information in one place that’s easy to navigate and retrieve. Contributors and reviewers have specific needs to manage the creative process, maintain the project plan and keep all stakeholders informed.

With Google Sites, you can easily manage projects and create, share, find, and publish content across your organization. Easy to use features such as site and page templates and embedded documents make it easy for any user to create useful sites. Google Sites can be used for company intranets, portals, team project and more. Furthermore, the Google Sites API gives third-party developers a way to access, integrate with, and extend the platform. The To-Do gadget is an example of extending a Google Site with a tool that can enable teams to track and manage tasks.

Join Scott Johnston, Group Product Manager of Google Sites, and me for a live webinar on Tuesday, December 7th to learn more about improving collaboration and team productivity. I’ll start with an overview of Google Sites and highlight features that can help teams be more productive. We will be featuring a live demo.

Register to attend the live webinar on 12/7 @ 10am PST / 1pm EST / 6 pm GMT.

We hope to see you there.

Posted by Lisa Ding, Google Sites Team

Google Apps Marketplace - Project Management highlights, 11/30/10

Editor's note: This is the latest in a series of posts on apps in the Google Apps Marketplace that have caught our eye here at Google. We’ll do this every so often as we see things we'd like to share. Look for the label "marketplace highlights" and subscribe to the series if you'd like to stay tuned.

Today, more than 3 million businesses and thousands of universities not only have access to Google’s core suite of applications, they also get easy access to 200+ of the best apps on the web through the Google Apps Marketplace. These installable Marketplace apps are easy to try and buy, and offer single sign-on and hassle-free access from the Google universal navigation bar. Beyond the convenience of single sign-on, many apps integrate with users’ Gmail inbox, Google Docs, Google contacts, and Google calendar to improve productivity even further.

Across these businesses and schools, there’s one thing all users likely have in common: they have projects to complete. The good news is whether you have a product to build or market, a research study to publish, or an internal project to deliver, there's likely an app in the Marketplace to help you and your type of project succeed.

And since projects come in all shapes and sizes, we’ve categorized the apps in to 5 groups based on their focus, and then further ordered them by most installed first. This should help you better understand which of these 30 apps are right for your projects.

Project Management
Project management, with a focus on planning and tracking

Mavenlink - an end-to-end solution for professional services delivery
Gantter - powerful desktop scheduling right from your browser
Smartsheet - online project task sheets w/dependencies, Gantt charts & files
Zoho Project - beyond planning...get your projects done faster

Viewpath - manage project tasks and resources with drag/drop simplicity
Cohuman - task-centric communications to synchronize people & teams
Comindwork - fully customizable Gantt views, workflows and to-dos

Teamup - anytime, anywhere project tracking for businesses of all sizes
WorkforceTrack - online collaboration, reporting, time tracking and billing

Project Collaboration
Project management, with a focus on communication and sharing

Manymoon - social productivity, project management & task management
Teambox - project management software and social collaboration
Bright Green - intuitive project collaboration - Agile, Kanban and Waterfall
LumoFlow - project workspaces that motivate people to participate
Glasscubes - organize your day to day work - manage projects, info & people
Emforge - project platform with a wide set of tools for distributed teams
DeskAway - simple yet powerful web-based project collaboration tool

Task Management
Project management, with focus on task list sharing and collaboration

RapidTask - make project management as easy as email
Producteev - turn your emails into tasks
GQueues - share lists, assign tasks, get reminders, stay organized
Thymer - project management and task planning for people who hate it
ToBeeDo - simple online task management service with time tracking

Timesheets
Project management, with a focus on tracking and billing hours

gTrax - simple time tracking app to manage resources & project budgets
Harvest - simple time tracking and timesheets for teams and freelancers
Paymo - easy online project management, time tracking and billing app
BeeBole - a fast timesheet for teams - fully customizable.
TrackMyHours - a powerful time tracking & billing solution
Cube - start tracking time and expenses in less than 15 seconds

Product Development Projects
Project management, with a focus on software development

Acunote - enterprise online project management and Scrum software
Jira Studio - software dev tool suite with Subversion and agile management
Gravity - a simple but powerful tool to help you manage agile projects

If you’re looking to improve the way you manage and collaborate on projects, we encourage you to evaluate these apps. We’re adding new apps to the Marketplace all the time, so continue to check back for apps for all your organization’s needs.

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise

Panama City promotes open government with Google Apps

Editor’s note: Today our guest blogger is Richard Ferrick, Network Administrator for Panama City, Florida, one of the first governments in the country to adopt Google Apps for Government. Join Richard for a live chat on GovLoop this Thursday, December 2 at 2pm ET / 11am PT / 6pm GMT.


Panama City, Florida is a beautiful resort destination on Florida’s Emerald Coast; our white sand beaches attract vacationers year round. We’re also home to 37,000 residents who care a lot about open access to their local government. Our city government makes it a priority to make our operations transparent to citizens, businesses, and visitors alike. At the same time, with a three-person IT department supporting nearly 250 city employees, finding ways to work smarter and conserve funds is essential.

