SearceApps

2011-03-18T06:51:00.000-07:00

Want to collaborate even more? Discussions now available in Google Docs

Comments have been updated to facilitate better discussions and seamless integration into email. Some of the features include:

- Improvements to the discussion flow by adding ownership and edit rights to individual comments. Each comment now has a timestamp and profile picture.
- No need to delete comments. You can resolve comments to remove them from the visible document and view them later by clicking the discussions button at the top of any document.
- Integration of comments with your inbox to facilitate more rapid and responsive communication. You can now add someone to a discussion with an @mention. For example, typing ‘@eddy@altostrat.com’ in a discussion will send a notification email to Eddy with the text of your comment.
- Eddy can open the document from the email, or reply via email and the reply will show up in the comment as soon as the email is sent.

Release track:
Rapid*

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

Languages included:
All languages supported by Google Docs

How to access what's new:

Create a new document, position the cursor or highlight some text and select ‘Insert’ then ‘Comment.’ You also have various options to configure how email from comments is received.

Please note that improved comments are only available in new documents at this time so if you want to try it out make sure to create a new document. The comments you’ve created in an existing document won’t be changed.

For more information:
http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-discussions-in-google-docs.html
Comments in documents: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=guide.cs&guide=1208624

2010-10-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

Automating business processes in Google Sites with Google Apps Scripts

Google Sites lets you create public or internal web sites, and today we’re enabling scripts to support multi-step workflows in sites.

For example, your company can create a site for employees to browse and register for training sessions and career development programs. On the page describing each training session or class, you could add a “Register Now” button, which would automatically add registrants to the class roster, add the details of the session to each participant's Google Calendar, and email users to confirm enrollment. All of these automated actions can be driven by a script embedded in the site.

Starting today, you can create, edit, and launch Google Apps Scripts from any Google Site, which allows you to automate business processes that involve multiple applications. As in the example above, an Apps Script function can automate tasks such as sending emails, scheduling calendar events, creating and updating site pages using data from other systems, and more.

You can build a script by clicking “More actions” > “Manage site” > “Apps Scripts.” Once you’ve added a script to your site, you can add links or buttons to trigger the script from any page. For tips to get started with scripts, visit the Google Apps Script site.

2010-10-14T05:23:00.000-07:00

Priority Inbox in Gmail is now available to all Google Apps domains

Priority Inbox (Beta) is a new view of your inbox that automatically helps you focus on your most important messages. Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred,” and “Everything else”. Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive in your inbox.

Previously, this feature was only available to domains whose administrator had enabled the ‘Enable pre-release features’ checkbox in the Google Apps Control Panel. This feature has now been released to all domains so that checkbox no longer controls this feature.

Editions included:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team, Partner Edition and Google Apps for Government

Languages included:
All languages supported by Gmail

How to access what's new:
- Users can manually opt-in to this new feature by clicking on the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner.
- Users can return to the normal view at any time by clicking on “Inbox” or by disabling Priority Inbox in “Settings”.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/08/email-overload-try-priority-inbox.html
http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=29809

2010-09-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

Call any phone from GMail for free

Google Voice meets Gmail to allow Gmail users to call any phone in the world from their computer. Google Voice (not available in India yet), a service that allows a single Google phone number to link to your various home, work mobile phones, has been embedded within Gmail, according to Google.

As a result, for the very first time, users can now make PC-to-phone calls through Gmail itself. Google said it's rolling out the free phone call service to Gmail users based in the U.S and Canada immediately.

Gmail users will enjoy free phone calls within U.S. and Canada for at least the rest of the year, according to Gmail's official blog. International call rates will be low, Google said, as it revised its call rates.

To make use of the free PC-to-phone call service, Gmail users will have to download and install Google's voice and video chat plugin. Gmail users should look for a "Call Phone" from the Chat menu in Gmail's sidebar and dial any phone number using the virtual keypad. Gmail users with a Google Voice account can also receive incoming calls to their number within Gmail.

While this free Gmail phone call service is limited to users in U.S. and Canada for now, Google stated it's "working on making [calling] available more broadly." Hopefully, soon.

