Students share their Google Apps stories

Editor's note: We've had enough interest in this story, which ran yesterday on the Official Google Blog, to share it again here. If you are using (or interested in using) Google Apps and other Google solutions in education, be sure to watch the video – and use comments, below, to fill us in on Google Apps stories from your school.

You might remember reading our posts from the road when we hit the streets and headed "App to School" in our retro bio-fuel bus (below) to visit ten universities across the U.S. that used Google Apps. One of our main goals for this trip was to hear from the technology experts themselves -- the students -- about how they were using Google tools like Gmail, Docs, Calendar, Sites, and Talk to be more effective on and off campus.


Luckily we had a video camera along for the ride, and we filmed a bunch of students telling their stories. Every week we'll share a new video on the Google Students blog, so you can hear from the students themselves and hopefully learn a few new ways to use these products. If you want to make sure you catch all the latest videos, and stay up-to-date about other news and tips for students, you can subscribe to the student blog.

Here's one video from a student who uses Google Calendar to manage lab studies with his classmates:



Can't wait another week to see more videos? Check out our playlist. And if you have your own story to share, we encourage you to upload it as a response.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Google Apps for Education

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Sync Google Apps with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices

For workers on the go, having up-to-date calendar and contacts information is crucial. Knowing about last-minute changes to schedules can mean the difference between winning and losing a big deal. Today, we're happy to announce two-way push sync of calendar and contact information for Google Apps users with iPhones and Windows Mobile devices. We're also releasing contact sync for mobile devices that support SyncML.

With Google Sync, whether users make changes to calendar events and contacts from their browsers or mobile devices, changes will be reflected in both places automatically, within minutes. And because Google Sync ties directly into devices' pre-installed calendar and contacts applications, employees don't need to learn a new interface.

To get started, Google Sync must be enabled for your domain from the Google Apps control panel. Then, employees will be able to configure Google Sync from their devices. The instructions for each type of phone are different, so check out our help center for device specific information.

Before getting started with this beta release, please take a minute to review some syncing limitations we're aware of with the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices. Also, keep in mind that Google Sync will replace all existing contacts and calendar information on your phone, so make sure to back up any important data before you get started.

For more information, visit m.google.com/sync.

Posted by Debbie Leight, Google Apps Team

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Migrating from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps: a business perspective

Every month, we invite a featured customer to talk about their experience bringing Google Apps into their businesses, sharing insights and suggestions for other teams looking to bring Apps into the workplace. We invite you to join this conversation since it's a great opportunity to get "real world" answers to your questions about Google Apps.

These talks are informal and open. We share an overview from our featured customer and a brief look at Google Apps, followed by Q&A. There's a lot to say about Google Apps, and we figure that our customers are the best people to tell you how they've used Google Apps in business – what's worked, what they've learned, and what they'd recommend to other businesses who might be considering a move to Google Apps.

Next Thursday, February 12, we're pleased to welcome Jud Clift, President and Founder of ASE Technology, who uses Google Apps to manage his print technology business. ASE Technology migrated from Microsoft Exchange and a Blackberry Enterprise Server to Google Apps and since then has used services like Google's email and integrated IM to help field sales reps get faster answers from headquarters when they're out with prospects.

ASE Technology also uses Salesforce.com for Google Apps to manage forecasting and product SKUs to get a more complete picture of sales activity.

We hope you'll join us as Jud shares tips and learning from his migration from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps. Details follow:

Migrating from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps: a business perspective
Thursday, February 12, 2009
10:00 a.m. PST, 12:00 p.m. CST, 1:00 p.m. EST

Sign up here.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps

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Offline also available in Google Calendar

Following up on last week's announcement of offline access in Gmail Labs, we're happy to let you know that read-only offline access is now an option in Calendar for Google Apps customers.

So on top of organizing your Gmail inbox while you're traveling or without a strong Internet connection, you will be able to see your events in Google Calendar from wherever you are. Offline Calendar will let you view your existing schedule and events, but not edit them, so you don't have to print out calendars the night before a trip.

To enable offline in Calendar:

1. Sign in to Calendar.
2. In the upper right-hand corner of your account, next to your username, there will be a new 'Offline Beta' link. Click this link to start the offline synchronization process.

Users of Google Apps Standard Edition can get started on these steps immediately. For Premier and Education Edition, domain administrators will first have to check the box next to 'Turn on new features' in the 'Domain Settings' page of the Google Apps control panel before their users can enable this option.

This offline feature uses Gears, an open source browser extension that adds offline functionality directly to the browser.