Google Apps has freed our IT team from maintaining email servers and updating websites to focus on important transparency initiatives. We started with a 50-employee pilot of Google Apps in 2007 and gave all city employees the Google email and collaboration tools in 2008. Earlier this year, we became one of the first users of Google Apps for Government to take advantage of its government-specific security measures.

We decided to move our public facing website to Google Sites after experiencing a catastrophic server crash with our old site this spring. We were happy with our previous website, but now we like our site even more. Google empowers people in other city departments to update the website with ease. For example, major changes are underway for Panama City’s Comprehensive Plan. Planning staff post announcements, updates and amendments as they happen. Human resources adds new job postings and other departments collect input from residents using a simple form. IT no longer needs to make every update ─ and when we do, it can be from anywhere. This keeps the website more current and saves valuable time. Plus, we’ve had a lot of compliments from citizens who say everything is easy to find.


Google Apps also simplifies finding information to respond to public records requests. The state puts a high priority on the public's right of access to government information. This daunting task is now simplified with the email archiving capabilities of Google Message Discovery. What would take hours for a single request now takes minutes.

What’s more, mobility limitations for the staff are now a thing of the past. Previously, employees were forced to use a VPN connection and remote desktop. With Google Apps, no VPN is required. Some staff even access Apps securely from personal mobile devices. Employee productivity is at an all time high.

With time savings like these, our IT staff has more time to focus on open government initiatives. In 1967, the state passed the “Sunshine Law” establishing a basic right of access to most public government meetings. This used to mean people could attend these meetings in person, but that isn’t always practical. We wanted to make the proceedings more broadly accessible. So, we added live streaming of all public meetings to pcgov.org. Then we set up our own YouTube channel, making past meetings readily available to the public. We will also start testing video chat for use during city meetings, and look for more ways we can use Google Apps to open up our government.

Please join Thursday’s live chat on GovLoop to learn more.

by Richard Ferrick, Network Administrator / Web Development, Panama City, Florida

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

Now available with Google Apps: AdWords

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google AdWords
Every business wants to connect with its customers and this is often one of the goals that a business spends the most time on. Now, your business can more easily use the power of Google AdWords to connect with your customers using your Google Apps account.

AdWords gives you the ability to reach more than 80% of Internet users* as they are actively searching for information about products and services on Google and Google’s advertising network. AdWords enables you to connect with your potential customers at the right time with the right message, by letting you select Google search keywords related to your product or services so that users searching for these keywords can see your advertisements.

Setting up an account takes only minutes and controlling costs is easy - you only pay when people click on your ad and land on your site, and you can set a daily budget to limit your total spend. AdWords also offers great flexibility, allowing you to change your budget on the fly. Plus, if your business serves certain geographies, you have the ability to target your ads only to people searching in a particular state, city, or region.



Now that AdWords works with Google Apps, collaborating with other people in your organization to manage campaigns in AdWords is simple as well. You can invite colleagues to access your AdWords account with their existing Google Apps accounts and grant them differing levels of access depending on how much or little control you’d like them to have. Whether your business has one person that handles all of the online marketing or a team that works collaboratively, AdWords can accommodate your needs.



Also, in addition to collaborating in AdWords itself, tight integration with Google Apps lets you export your reports to Google Docs in a single click. This lets you share your campaign data with colleagues and collaborate in real-time in the same way that you already collaborate on other documents and spreadsheets using Google Docs with your Apps account.



Be sure to check out some success stories from businesses of all sizes, including First Crush Restaurant, which was able to increase traffic to its website by 400%, or Happy Hound dog daycare and boarding facility, which gets over 90% of its business through AdWords.

Learn more and get started
Google AdWords can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about AdWords you can visit our information page or you can find the latest news and tips at the AdWords Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google AdWords at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Kit Broussard, AdWords Team

Note: Google AdWords may not be available in all areas.
*Source: comScore Media Metrix (US, May 2009)

Z Gallerie goes Google and moves its 55 retail stores to Google Apps

Editor’s note: Today our guest blogger is Howard Kolodny, CIO of Z Gallerie. To learn more about other companies “going Google” check out our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google Cloud Calculator.

Z Gallerie is a Southern California-based home furnishing and accessories retailer with 55 stores in 19 states. We were started in 1979 by 3 siblings as a poster shop and have grown into a national furnishings store with over 1,000 employees.

We started looking at Google Apps to solve a key problem. In our stores, the only computers we have are also cash registers, so data security is definitely a concern. We didn’t want any confidential information stored on store computers. Moving to a 100% web option with Google Apps instantly improved data security at our retail stores. Now we don’t have to install software on hundreds of computers all over the country, and there is no need to worry about data being accessed on those computers, because it’s all safely stored and protected in the cloud. Plus we’re able to offer a greatly improved email service for our employees.

In addition to added security, we’ve also seen improved productivity since moving to Apps. Before we switched to Google Apps, we had an antiquated email system that made it hard to find emails, and word processing software that hindered collaboration and forced us to do a lot of manual work. Because of the lack of functionality of our previous tools, we often resorted to using paper request forms and faxing information back and forth between corporate offices and retail stores.

