​Modern browsers for modern applications

​The web has evolved in the last ten years, from simple text pages to rich, interactive applications including video and voice. Unfortunately, very old browsers cannot run many of these new features effectively. So to help ensure your business can use the latest, most advanced web apps, we encourage you to update your browsers as soon as possible. There are many choices:

Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0+

Mozilla Firefox 3.0+

Google Chrome 4.0+

Safari 3.0+

Many other companies have already stopped supporting older browsers like Internet Explorer 6.0 as well as browsers that are not supported by their own manufacturers. We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and Google Sites. As a result you may find that from March 1 key functionality within these products -- as well as new Docs and Sites features -- won’t work properly in older browsers.

2010 is going to be a great year for Google Apps and we want to ensure that everyone can make the most of what we are developing. Please take the time to switch your organization to the most up-to-date browsers available.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Senior Product Manager

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Launched: Google Apps Script for Google Apps Standard Edition

Back in August we released Google Apps Script to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers. Today we're excited to extend the availability of Apps Script to Google Apps Standard Edition, used by millions of groups, families, clubs and other organizations around the world.

Google Apps Script provides the ability to automate a variety of tasks such as modifying Spreadsheets, creating Calendar appointments, checking stock prices, sending email, looking up Contacts and much, much more. For a more detailed overview, check out the video below:



Getting started is easy. You can take a look at the Apps Script Welcome Page, and then work through some of the Tutorials. Before long you'll be writing scripts to automate all kinds of repetitive tasks like keeping track of group expenses and sending out automated reminders triggered by values in a spreadsheet.

In this example, we're using a Google Docs spreadsheet to keep track of our soccer team's weekly dues. Each player owes $5 per game towards shared expenses. Unfortunately the players can be an absentminded bunch that need frequent payment reminders. In the spreadsheet, every amount entered updates a player's column to indicate which weeks are PAID (in green), and how much is DUE (in red). We've also used Apps Script to add a custom menu:

• 'Refresh' recalculates and colors cells to indicate which weeks are PAID and which are DUE
• 'Send Reminders' emails a polite message reminding players in debt to pay up

Go ahead and take a look at the sample code in this template. After choosing Use This Template, select Scripts... from the Spreadsheet's Tools menu. It's a very basic script, but it gets the job done!

Check it out, and let us know what you think!

Posted by Evin Levey, Product Manager, Google Apps team

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Site creation, sharing management and more with the Google Sites API

Since we launched the Google Sites Data API last fall, we've heard great feedback from businesses and schools using the API to update sites from 3rd party applications, migrate data from legacy workspace solutions into Google Sites and more.

Today, we're releasing several improvements to the API: the abilities to list a user's sites, create new sites, copy existing sites, and manage sharing permissions. You can read more about these updates to the Google Sites Data API on the Google Code Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

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Spelling Suggestions and Thumbnail View in Google Docs

Google Docs lets you create, store, and share work files with teammates and other colleagues. Today we're making it easier for you to search across your files and find your documents with spelling suggestions in Google Docs search results. When you search from your Google Documents List, we automatically check whether your query uses the most common spelling of a given word. If you’re likely to get better search results with an alternate spelling, you'll see a "Did you mean..." spelling suggestion. Never again will you wonder why your search for "agedna" (agenda) came up with zero results!

We also launched a new thumbnail view that displays small previews of your files. When combined with personalized relevance in search results, the thumbnail view makes it even faster to find the file you're looking for. You can toggle between list and thumbnail views using new buttons on the top right of the toolbar.

Finally, we're increasing the maximum file size for the Upload and share any file feature on Google Docs, so now you can upload, store, and share any file up to 1GB in size with Google Docs.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Product Manager, Google Apps

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How search can add real ROI to eCommerce websites

Although it "makes sense" that good search can increase website ROI, especially for eCommerce websites, it's important to back that intuition with quantifiable data supporting the value of online research search. Thanks to recent research from Market Strategy Group, the evidence is in.

Market Strategy Group's new white paper, titled "Search for Revenue: Leveraging Powerful Search to Boost eTail Sales" shares a range of data indicating how adding or improving search capability on eTail sites can significantly raise revenues. The study covers why site search is more important today than ever before, and delves into the potential ROI companies can achieve by having advanced search on their eCommerce sites.

We're sharing firsthand perspecitves on that value in an upcoming webinar hosted by eCommerce specialists MultiChannel Merchant:

Search: adding real ROI to eCommerce websites
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
1:00 p.m. EST / 10:00 a.m. PST

During this hour-long webinar, you'll hear from:

• Leslie Bacon, Group Publisher at Penton Marketing Media Group, delivering insights on the online channel and how Multichannel Merchant is addressing the shift towards online sales
• Joyce Wu, Partner at Market Strategy Group, covering their recent white paper, Search for Revenue: Leveraging Powerful Search to Boost eTail Sales
• Vijay Koduri, Product Marketing Manager at Google Enterprise, discussing how Google Commerce Search addresses the problems of e-commerce site search speed and relevancy

All three speakers will answer audience questions as part of this event.

Register here. We hope you'll join us to get the facts on how effective search boosts results for online retailers.

Posted by Ashley Gorringe, Enterprise Search team

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Migrating 6,000 users in 20 countries from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild Semiconductor, the $1.2 billion chipmaker. Barry has more than 15 years of IT experience in the semiconductor industry. His responsibilities include enterprise IT support for telecommunications, messaging, database administration, and product design infrastructure as well as responsibility for business applications supporting finance, human resources, and business intelligence.