2010-09-15T15:47:00.000-07:00

Google Apps is changing... transition to the new infrastructure for Google Apps accounts

Google Apps accounts can start accessing dozens of Google services beyond the core suite of messaging and collaboration apps. This change will let users access many new services such as Blogger, Reader, Google Voice and calling-in-Gmail (US only), Picasa Web Albums, AdWords and iGoogle from their Google Apps accounts. This big improvement addresses 9 of the top 20 requests from customers in one fell swoop, so we’re thrilled that the new infrastructure is now open for early adopters! After accounts are transitioned to the new infrastructure, these customers will be able to tap into much more innovation happening all across Google, helping people be even more productive with a broader range of tools in the cloud.

Why just for “early adopters” you ask? We’re still working on a few important features, but after extensive testing we’ve found that what’s ready today is already tremendously valuable to many Standard, Premier and Education Edition customers. Here’s the functionality that early adopters won’t see before the new infrastructure is feature-complete.

Before the transition

Before the transition, Google offered different types of accounts to different types of users. Specifically, we offered two primary types of accounts that were completely separate services:

Google Apps accounts
Issued, managed by, and used with your @my-domain.com organization.
Provided access to only Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, Groups, and Video.

Jane was assigned a Google Apps account by altostrat.com and used Gmail, Docs, and Calendar with her Google Apps account.

Google Accounts
Provide access to all Google products and services, such as Gmail, Blogger, Picasa Web Albums, Reader, orkut, and Web History.
Can be created with any email address, such as the email address you have with your organization, or with any standard webmail address (@yahoo.com,@hotmail.com, etc.).
Signing up for Gmail automatically creates a Google Account with the Gmail address as the primary email on the account.
In this example
Jane has a personal Google Account that she owns, and uses Blogger, Picasa Web Albums, and Google Reader with her personal Google Account.

After the transition

The change that is happening will transition Google Apps accounts into the Google Account infrastructure, so you can use your Google Apps account to access the same Google products and services that Google Accounts holders can. Your Google Apps account will begin to function more like a full Google Account. For instance, you'll be able to sign in and use products like Blogger and Picasa with your Google Apps account, if your domain administrator allows.

After the transition, keep in mind that you won't be able to sign in to multiple Google Accounts at a time. If this is a problem for you, learn how to get around this issue.

In this example

Jane's administrator transitioned her Google Apps account to the new account infrastructure, allowing Jane to start a new blog on Blogger and start a new photo album on Picasa Web Albums, stored on her Google Apps account. Note that Jane now has two separate Picasa web albums, one with her Google Apps account and one with her personal Google Account.

2010-08-02T14:39:00.000-07:00

Introducing Google Apps for Government

Google announced a new edition of Google Apps. Google Apps for Government includes the same great Google applications that people know and love, with specific measures to address the policy and security needs of the public sector.

Google Apps is the first suite of cloud computing messaging and collaboration applications to receive Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) certification and accreditation from the U.S. General Services Administration. The FISMA law applies to all information systems in use by U.S. federal government agencies to help ensure they’re secure. The federal government’s General Services Administration has reviewed the documentation of our security controls and issued an authorization to operate, the official confirmation of our FISMA certification and accreditation. This review makes it easier for federal agencies to compare our security features to those of their existing systems; most agencies we have worked with have found that Google Apps provides at least equivalent, if not better, security than they have today. This means government customers can move to the cloud with confidence.

And Google is not stopping with FISMA certification. Google Apps for Government will continue to evolve to meet unique government requirements. Google Apps for Government stores Gmail and Calendar data in a segregated system located in the continental United States, exclusively for our government customers. Other applications will follow in the near future. The suite is a “community cloud”—as defined by the National Institute for Science and Technology—to support the needs of our government customers. Google Apps for Government is available now to any federal, state or local government in the United States.

With reviews of our security controls in place, government agencies can more easily take advantage of all the benefits of one of the world’s best cloud computing systems. Google’s cloud offers higher reliability, best-in-class disaster recovery and access to a steady stream of innovation—all of which can provide substantial improvements over existing systems in addition to significant cost savings. And with no hardware or software to install and maintain, Google Apps for Government allows agencies to redeploy resources to technology projects core to their mission of serving the public. This new edition should give governments an even stronger case for making the move to the cloud.