Supply ordering has completely changed after moving to Google Apps. Each store used to print out a form, fill in what they need for the store, and then fax it in, only to have someone in the office manually add it all up. Now we have a spreadsheet with all available supplies and each store enters what it needs. We use a similar process for our modified holiday hours. Previously each store would send in their updated hours and someone at headquarters would enter them all into a spreadsheet and send it out to everyone. Shared spreadsheets have saved us hours of tedious manual work, not to mention a lot of paper.

Employees have enthusiastically embraced the new technology and their extra time is put to good use. Many already used Gmail outside of the office so the transition was easy. Google Apps partner, SADA Systems, helped with training and deployment to get employees up to speed. Since deployment, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much positive feedback we’ve received from employees. They’ve been particularly appreciative of the speed of search in Gmail. Knowing that they can always easily find something in their inboxes has made it easier to follow up on consumers’ questions about promotions that ran months before, or emails from headquarters. Everything is right at their fingertips.

Google Apps provides a more secure way to store and access data, an easier and cheaper way to maintain our information systems and has increased employee productivity tremendously. This change has also improved morale by giving our employees faster and easier ways to do their work and allowing them to work together. With the holidays approaching, it’s comforting to know that we’re ready to handle anything that comes our way because we have the right tools in Google Apps.

Posted by Howard Kolodny, CIO, Z Gallerie

Optional attendees in Google Calendar

Time is one of our most precious resources. Despite their necessity, meetings tend to vary in importance for different attendees. John might be really interested in his team’s weekly meeting, whereas Jane, who is working on a unrelated project, may want to skip it.

Guests’ roles in meetings tend to vary as well. Some people have to be there to lead the meeting or help make decisions, whereas others are gathering information they may be able to digest just as well via the notes. Without knowing which attendees are crucial and which are optional, it can be difficult to know which meetings you really need to attend.

That’s where Google Calendar’s new “Optional attendees” feature comes in. With a couple clicks, you can openly communicate the importance of a meeting for each attendee. Click on the “Make some attendees optional link” above the guest list and then toggle the role of each attendee by clicking the icon next to his or her name. So far, this feature has helped us more effectively manage our own time on the Calendar team — we hope it does the same for you.

Posted by Karol Stosiek, Software Engineering Intern

Extra Credit: What more can you do with Apps for Education?

Update December 17, 2010: Added links to webinar video recordings.

Is your school already using Google Apps for Education? Want to move beyond the basics, and learn how to customize, integrate, and extend Google Apps on your campus?

This December, we’re kicking off a series of free “Extra Credit” webinars covering advanced topics for IT leaders in education, such as integrating Google Apps with LMSes (learning management systems), SISes (Student Information Systems), and other common learning programs, like student e-portfolios.

We’re excited to have experts from Northwestern University, Truman State University, Clemson University, SunGard Higher Education, and Appirio, Inc. sharing their experience and learnings in this first set of webinars, running December 6 - 9, at 11AM PST daily. Topics will include:

• What EDU can learn from Enterprise deployments [video]
• Google Apps as an Eportfolio solution at Clemson U. [video]
• Integrating Google Apps and Blackboard™ with Bboogle at Northwestern U. [video]
• Integrating Google Apps with SunGard Higher Education ® products at Truman State U. (includes Luminis 5 / Google Apps demo) [video]

Learn more, and reserve your spot at google.com/apps/extracredit. Registration is free.

Posted by Jason Cook, Google Apps for Education team

Now available with Google Apps: Google Finance

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Finance
Financial market data is some of the most time-sensitive and important information that many businesses track minute by minute. Portfolios, stock charts, and up-to-the-second market news are all central to understanding investment options, making business decisions, and tracking suppliers, partners, and competitors. How is the market reacting to the press release you just issued? How financially stable is the vendor you’re considering? What are your competitors in the market announcing today? Fortunately, Google Finance is now available to our Google Apps customers, so you can answer all of these questions and more for free with your Google Apps account.

Google Finance puts all of the financial data and market news that matters to you at your fingertips throughout the day and enables you to share it easily with colleagues and clients. Integration with your Apps account allows you to create and save multiple portfolios and track performance over time as well as access your saved portfolios through your mobile device when you’re away from your computer.


Google Finance also makes it easy to keep track of important portfolio company events, such as quarterly earnings announcements, by allowing you to add these events directly to your linked Google Calendar with a single click.


Other Google Finance features allow you to create custom stock charts that include related companies’ performance and custom technicals and indicators of your choosing -- and share them with colleagues easily. And you can brainstorm investment opportunities using the Google Finance Stock Screener or Domestic Trends features.

Learn more and get started
Google Finance can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps control panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about Google Finance, you can check out our Help Center pages, or you can follow the latest product news, tips, and features on the Google Finance Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Finance at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story, and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Karolína Netolicka, Product Manager, Google Finance

Note: Google Finance may not be available in all areas.