Barry will be available on a live webcast this Thursday, January 28, at 2:00 p.m. EST, 11:00 a.m. PST, 7:00 p.m. GMT to talk about his company's experience switching to Google Apps, and to answer your questions about this process.

At the end of 2008, we were at a crossroads for our email and collaboration tools. We had to make a long-term decision on what direction to take. At the time, we had over 6,000 Lotus Notes/Domino users around the world using an older platform (Lotus Notes/Domino version 6.5). We had some serious challenges: our users were frustrated with the outdated Notes/Domino functionality, the IT environment was complicated, and the ongoing maintenance costs were high. At the same time, we were working to implement an email archiving and e-discovery solution that was, frankly, not going well. To add to the mix, the world economy was in free-fall and our business was seeing those effects.

We wanted to improve our messaging tools while simplifying the IT environment, but needed a cost-effective approach. We originally thought we should upgrade our existing solutions to the latest releases, but knew that was going to be a time-consuming and expensive approach. So, we started seriously evaluating other options. During our review, we considered the hosted versions of the Lotus and Microsoft offerings, but ultimately focused our attention on evaluating Google Apps.

When Paul Lones, our SVP of IT, first suggested taking a look at using Google Apps as our enterprise email tool, we thought he was joking. But when we started looking at the capabilities, benefits, and costs of Google's enterprise offering, we were very impressed. We then began a more thorough technical and functional review. We determined that the core capabilities for email, calendar, contacts, and IM would probably meet our needs. Since email archiving and discovery were also critical for us, we looked at the Postini solutions. Again, we thought the delivered Postini features would work for Fairchild. Beyond the basics, we also saw the added value of Google's collaboration features available from Google Sites and Google Docs, and the anywhere/anytime access provided by Google's cloud-based services. Finally, we did an ROI analysis and estimated we’d save about $500,000 per year by migrating off of Lotus Notes/Domino. So, we made a case to our CEO and executive team to move forward with a pilot project using Google Apps.

For the pilot, we selected a core group of IT and business employees and asked for some volunteers. To our surprise the CEO and the entire executive team volunteered. As a result, we also included the executive assistants. Although having the execs in the pilot raised the stakes, it turned out to be one of the keys to the project's success. To help us get up to speed quickly and run the pilot smoothly, we partnered with Appirio Consulting. Appirio had previous experience converting large corporations from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps. Appirio conducted one-on-one or small group training sessions for the pilot users and targeted training for the executive admins because of the complexity of their jobs when it comes to collaboration, email, and calendar management.

After a successful pilot, we made the decision to migrate the whole company to Google. The next group of employees migrated were 400 "early adopters" from across the company, including all owners of Notes/Domino applications and databases. The idea was to give these people a head start in moving any important non-email content from Lotus to Google Apps. For the early adopters, we used a combination of live and recorded web-based training. These early adopters also became "Google guides" for the rest of the user base during the full company migration.

Ultimately, we deployed Google Apps to over 6,000 users in 20 countries in less than five months. This deployment included migrating contacts, calendar entries, and up to 12 months of historical email, plus providing BlackBerry support. At the same time, we implemented the email security and email archiving capabilities available using Google's Postini platform.

Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money. Google Docs and Sites are really changing the way people work as teams, and the way information is shared. This new way of doing working is really powerful, especially for a company that does business in so many countries and timezones. We are now looking at Google Sites to replace our existing intranet. But the ability to access Gmail and the other Google Apps from anywhere – without having to use a VPN – has probably been the biggest hit.

We learned a lot of valuable lessons throughout the process of evaluating and migrating to Google Apps that we’d be happy to share with you. Please join me to discuss our experience in more detail and to learn how you might leverage Google Apps for your company.

Join us for this LIVE Event on:
Switching from Lotus Notes/Domino to Google Apps by Fairchild Semiconductor
Thursday, January 28, 2010
2:00 p.m. EST / 11:00 a.m. PST / 7:00 p.m. GMT

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

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Welcoming Earth API (and Flash SSL support) to the Google Maps API Premier family

We're happy to announce that we've integrated the Google Earth API into Maps API Premier, adding easy multiple domain and SSL support, enterprise technical support, and a more expansive license to enable commercial use or sale of a product that embeds Earth API or to use it in a site that isn't publicly accessible. With this news, Earth API joins the current family of Maps API Premier services including the Javascript Maps API v2, Maps API for Flash, Static Maps API, StreetView API, and geocoding service, as explained today in the Google Maps API Premier Developer's Guide.

A number of developers have already created amazing products leveraging the Earth API platform in the Maps API Premier suite. Earth Knowledge's Earth API implementation shows how:

Click on the screenshot (you may be prompted to add the Google Earth Plugin, and then "refresh" to view) to see how it powerfully visualizes all of the critical 3D data an emergency responder would need to know about the recent catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.

Other examples include StrataLogica™ , Nystrom's great education application, which brings a favorite teaching tool – the globe – to the 21st century. And, in these climate-conscious times, Space Time Insight enables utilities to visualize critical streams of data using the Earth API from smart grid data to current wind conditions.

One more thing: we're also announcing full HTTPS support in the Premier version of the Maps API for Flash. This addition delivers the added security of HTTPS while still providing a friendly user experience that's free of warning pop-ups. This is important news for customers who are creating applications with the Maps API for Flash but who need the security of HTTPS.

Learn how to work with this functionality here, and (if you're already a Premier customer) make sure you contact Enterprise Support with your client ID to have them enable SSL.

Posted by Daniel Chu, Product Manager, Enterprise Maps & Earth team

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