2010-07-15T22:34:00.000-07:00

Making it easier to video chat, voice chat, and group chat in Gmail

Video chat, voice chat, and group chat have all been available for some time within Gmail, but they've been curiously tucked away. Getting them up and running required fidgeting with a little menu at the bottom of each chat window. Starting today, all of these features will be just a single click away.

One of the more subtle benefits to surfacing these chat options is that it's easier for people to get started who don't yet have the voice and video chat plugin.
If your chat buddy doesn't have the plugin, clicking on this icon in the chat window will invite them to install it. As soon as they're done, you can carry on with a face-to-face video chat.

2010-07-12T04:17:00.000-07:00

Laying the foundation for a new Google Docs

New document and spreadsheet features

You shouldn’t have to give up any routine features when you switch to web-based applications, and Google is addressing many longstanding requests across Google Docs with this release that were not feasible with older browser technology. Documents support better formatting options like a margin ruler, better numbering and bullets, and more flexible image placement. Spreadsheets now have a familiar formula editing bar, cell auto-complete, drag-and-drop columns and more.

Higher fidelity document import

It should be easy to move files saved on your computer to the cloud, so we made our document upload feature much stronger. Imported documents keep their original structure more accurately, so you can spend less time adjusting files you move to the cloud.

Speed and responsiveness

Browser-based applications shouldn’t force you to compromise on performance either, and our new architecture is much faster than before. Working with very large spreadsheets is even snappy now. Web apps really can feel just as fluid as traditional software.

Faster collaboration

Collaboration has always been Google Docs’ forte, and the new codebase is letting us leap forward here, too. The applications support up to 50 simultaneous editors, and documents let you see other people’s changes character-by-character as they type. Finally, we’ve added multi-user editing to drawings too, so now you can build flow charts, schematics, and other kinds of diagrams collaboratively.

The new Google Docs editors will take advantage of faster rendering engines in modern browsers as well as new web standards like HTML5. As a result, we need to temporarily remove offline support for Docs starting May 3rd, 2010. We know that this is an important feature for some of you, and we are working hard to bring a new and improved HTML5-based offline option back to Google Docs. Please note that this change only concerns Google Docs. We will continue to support offline access for Gmail and Google Calendar. To learn more.

Over the next few days, users will be able to start creating collaborative drawings from the Docs list. For Google Apps customers with the control panel option set to “enable new pre-release features,” users will have the option to enable the new document editor in the ‘Document settings’ page, and activate the new spreadsheet editor with the “New version” link at the top of any spreadsheet.

These improvements to Google Docs are designed to help businesses like yours move to the cloud faster and be more productive than ever before. We look forward to hearing what you think.

2010-07-07T13:22:00.001-07:00

Use Microsoft Outlook with Google Apps for email, contacts, and calendar

Many business users prefer Gmail's interface and features to products they've used in the past. But sometimes there are people who just love Outlook. For them, Google have developed Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook. It enables Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. And they can always use Gmail's web interface to access their information when they're not on their work computer.

Key features include:

Email, calendar, and contacts synchronization. For email, the plug-in uses the offline Gmail protocol, which is much faster than IMAP or other methods.

Free/Busy lookup and Global Address List functionality, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with your colleagues, regardless of whether they use Outlook's calendar or Google Calendar.
A simple, two-click data migration tool which allows employees to easily copy existing data from Exchange or Outlook into Google Apps.

Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook lets you use Microsoft Outlook seamlessly with Google Apps Premier or Education Editions.

Google Groups - A great tool

2010-07-07T04:18:00.001-07:00

Google Groups : A great tool

Google Groups is a service from Google that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. Membership in Google Groups is free of charge and many groups are anonymous. Users can find discussion groups related to their interests and participate in threaded conversations, either through a web interface or by e-mail. They can also start new groups. Google Groups also includes an archive of Usenet newsgroup postings dating back to 1981 and supports reading and posting to Usenet groups. Users can also set up mailing list archives for e-mail lists that are hosted elsewhere.

Communicate and share more easily with Google Groups

Google Groups can be used as mailing lists and to share calendars, docs, sites, and videos easily with co-workers.

Fast setup

Employees can create and manage groups without burdening IT.

Sharing with a group

Employees can share docs, calendars, sites, shared folders and videos with a group instead of individuals. You control who has access to content by managing group membership.