Now available with Google Apps: Blogger

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Blogger
How do you let the world know what's important to your organization on a day-to-day basis? You may have a Web site, but when was the last time you added fresh content? You may have advertisements and media placements, but how interactive can you make those conversations? Many companies solve these problems by using blogs to connect in more meaningful ways, sharing up-to-date information and allowing follow-on conversations; and now Google Apps users have the perfect tool for delivering a corporate blog: Blogger.

Blogger is an easy-to-use yet extremely powerful content publishing platform that helps you broadcast stories, insights, and ideas to others in only a few clicks. Your organization can use Blogger to start conversations with customers or partners about upcoming events, product launches, or your company's vision for your industry.

A recent study showed that an estimated 34% of US companies already use one or more blogs to connect with their customers, and this figure has doubled in the past few years.* Google uses blogs, just like the Enterprise Blog where you’re reading now, to connect with our users and partners. In fact, Google has almost a hundred blogs running on the Blogger platform, covering topics as diverse as our renewable energy policies, product updates, developer challenges and code snippets, and information for advertisers and partners.

Blogger offers a powerful rich-editor that lets you create a great looking site with simple and intuitive tools that require no web design experience to use. And for those that want to achieve a deeper level of customization, Blogger provides great flexibility and full control over the blog content you create, letting you edit the HTML and add CSS and Javascript to create your own unique look and feel.

Just like Google Apps, Blogger runs in Google’s cloud so you never have to worry about provisioning new hardware or updating software. Blogger already serves content from millions of contributors to over 300 million readers, so the platform is ready to scale to meet your needs as readership grows with your organization.

Learn more and get started
Blogger can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information you can take a product tour or learn about Blogger’s top features. Finally, you can track the latest news and updates on Blogger’s own blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Blogger at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Anil Sabharwal, Product Manager, Blogger

Note: Blogger may not be available in all areas.
* Source: eMarketer, August 2010

Live Webinar: Jaguar Land Rover’s journey to the cloud

On Friday 26th November we'll be joined by Andy Bennett, IT Operations Manager at Jaguar Land Rover. Andy will share his team's experience moving more than 15,000 Jaguar Land Rover employees to Google Apps. He will detail both the resulting cost savings and the new ways of working that Google Apps has encouraged.

Jeremy Vincent, CIO of Jaguar Land Rover, gives us a taste of the session:

"We switched our entire global organisation (15,000+ users) to Gmail, Calendar and Contacts in one weekend in December 2009, saving around £1.75m in total one-off migration costs as we separated from our former parent company.

Now, almost one year in, we have a truly enterprise-wide common critical business application which is delivering benefits continuously, especially as we turn on more Google applications and as Google continuously improves its product set."

To hear more about Jaguar Land Rover’s switch to Google Apps attend this live webcast, Friday 26th Nov 2010 at 11.00 GMT. Register today.

This session will be moderated by Angela Ashenden, Principal Analyst at MWD Advisors.

Google Apps for Education professional development webinars

As more and more states and school districts are going Google, we're hearing great ideas for integrating Google Apps into the classroom. To help educators make the most of Google Apps, we're starting a biweekly webinar series focused on Google Apps for Education professional development.

Webinars will be led by Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers and held biweekly on Tuesdays, 4:30PM PT.

We kicked off the series on November 9 with an overview of Google Sites. The next webinar in the series will be tomorrow, November 23, at 4:30PM PT/7:30PM ET on the topic of Student Newspapers and Google Apps - register today.

Future webinars in this series include:
Dec 7 - Taking the core features of Google Apps to the next level
Dec 21 - The Collaborative STEM classroom
Jan 4 - Becoming a Gmail Ninja

Recordings from past Google Apps webinars can also be found in our resource center.

To get a glimpse of how a teacher might use Google Apps in the classroom today, you can also view our new K-12 demo:



Posted by Dana Nguyen, Google Apps Education Team

Now available with Google Apps: Google Voice

Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Voice
Telephones make our lives easier every day, but we’ve all met with the limitations of what the existing technology can do for us. Maybe it’s missing an important call because you were away from your office. Maybe it’s juggling multiple voicemail inboxes or struggling to listen to voicemail in a crowded conference room or on a noisy train. Maybe its wishing you could set up a conference call right from your mobile phone and connect with colleagues instantly.

Now, Google Apps users can move beyond these limitation and use their telephones in new and more flexible ways by using Google Voice with their Google Apps accounts.

Google Voice is about giving you more control over your communications, regardless of which phone or carrier you use. Here’s a little bit about how it works:

• A Google Voice number is tied to you (not to a single device) and can ring all of your phones. This means when someone calls your Google Voice number, you can choose to have it ring your work phone, home phone, mobile phone, or all of them at once, so you’ll never miss a call again.


• Google Voice makes voicemail as easy as email by transcribing your voicemail messages and storing them all in one place, along with your SMS messages, for as long as you like. You’ve long had the ability to quickly scan email messages as they arrive, and Google Voice now brings this same flexibility to voicemail.


• With Google Voice you can switch phones in the middle of a call, so you can continue a conversation that you started on your desk phone from your mobile when you need to get going.