Posted by Joyce Sohn, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Introducing better email lists for Google Apps

We've heard quite a few requests for email list enhancements, so we know our users will be happy to hear that several new administrative features for email lists are available today.

First, administrators can now assign permissions per email list that determine who can send email to that list. The sending of email can be restricted to members of the list, anyone in the domain, anyone in the world, or even a subset of members designated as list owners. This means you can more effectively use lists for internal communications, announcements, external contact aliases, and even cross-organizational collaboration.

Second, lists and list membership are easier to manage in bulk in the control panel. Mailing lists can even contain other mailing lists, which allows you to easily reuse frequently-referenced lists. We've also updated the Provisioning API for Premier and Education Edition administrators, which replicates all the email list functionality in the control panel, enabling automated mailing list management. We already have individual customers managing upwards of ten thousand lists using this API.

Third, we've renamed "email lists" to "groups". You can access the feature from your control panel under 'Users and Groups' > 'Groups'. Why would we bother renaming it? We see more uses for groups than just sending email to lists. So, we'll be making groups useful for other enterprise tasks in the future, like easily sharing a document with a group of people. Also, we'll be incorporating many of the features that our consumer users love in Google Groups into Google Apps over time.

All of your existing Google Apps email lists have been converted to groups, so check out our getting started guide and get more out of those lists today!

Posted by Justin Sadowski, Google Apps Engineer

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Folders and labels: the best of both worlds

New Google Apps users quickly notice that Gmail uses labels instead of traditional folders for organizing email. Why this design decision? Put simply, you can organize and then find messages more efficiently with labels.

Here's why: a message can be tagged with multiple labels like "Project Orion" and "Budget," so you can find that message in either context down the road. With folders, you'd need to pick the one best place for that message – let's say the "Project Orion" folder – making it harder to find later if you're looking for that same message in the context of budget planning.

We hear that the concept of labels can feel foreign at first, and, up until now, the way you had to first apply a label and then archive to move it from your inbox was a two-step process. Listening to users, we heard that people wanted the flexibility of labels but the simplicity of folders.

As of today we're making it easier for you to work with labels. From your inbox or when viewing labeled messages, you'll see a new "Move to" button that labels and removes messages from the current location in one step, just like folders. To apply a label without archiving or removing existing labels, click the "Labels" button.

For you keyboard shortcut diehards, V lets you quickly move, and L lets you label selected messages...but first make sure you've turned on keyboard shortcuts.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

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Exploring new worlds with Google Earth Enterprise

The big news at the Googleplex today is the latest release of Google Earth, making features like Ocean, Historical Imagery, and Touring available to Google Earth users everywhere.

We're happy to open up these new worlds of exploration to our Enterprise customers, with new releases of Google Earth Pro and Google Earth Enterprise also available today. This is a tremendous advance for organizations who work on -- or under -- the Seven Seas, or who have archives of historical photos and data that they'd like to make more accessible to their employees.

People who use Google Earth Pro, the workplace edition of Google Earth, will see the new oceanographic data, historical imagery, and other features through their connection to Google's public globe of satellite imagery, maps, terrain & 3D buildings. With today's release of the Google Earth Enterprise 5.0 client, customers can start to realize the benefits by layering their own private data on top of the Google-hosted Ocean or Historical Imagery via KML. Google's public data about the world's oceans and images from the past should give a glimmer of what's possible.

We're hard at work to allow Google Earth Enterprise customers to build their own Ocean or Historical Imagery for their private networks, in much the same way they today build their own Earth. This will enhance organizations' ability to build private globes displaying this information while ensuring that authorized users can visualize the data quickly and easily.

(That's Cape Fear under water, by the way.)

The new Touring feature already works with private globes, allowing for simple creation of narrated tours of an area to share critical information with other Google Earth users. Touring compliments the Movie Maker capability, which lets users "fly through" Google Earth while capturing video that can be used in presentations, broadcasts, or on websites, available only in Google Earth Pro and the Google Earth Enterprise client.

And there's more. With this latest release, importing data from GPS devices is easier than ever. Customers will also find better ways to interact with their data. Pop-up windows for your data can now include fully compliant HTML and javascript, allowing organizations to provide their employees with richer context about the location they're viewing. And we've improved the startup speed and the performance of layers.

Existing customers who want to get started with the Google Earth Enterprise 5.0 client should contact Google customer support to access the download. Google Earth Pro customers will be prompted to upgrade the next time they start Google Earth. If you want to learn more about either product, drop us a line.

We hope you'll learn more about this announcement and bring the power of these new services to your organization, no matter where in the world (or the ocean!) you may be.

Posted by Bryan Atwood, Product Manager, Google Earth Enterprise

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