Customizable subscription settings

Group discussions are archived by default, allowing users to easily search and view past and present discussions via the web UI.

Searchable archives

Group members can access and search archives of mail sent to their lists to efficiently find topics of interest.

Reply on behalf of a group

Groups can serve as a central point to receive and respond to communications, and members can reply on behalf of the group.

Use groups to create shared mailboxes

With the user-managed groups service, you can use groups to create "shared mailboxes" for your users -- without having to create new user accounts. With a shared mailbox group, users can send and reply to messages using the group's email address rather than their own addresses.

This type of group is especially useful for technical support or customer service purposes. For example, you can create a group with the address "support@your_domain.com," add your support staff as members, and allow people outside your organization to send messages to that group. Your support staff will receive your customers' messsages and can reply on behalf of the group's address. To do so, they simply go the group's discussion archive and select the group's address when they post their replies.

Google Groups Tour: What can you do with Google Groups?

Search or browse for information

Want to learn about car repair? Have a question about computers? You can find a discussion or a group about it.

Make a group of your own

Why not start your own group? For your family, your softball team... Creating a group is easy - just pick a name and start inviting members.

Join a group

Find something you like? Join straight away, or request an invitation if it's a private group.

Google Groups Tour: Discuss online or over email

Join in on what others are talking about

From within a group, you can reply to a message that someone else posted, or post a message or question of your own.

Start a discussion in your own group

Create a group of your own so you can get in touch and keep in touch with your group's members.

Discuss online or over email

You can choose whether you want to read and post messages online, or to just use your current email account to read and respond.

Google Groups Tour: Create rich, custom pages

Create web pages right inside your group

Use it for information about your group, shared documents, or anything you want to publish online. Any member can view, contribute to, and comment on the pages, from right within your group.

Build a knowledge base

Capture the content and information that may already be in your discussions, in a way that's more easily accessible. Have a group for discussing the best restaurants in your area? Why not create a page that lists members' favorite restaurants?

Google Groups Tour: Customize your look and graphics

Make it your own

No two groups are the same, so why should they look the same? Select pictures, colors and styles to give your group its own distinct look.

Google Groups Tour: Share files and member information

Upload files

Group members can upload files and share their work with others in the group.

Learn more about each other

Each member of a group can create a profile, including a picture and quote. Now you can share information about yourself, and even find other members using search.

How to implement Public Folders in Google Apps

If you want to implement Public Folders in Google Apps – there is no direct one to one functionality in Google Apps which can be mapped to Exchange functionality of public folders. Public folders allows a group of people to access the same set of emails and documents. How that does not mean you can not achieve the same results in Google Apps as there are different ways to achieve the same results in Google Apps.

We can work around this issue in a number of ways, depending on the your specefic needs.

Sharing emails

(1) One of the method for sharing email is to create a mailbox for each ‘public folder’. If you users will continue to use Outlook you can create an additional IMAP account in their profile to point to the ‘shared mailbox’. This way works great if you want all users to have full access to the mailbox.

(2) An alternative to IMAP is to connect to the ‘shared mailbox’ with POP using the ‘recent:’ preface to the username. Setting up a shared mailbox this way will allow for all users to download the mail from the mailbox but not to edit/delete the mail items in the shared mailbox.

(3) If your users will be using the web interface you can ‘get mail from other accounts’ and with the use of filters you can have one filter per ‘shared folder’ to keep everyone’s mailbox consistant.

Sharing Calendars

(4) If you are looking for sharing the calendar you can create a shared calendar and have everyone add it to their account.

(5) You can create a Google site and embed your calendar in Google sites. This can also be used for sharing documents as indicated.

Sharing Documents

(7) If you are looking to share documents then you must have thought of Google Docs. However in Google Docs the storage of individual docs is handled differently due to the fact that shared documents do not retain the ‘folder’ from the creator, Docs is not the preferred place to store shared documents where organization is a requirement. Considering this we can setup File Cabinet pages in Google Sites so the documents can be sorted and viewed by everyone. Documents can also be embedded directly in the Google Sites pages.

Try Google Groups

2010-07-01T07:04:00.000-07:00

Google Docs

Create and share your work online with Google Docs

Upload your files from your desktop: It's easy to get started and it's free!
Access anywhere: Edit and view your docs from any computer or smart phone.
Share your work: Real-time collaboration means work gets done more quickly.