• You can also customize call settings based on who’s calling. Google Voice lets you choose which phones ring based on the caller, which voicemail greeting is played if you don’t answer, and allows you to block certain numbers or send them straight to voicemail. For example, with this functionality you could direct most calls to your desk phone, but also ring your mobile when an important customer calls, as well as serve different voicemail greetings to that customer than you do to your coworkers or suppliers.

Just like Google Apps, Google Voice runs in Google’s cloud so it can be accessed online, even when you are away from your phone.

Learn more and get started
Google Voice can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information, you can visit the Google Voice overview page to see video explanations of the key features or take a look at our Help Center for details instructions. You can also follow the latest product news and features on the Google Voice Blog.

Share your story
Have you already started using Google Voice at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Vincent Paquet, Product Manager, Google Voice

Note: Google Voice is only available in the U.S.

A bridge to the cloud: Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office now available to early testers

Tens of millions of people have moved to Google Docs because it’s 100% web: it provides real-time collaboration in the browser, with no software to install, manage or upgrade. Of course, we know that many more of you still use Microsoft Office, because until recently, there weren’t many tools to help you collaborate and share with others. Now there’s more choice.

To help smooth the transition from Office to the cloud, my teammates and I founded a company called DocVerse, which was acquired by Google earlier this year. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been hard at work moving the DocVerse product to Google’s infrastructure. We’ve also renamed it Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office. Today, we’re pleased to take the next step towards a public launch and make it available to early testers.

For those of you who have not made the full move to Google Docs and are still using Microsoft Office, Google has something great to offer. With Cloud Connect, people can continue to use the familiar Office interface, while reaping many of the benefits of web-based collaboration that Google Docs users already enjoy.

Users of Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 can sync their Office documents to the Google cloud, without ever leaving Office. Once synced, documents are backed-up, given a unique URL, and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs. And because the files are stored in the cloud, people always have access to the current version.

Once in the Google cloud, documents can be easily shared and even simultaneously edited by multiple people, from right within Office. A full revision history is kept as the files are edited, and users can revert to earlier versions in one click. These are all features that Google Docs users already enjoy today, and now we’re bringing them to Microsoft Office.

All you need is a Google account, and you’re ready to go. That’s it!

If you’re a Google Apps for Business customer interested in joining our preview program, please sign up here. If you’re not, don’t worry- at launch, Google Cloud Connect will be available free to everyone, including consumers.

Posted by Shan Sinha, Group Product Manager

Update: Thank you for your interest! Due to the extraordinary demand from thousands of businesses in just the last few hours, we are no longer accepting volunteers for our early testing program. Please fill out this form if you would like to be notified when Google Cloud Connect becomes available.

Many of you have also asked about availability for Macs. Unfortunately due to the lack of support for open APIs on Microsoft Office for Mac, we are unable to make Google Cloud Connect available on Macs at this time. We look forward to when that time comes so we can provide this feature to our Mac customers as well.

Now available with Google Apps: Google Reader

Editor’s note: Yesterday we launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Reader
We all have favorite websites. The ones that we keep returning to day after day – or even several times a day – to check for new content. Whether you follow company press coverage on a set of news websites, track industry-related developments through trade journals, or follow what people are saying about your organization in the blogosphere, you can now do all of this in one place using Google Reader.

Now available with Google Apps accounts, Google Reader is a web-based content aggregator that allows you to pull updates from your favorite websites together in one place. By subscribing to a site's RSS or Atom feed in Reader, you’re automatically notified when that website posts new content. Instead of checking many sites repeatedly for updates, Google Reader brings your favorite web content to you!



Google Reader also makes it easy to share relevant articles with colleagues at your organization using Google Apps. Reader is integrated with your existing contacts list so address auto-complete works seamlessly. For example, if you see an article in your Reader feed about new tax incentives for your industry, you can easily share this with a coworker responsible for financial planning or with an entire distribution list you have created, right from the Google Reader.


For those of you always on the move, Google Reader also makes it easy and convenient to follow the stream of updates from your favorite websites on your mobile device, automatically synced through your Google Apps account.


Learn more and get started
Google Reader can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information about Google Reader you can take a look at our Help Center pages or follow the latest news and get tips and tricks from the Google Reader Blog.


Share your story
Have you already started using Google Reader at your organization, or plan to now that it’s available? Please share your story and your organization could be featured in the next Gone Google ad campaign!


Posted by Brian Shih, Product Manager, Google Reader

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Australia's Flight Centre and Ray White have gone Google

[cross-posted from the Official Google Australia Blog]

Our Apps business is one of the fastest growing at Google today, with Australia being one of the fastest growing markets in the Asia Pacific region. Today we are announcing that two leading Australian businesses are the latest to go Google.

Flight Centre is Australasia's largest travel agency group with more than 2,000 shops and businesses in 11 countries. Migrating to Gmail will cut their email system costs by approximately 30% annually, while giving their employees an unprecedented 25GB inbox - meaning staff will never need to be burdened by deleting emails. The new Google Apps suite has given them access to more than just email – they have a collaborative suite of tools that supports their entire global operation. Watch Flight Centre’s story below.



Ray White manages over $30 billion worth of real estate sales across Australia, New Zealand and Asia, writing $6 billion in home loans each year. In addition to providing 1,000 businesses, 8,000 agents and each of its customers a standardised communication and collaboration platform via Google Apps, Ray White also developed apmasphere - a dedicated rental property management system delivering greater efficiency and transparency for property management in Australia. Ray White developed this application on the Google App Engine platform, which provided a fast, efficient and robust development environment, with unique collaboration features. We’re convinced that Ray White’s pioneering work will form a template for other developments around the world. Watch Ray White’s Story below.



More than 3 million businesses worldwide have “gone Google” - including Australian businesses you can read about here.

Posted by Emma Robinson, Google Enterprise AU/NZ team

Google Apps shared contacts, now with double the capacity

Starting today, Google Apps for Business, Education and Government customers have space for twice as many contacts as before in their organization’s shared contacts. IT administrators told us that they needed more capacity, so we upped the limit from 25,000 to 50,000 entries. Shared contacts are part of the organization’s global address list (GAL), and these contacts auto-complete across Google Apps to help employees work faster and more accurately. Once you start typing to address an email message, invite colleagues to a calendar event, or share a Google Docs file, you can just click a recipient’s name to complete the entry.

We’ve also made optimizations to the Shared Contacts API so administrators can upload contacts much more quickly. Enjoy!

Posted by Mike Helmick and Petr Konecny, Software Engineers

Ten times more applications for Google Apps customers

Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog and the Google Small Business Blog

As customers begin to recognize large productivity gains with Gmail, Google Docs and the rest of Google Apps, they frequently ask when they’ll be able to use services like Google Voice, Reader, Blogger and AdWords with their Google Apps accounts. We’ve steadily added new functionality to Google Apps and recently added support for third-party apps, but we’re thrilled to swing the floodgates of new functionality wide open now. Starting today, customers worldwide can access a full spectrum of services from Google—including more than 60 productivity-boosting applications that extend far beyond any traditional software suite.

Coupled with the ability for administrators to provide different sets of applications to different groups of users, the possibilities for empowering workers in new ways are remarkable. For example, you could equip your marketing team with Picasa Web Albums so they can collect and share photos from customer appreciation events, and let that team publish your company’s blog with Blogger. Services like iGoogle and Alerts, on the other hand, may be broadly useful, and could be enabled for your whole organization.



Existing customers can transition at their own pace over the next couple months to the new infrastructure supporting these applications from the administrative control panel. New customers will automatically have the new infrastructure. The additional services are not covered by the Google Apps SLA or telephone support, but we’ll be watching for feedback how we can make these new applications even more useful.

In tandem with this big improvement, we’re also simplifying the names of the versions of Google Apps. Here’s how we now refer to our line-up:

• Google Apps is our free service geared towards families, entrepreneurs and other groups up to 50 users.
  
• Google Apps for Business offers 25GB of email storage per user, a 99.9% uptime guarantee, data migration capabilities, advanced management tools, telephone support, added security features and more, all for $50 per user per year.
  
• Google Apps for Government is FISMA certified and designed with local, state and federal agencies in mind.
  
• Google Apps for Education offers many benefits of Google Apps for Business, but at no cost to schools, universities and qualifying non-profits.

The team has worked hard to unlock all of this new functionality for our customers, and we think many of these new applications will become indispensable within your organization. To help get you started, each day the Google Enterprise Blog will profile how your organization could put a different application to use. The first post tomorrow will focus on Google Reader, so drop by again soon to follow the series. Posted by Derek Parham, Lead Software Engineer, Google Apps

Editing your Google Docs on the go

Cross posted on the Official Google Blog, Google Docs Blog and the Google Mobile Blog

With Google Docs, we’re always trying to make you more productive—and part of that means making it possible for you to get things done from anywhere, at anytime. That’s why we’re excited that the new documents editor now supports editing on your mobile browser. We’re rolling this out over the next few days.

That means that...

• You can work on that important memo...while on the bus or train to work.
• If you’re behind on a group proposal, but really want to make it to the ball game tonight, your whole team can work on it from the bleacher seats.
• You can put the finishing touches on your big proposal while waiting to be met in your client's lobby.
• ...and the list goes on!

Take a look at this video to see mobile editing in action:



It’s easy to get started: visit docs.google.com in a browser on a supported device, and select the document you want to edit. Then, when you’re viewing it, press the Edit button to switch to the mobile editor.

In the next few days, we’re rolling this out to English-language users around the world on Android with Froyo (version 2.2) and on iOS devices (version 3.0+) including the iPad. We’ll be adding support for other languages soon. And as before, we also support editing of spreadsheets from your mobile device’s browser.

We hope you enjoy editing your documents on the go—especially when you’re at the game with a hot dog in your other hand.

Posted by Andrew Grieve, Software Engineer

Spyder follows the snow, pushes the limits, and lives in the cloud

We're thrilled to share stories from the people and organizations that use Google Apps to explore, discover and push the boundaries. These businesses truly embody the freedom enabled by the cloud.