Create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online

Create basic documents from scratch or start from a template.
You can easily do all the basics, including making bulleted lists, sorting by columns, adding tables, images, comments, formulas, changing fonts and more. And it's free.

Upload your existing files.
Google Docs accepts most popular file formats, including DOC, XLS, ODT, ODS, RTF, CSV, PPT, etc. So go ahead and upload your existing files.

Familiar desktop feel makes editing a breeze.
Just click the toolbar buttons to bold, underline, indent, change font or number format, change cell background color and so on.

Share and collaborate in real time

Choose who can access your documents.
Just enter the email addresses of the people with whom you want to share a given document and send them an invitation.

Share instantly.
Anyone you've invited to either edit or view your document, spreadsheet or presentation can access it as soon as they sign in.

Edit and present with others in real time.
Multiple people can view and make changes at the same time. There's an on-screen chat window for spreadsheets, and document revisions show you exactly who changed what, and when. Viewing a presentation together is a breeze, as anyone joined in a presentation can automatically follow along with the presenter.

Safely store and organize your work

Edit and access from anywhere.
There's nothing to download; you access your documents, spreadsheets and presentations from any computer with an Internet connection and a standard browser. And it's free.

Safely store your work.
Online storage and auto-save mean you needn't fear local hard drive failures or power outages.

Easily save and export copies.
You can save your documents and spreadsheets to your own computer in DOC, XLS, CSV, ODS, ODT, PDF, RTF and HTML formats.

Organize your documents
Easily find your documents by organizing them into folders. Drag and drop your documents into as many folders as you want.

Control who can see your documents

Publish your work as a web page.
You can publish your documents online with one click, as normal-looking web pages, without having to learn anything new.

Control who can see your pages.
You can publish to the entire world, just a few people or no one -- it's up to you. (You can also un-publish at any time.)

Post your documents to your blog.
Once you've created a document, you can post it to your blog.

Publish within your company or group.
With Google Apps, it's even easier to share important documents, spreadsheets and presentations within your company or group.

Check out whats new in Google Docs

2010-07-01T06:17:00.000-07:00

Disappearance of Calendar from Blackberry device

Sometimes calendars gets vanished from the Blackberry without any ground. It generally arise due to introduction of other calendars say for any social networking site calendar.

Following are the instructions that can probably resolve the issue of vanishing of Calendar from Blackberry Device.

1. Go to Options -> Advance Options -> Default Services

Set Calendar (CICAL): To your default account

Usually calendar and messaging are set to the same account

Messaging (CMIME): To your default account

Usually calendar and messaging are set to the same account

2. Go to Options -> Advance Options -> Service Book

Delete all NON default Calendar (CICAL)

Install Blackberry Desktop Manager on your system.

Connect Blackberry Device to BlackBerry Desktop Manager

Navigate to the following path

Backup and Restore -> Advance -> Scroll to Calendar -> Highlight and click Clear -> Scroll to Calendar All -> Highlight and click Clear
Go back to Main Menu
Synchronize

What is Google Apps

2010-06-24T23:54:00.001-07:00

Google Apps

Google Apps is a web-based hosted solution, which means you can access Google Apps at anytime, anywhere you have an Internet connection. You might hear this type of technology referred to as "software-as-a-service" or "cloud computing". "Cloud computing" or "software-as-a-service" is a computing model in which IT applications are provided “as a service”, allowing users to access these applications from the Internet ("in the cloud") without needing to maintain the infrastructure that supports them. A simple way to understand the model is how people currently allow companies to run and manage their electricity rather than generating it within their home/office themselves.

Watch Google Apps Quick Tour

With Google Apps, your data and the applications themselves are served from Google's highly secure, scalable, and reliable data centers. Google actually builds its own data centers from scratch, so we're able to have one of the lowest cost-per-server infrastructures in the world; which means that those savings are passed on to our Google Apps customers. Your business is able to offload the infrastructure costs and the effort it takes to maintain an on-premises solution, and focus those savings on more strategic IT initiatives.

And since Google Apps is web-based, your employees can be productive from anywhere, whether they're at their own desk, using a different computer, or on the go with a mobile device.