Spyder has always been a company that pushes the limits of design and performance, proving that it’s as important to adapt with speed and grace to conditions on the mountain as it is in business. At Spyder they value speed and innovation in all that they do, and that includes their information systems. Google Apps helps Spyder design high-performance products and work with their athletes and manufacturers all over the world.

While Spyder has grown and expanded its product line over the years, its roots are in ski racing. Founder and championship skier, David Jacobs, started Spyder as a ski sweater company out of his kitchen in 1978. As a former coach of the Canadian National Ski Team, David understood that athletes depend on quality equipment to gain a competitive edge. For more than 30 years, Spyder has focused on engineering superior skiwear for its athletes, whether they’re Olympic skiers like Julia Mancuso and Tommy Moe, back country enthusiasts, or just beginners. Rigorously tested by top athletes on some of the toughest terrain and the most competitive races, Spyder products embody a passion for performance.




Spyder is a business that needs to go where their athletes go. And these people feed on adventure and thrive on adrenaline, so they find themselves in some pretty interesting places - Alpine Ski World Cup stops, Chilean photo shoots, and wherever the Olympics are, to name just a few examples. Google Apps helps Spyder set up shop on any mountain. With Google Apps Spyder employees can just pick up their laptops, check their email on the go, and get to the next race or the next photo shoot.

Spyder works with designers and manufacturers all over the world, so they need to be able to share documents and spreadsheets, have meetings over video chat, and find what they’re looking for in their inboxes - fast. Google Apps has helped Spyder’s internal teams work more cohesively and efficiently, enabling them to get the best quality products to market, wherever they happen to be in the world. If Google Apps helps them get their work done faster so they can get back on the mountain, that doesn’t hurt, either!

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Apps team

Google Earth Enterprise customer honored for government IT achievement

Editor’s note: From time to time, the Google Earth and Maps Enterprise Team likes to show off our users who have created useful and timely applications with our products. Marty Kitrell, from the Information Technology Laboratory of the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center, explains how many agencies organized to build the Google Earth Enterprise powered project called NIPRNet Globe Service (NGS), which is one of the 10 award winners for 2010 Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government by the Government Computer News.

Google Earth has revolutionized how people see the world. Through simple clicks of a button, a user can zoom to any part of the world and quickly access information about any place on earth. It’s technology that millions use to plan vacations and business trips, map routes from one place to another and learn about where they are going and what they will encounter along the way. It provides an effortless window to all parts of the globe.

How can those same capabilities be given to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers?

It hasn’t been possible — until now. The Information Technology Laboratory at the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center in Vicksburg, MS, and Program Director Transportation Information Systems (PD TIS) and Program Manager Joint-Automatic Identification Technology (PM-JAIT), have collaborated to combine Google Earth Technology and the Non-Classified Internet Protocol Router Network (NIPRNet) Global Services (NGS) project. It solves the two main problems that have precluded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from using Google’s state-of-the-art technology — security and customization.

NIPRNet Globe Services is the result of three years of research and development in building and deploying a fully operational decision-support system based on Google Earth Enterprise technology. Through NGS, the Corps of Engineers can now quickly access customized globes containing detailed information of specific geographical areas following a natural or man-made disaster required for decision support, including satellite imagery, maps, terrain and made-to-order data fields. With customizable layers, the Corps can quickly access as much or as little information as needed for emergency planning and management. And, importantly, the data is secure. No commercial servers have to be accessed because NGS has custom-written geocodes and auto-update servers that run on NIPR behind the .mil firewall.


Because of its ground-breaking technology, NGS been named as one of 10 award winners for 2010 Outstanding Information Technology Achievement in Government by the Government Computer News. Team members of NGS were formally honored at the GCN Awards Gala on Oct. 27 at the Ritz-Carlton, Tysons Corner in McLean, VA. If you want to know more about NGS, please contact NGS applications manager Robert Walker at robert.s.walker@usace.army.mil.

Posted by Natasha Wyatt, Product Marketing Manager, Google Earth and Maps Enterprise

Security First - A Chat with Google Apps Security and Privacy Experts

Google Apps customers experience both cost savings and productivity benefits, and more than 3 million of businesses have made the switch to Google Apps. To answer some of the questions businesses often ask about the security and privacy of data that is stored in Google Apps, we released the Google Apps Security Whitepaper in June. And to provide further visibility into how we protect the data in Google Apps, we are hosting a webcast on November 18th, 2010. Register today to attend this webcast.

In the webcast, Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security for Google Apps, will describe some of the challenges of securing traditional on-premise IT infrastructure and explain how Google’s cloud computing architecture can offer an improved security model. John Collins, Google Enterprise Trust Product Manager, will then talk about how Google protects the privacy of the data that is stored in Google Apps.

We will take questions from the audience, so if your business or organization is considering a move to Google Apps, this session will be a great opportunity.

Register to attend this webcast, Thursday, November 18th at 11:00 AM PST / 2:00 PM EST / 19:00 GMT.

Posted by Adam Swidler, Google Apps team

Larimer County Moves to Google Apps in Just 3 Days

Editor’s note: Today, our guest blogger is Andy Paratore, CIO of Larimer County in Colorado. Home to nearly 300,000 residents in north-central Colorado, the county’s offices are in the city of Fort Collins. Larimer County shares a border with the State of Wyoming, and both will soon have a common email system, as well.

Please join Andy for a live webcast about making a rapid transition to the cloud this Wednesday, November 17, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT. Register today.

While most people watched fireworks over the July 4th weekend, the Larimer County government used the holiday to switch all our employees to Google Apps. With this “big bang” approach, it took just three days for us to migrate our 1,800 employees and over four million email messages to Google’s web-based email and collaboration applications. As a result of this rapid switch, the county saved implementation costs, improved mobile access to information, and provided employees with new and innovative applications to help us do our jobs.

Of course, careful planning and preparation were key to making this fast move to the cloud. We did a detailed comparison of Google Apps and several on-premise solutions and found Google delivered the best value and features. We had 100 county employees pilot the applications for six weeks, which allowed us to identify and resolve issues in advance of the big migration. And we took advantage of the contract put in place by the Colorado Statewide Internet Portal Authority (SIPA) and Denver-based Google Apps partner Tempus Nova.

By switching to Google from our prior on-premise Novell Groupwise system, Larimer County benefits in many ways. We initially expect to save $50,000-$75,000 annually in server and support costs, and hope to save even more in the future as we take advantage of more capabilities of Google Apps; these are important savings for a county facing challenging budget circumstances. Perhaps more importantly, we’re enabling county employees to be more productive: offering additional collaboration capabilities like chat, real-time document sharing, and easy-to-build websites; allowing access to information from work, home or on the road with the same user interface; and making them less dependent on IT with an extensive set of online training and help tools that allow them to resolve questions themselves.

I look forward to sharing our experience with other organizations that are looking to make a rapid move to the cloud, please join me on Wednesday’s webinar to learn more.



By Andy Paratore, CIO, Larimer County

Posted by Dan Israel, Google Apps for Government Team

Do you have an informative and fun Google Apps story to share? Please submit it here.

Migrating from Lotus Notes® just got easier

Earlier this week, we released improved versions of Google Apps Migration for Lotus Notes and Google Calendar Connector for Lotus Notes. The migration tool has more than 40 new features to make moving from your Lotus Notes environment to Google's cloud even easier. Here are our favorites:

• Support for OAuth, so you don't need to store administrator and user passwords to migrate mail, calendar and contacts
  
• User provisioning can be run as a separate module prior to user migration, so you can verify users have been provisioned as you like before migrating data
  
• Enhanced logging capabilities so you can see what migration actions were taken
  
• Support for assigning group owners from migrated Domino Directory groups
  
• Improved support for migrated calendar events and push synchronization for BlackBerry® devices
  
• Simpler migration tool interface
  

Head over to the download page to read more about the new migration functionality and get the update. Please also visit our user forums if you have any questions or comments!

Posted by Colin Neale, Technical Solutions Engineer

Going Google across the 50 States: Two California-based companies find a common solution with Google Apps

Editor's note: Over 3 million businesses have adopted Google Apps. Today we’ll hear from PlayPlainIt.com and Medialcoate, two companies based in California. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map or test drive life in the cloud with the Go Google cloud calculator.

San Francisco moms and career women, Allison Howard and Laurel Kellam, are making it easier for Bay Area families to find events targeted at children under the age of five through PlayPlanit.com. Both Laurel and Allison work from home and meet up once or twice a week so the ability to be productive and access files remotely is critical. The two founders communicate throughout the day via Gmail and chat, and rely heavily on Google Docs to store, track and collaborate on just about everything.

According to Laurel, “As soon as we learned about the functionality and cost of Google Apps it was a no-brainer. Neither of us are ‘tech guys’ and we didn’t want to spend our money on any expensive equipment like servers. We’re big Google fans in general - we both use Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Voice for personal reasons. Also, as business owners who are responsible for every aspect of our start-up we knew we wouldn’t have the time or patience to troubleshoot Microsoft Outlook.”

Like Laurel and Allison, other companies have found that the cost benefits and collaboration tools offered through Google Apps can’t be beat. To learn more, we move south to Pacific Grove where we meet Marcelo Rizzo, Technical Manager for Medialocate, a translation services company helping Fortune 500 companies bring their products and content to global audiences. Marcelo tells us about why Medialocate chose Google Apps.

“Four years ago, Medialocate outsourced its Microsoft Exchange server to a hosting service. Everything went well for about two years. Then, all of the sudden, we were getting 75% uptime and a lot of user complaints. We pondered bringing Exchange back in-house. At $136 per user/year, it was not cost effective. We looked at other e-mail hosting services, but they were also not cost effective.

Finally we looked at Google Apps — $50 per user/year including support, document sharing and centralized management was unbeatable. It has become an integral part of our core assets and has helped boost our profitability by 30% over last year.”

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps team