Tag Archives: Google Apps for Work

Introducing New and Notable apps in the Google Apps Marketplace

Posted by Rahul Sood, Managing Director, Apps and Search for Work

For six years, the Google Apps Marketplace has helped businesses do more by being the number one source to find third-party apps and integrations that extend what's possible with Google Apps. But with hundreds of popular apps to choose from, it’s sometimes hard for customers to discover the newest and most innovative ones.

Enter New & Notable, a new section in the Google Apps Marketplace that surfaces the latest and best third-party apps and integrations for Google Apps, and the developers behind them.

Here’s a preview of some of the products highlighted this month:

  • Asana Dashboard: The new Asana Dashboard integrates with Google Sheets, allowing users to export task completion and performance information for wider tracking across teams. Read more here.
  • Hubspot CRM: With the new HubSpot CRM app, users can now log emails sent from Gmail into HubSpot with one click, and automatically sync meetings between Google Calendar and HubSpot, no matter which system they came from. Read more here.
  • Xero: With their latest integration, Xero — a provider of online accounting software for small businesses — lets users view Gmail messages alongside Xero transaction and activity details. Users can also save emails in Xero for reference, start a quote or invoice from within a Gmail message. Read more here.
  • Zendesk: With their latest integration, Zendesk automates the Google Apps admin tasks of forwarding support e-mails into Zendesk and listing Google users within Zendesk. Read more here.
  • Zoho People: Zoho People is a new HR management app for small businesses that lets users manage their HR portal directly from their Google Apps account, as well as add users directly to Zoho People, saving them from having to manually re-enter employee information. Read more here.

Find these apps and many more (like AppSheet, GQueues, ZipBooks, Any.Do, Infogram, and LogoMix) in New & Notable. If you’re on the hunt for killer apps that help you get more done with Google Apps, it’s the best place to start.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty takes good ideas global with Google Apps for Work

Posted by Andy Coppin, Operations Director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Editor's note: Today we hear from Andy Coppin, Operations Director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, a global advertising agency based in London. Founded in 1982, BBH has twice won Agency of the Year at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival with groundbreaking campaigns for clients including Audi, British Airways, Tesco and Unilever. With offices in London, Los Angeles, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Mumbai and Stockholm, read how the BBH team uses Google Apps for Work to enhance its global network.

A good idea can cross borders. That’s one reason why we have just one office in each global region, instead of one office in each country like most of our competitors. It keeps campaigns focused and recognises that our adventurous staff see travel as a perk, rather than a chore. So when we overhauled our IT system in 2010, we needed a system that enabled both close international collaboration and great mobility. Google Apps for Work opened up far-reaching creative possibilities that change the way we work.

Mobility we need with lower cost, more dependable tools


Google Apps is ideal for flexible and mobile working. Gmail and Calendar are web-based, so client-facing teams are never out of touch as they travel to meetings abroad. Previously, remotely connecting to our old servers could only be done with an unreliable VPN. It proved to be an expensive liability with a tendency to fail. Drive is not only cheaper, it’s also dependable. The instant messaging function on Hangouts is perfect for teams on the road. Chromebox for meetings has become so powerful and easy to use that it’s entirely superseded the separate video conferencing system we installed five years ago.

Managing IT and administrative controls internally, for faster troubleshooting


The simple administrative interface and modular design of Google Apps for Work means we can solve IT problems internally instead of spending on external support. My colleague Will Triantos, our Global Google Technical Lead, not only administers the entire platform for 1,000 staff in eight offices, he’s also constantly creating new ways of using Google Apps to improve work at BBH. Fast, friendly and comprehensive support from Cloud Technology Solutions (CTS) means all the advice we need is always on-hand. With their support, we migrated our entire Stockholm office to Google Apps in less than a week.

Fostering a culture of creative IT, sharing and efficiency


Using Sites, Drive and Google APIs, Will has created a much-improved new intranet. While our previous intranet was based on servers around the world that cost us £20,000 a year to license, the new intranet is entirely cloud-based, so we don’t pay to maintain our own hardware. Because it uses Sheets to present our global company directory, we can always be confident we have up-to-date contact details for all our offices. With its connections to Drive, we can upload documents like historical advertising pitches in a few seconds, instead of in ten to thirty minutes. And because any of our staff can upload, rather than just one administrator in London, each office can share news and holiday information specific to them. Teams anywhere can access their local Google+ communities or submit Forms to make catering requests from kitchen staff, and users access the intranet with their Google Account single sign on, too, so their Gmail, Calendar and Drive is embedded and only a click away.

Most IT FAQs are answered on our intranet, so Will is free to find other applications for Google Apps. To take a simple example, before new BBH staff arrive at the office, they fill in a Form on Sites that connects to a Sheet in HR, so we have all their details in advance. And at the building entrance they sign-in to a Form on a tablet that emails reception, so the right person can be there to meet them. Small things like that add up, make a great impression and prove that cutting admin in one area frees creative thinking elsewhere.

After busy M&A activity, AOL unifies with Google Apps

Posted by Steve Coulbourne, Technical Director, AOL

Editor's note: Today we hear from Steve Coulbourne, technical director at AOL, a global digital media and technology company focused on “Culture and Code.”

I’ve been part of the AOL team for more than 15 years. In that time I’ve seen the technology we use evolve immensely. When I first started, the company had standard desktops and a legacy IT system. Since then, we’ve shifted from clunky hardware and software to “lightweight enterprise” — prioritizing convenient, immediate access and ease of use.

Our CEO, Tim Armstrong, believes that if you keep doing things the same way, you’ll continue to get the same results. We take this philosophy seriously when it comes to our technology. Our global Chief Technology Officer, William Pence, provided clear vision for modern, cloud-based, and forward looking technologies, which propelled our investment and focus in this space. When we decided to start using Google Apps, we were most interested in unifying and improving how we work together across teams — especially between AOL’s different entities.

In recent years, we’ve completed many acquisitions (think Huffington Post, TechCrunch, and the integration of Verizon’s Digital Media Services to name a few). Having Google Apps during the period of potential confusion and chaos has helped us perform due diligence activities even quicker.

We started exploring Google Apps in 2010 and chose it over Office 365 because Microsoft required us to staff a whole team to manage SharePoint and its infrastructure. We also realized that adoption of Google Apps would be easier and more cost effective because of Google’s reputation for ease of use and the familiarity many of our employees already had with its tools.

Over the course of six months, we unified 13 domains into one with help from a third-party integrator to move from Microsoft Exchange to Google. From a set-up perspective, it took about two to three weeks to get everyone up and running with local peer (i.e., collaboration champions) and IT helpdesk support. Employees immediately started sharing their favorite Apps “hacks” with colleagues (for example, we use Google Forms for invite submissions, which alerts employees when events are filled and creates a culture of excitement and inclusion).

As a result, we were able to decommission 18 of our 22 globally distributed Messaging servers (more than 80 percent), eliminating 130 terabytes (TB) of drive space needs. We’re also migrating on-premise file shares into Google Apps, which will allow us to reallocate another 120 TB of file storage.

I led the initiative for company-wide adoption of Google Drive, Docs and Hangouts, and the entire company has been fully migrated since February 2015. With recent acquisitions, we've quickly integrated our collaboration tools to maintain focus on business value and production.

In terms of security (such as granting and denying access to data as needed), we’ve reduced costs. When you’re working in the cloud, there’s no need to bring on a third-party vendor to ensure data is secure. Moving away from premise-based solutions has provided us the flexibility to decrease our acquisition integration timeline from a messaging and collaboration perspective. We’re now able to offer the services of companies we acquire the same day that a deal is signed.

In certain instances, the collaboration capabilities of Google Apps enabled quicker time to market for our products. For example, the content and assets for each morning’s AOL homepage is queued up in real time on Drive. Also, our Business Communications team can edit articles at the same time — greatly reducing time to publication.

With multiple brands under the AOL umbrella, Apps also allows us to be more transparent and give everyone access to files and documents. With Apps, our employees are productive from anywhere — whether it’s on AOL’s campus or on the network — and connected as a unified team.

How Mimeo moves fast as a global company using Google Apps

Posted by Doug Bohaboy, VP of Marketing, Mimeo

Editor's note: Today we hear from Doug Bohaboy of Mimeo, a content distribution and digital printing company based in New York City. Learn how Google Apps helped Mimeo deliver at breakneck speed while keeping its employees connected.

When I first started at Mimeo, a content distribution and digital printing company, in 2005, we had fewer than 100 employees. I could stand up and talk to anyone in our New York office. I knew everyone.

Today, we have over 800 employees in six locations, including four international offices in the UK, Germany, India and China. Our New York office had ballooned to multiple floors. That’s why we turned to Google Apps to keep our distributed workforce productive, efficient and competitive in an evolving market. Google Hangouts, Google Docs and Google Calendar keep us organized and coordinated across multiple time zones.

To compete with other online suppliers, we need to move fast and fulfill orders quickly. Customers can place an order for a complex printed document on our website at 10 p.m. EST and expect it to be fulfilled and delivered the next day. This means people at our New York headquarters need to communicate rapidly with our global manufacturing facilities. With Hangouts, our teams can video or text chat instantly from any device, whether it’s a desktop computer or mobile phone, at any time of day or night.

We made the switch to Google Apps from Microsoft Exchange in 2010 to give people tools to work more closely together — without wasting time on IT issues. Before 2010, our IT team had to deal with issues that didn’t add value to the company, like scheduled server maintenance and helping employees fix email problems. These minor issues added up to 1,000 hours each year. Now, our IT team spends 100-200 hours a year addressing minor issues — equating to huge financial and time savings.

Google Apps, and particularly Docs, increases our efficiency. Today we create about 90 percent of our documents using Docs. Employees often collaboratively edit documents together when they’re sitting across the room from each other. Docs also makes meetings more efficient by giving us the ability to take shared notes and assign owners. The whole team doesn’t need to be in every meeting — we can tag team members who need to share their input on one small section, and they can contribute on their own time.

With offices in the UK, Germany, China and India, we use Hangouts to collaborate more meaningfully with more face-to-face time. The ease of meeting person to person also helps us appreciate the cultural diversity of our team, which contributes to our open culture that embraces diverse ideas and paths to problem solving. Whether from Memphis or Berlin, any of us could easily hop on a video chat in Hangouts while also having access to intuitive tools, making training new employees from any location seamless.

As companies like ours grow increasingly global, Google Apps is helping to create more mobile, flexible work environments. Our biggest goal is to do more for our customers while keeping our employees in sync by making Mimeo a great place to work. We know that our customers depend on Mimeo for fast, reliable service that consistently exceeds their expectations. Google Apps helps our employees make the most of their time and creativity, ensuring we retain the competitive advantage that’s made us a globally recognized company.


Google I/O: What’s new for enterprise developers

Posted by Diane Greene, SVP, Google

Applications have long been the lifeblood of the enterprise. This has never been more true than in today’s market. And Google has never been more committed to the enterprise. We’re excited to expose our APIs to enterprise developers who can now incorporate advanced technologies such as image recognition, speech recognition, location and maps, email and calendaring into their applications.

Google I/O is a great opportunity to share what excites about the massive digital transformation happening at companies around the globe. We’re thrilled about the speed of innovation with all of our enterprise products, particularly Google Cloud Platform, Google Apps, Maps, Android and Chromebooks. We’re laser focused on creating what developers need to build successfully in the cloud.

At Google, we continue to push new innovations that enable developers to turn great ideas into world class applications. We can also help you get your apps in the hands of your customers through marketplaces like Google Play, Chrome Web Store, Google Apps Marketplace and Cloud Launcher, which serve billions of Android and Chrome users and millions of businesses.
Today’s announcements at I/O further build out our developer toolkit, with new features to help developers build what’s next for the enterprise.
  • New APIs for Sheets & Slides: With the new Sheets API, we're giving developers a new level of access to some of the most popular features in Sheets. Create new spreadsheets, populate them with data and formulas, insert charts and pivot tables, and pull results right into your apps. Developers can use Sheets in a powerful workflow to push data from their app into Sheets, allowing users to collaborate on that data, before the updated data is pulled back into the original app. The Slides API enables developers to push data from other applications into Slides in order to create custom, polished presentations quickly.
  • API Partner Ecosystem: A number of partners, including Salesforce, SAP Anywhere, Conga, Prosperworks, Anaplan, Sage, Trello, and Asana are already connecting their services through these new APIs, and we look forward to seeing even more developers follow suit.
  • Enhancements to the Classroom API: We’re giving developers programmatic access to our most powerful features within Google Classroom. The Classroom API lets school reporting systems sync coursework and grades from Classroom and quickly connect teachers and students to their learning content.
Whether you’re using Google Cloud Platform, integrating with our Machine Learning APIs or building on top of our Google Apps suite, we’re committed to delivering the tools and technologies that help businesses improve productivity, securely connect information across platforms and power new workflows. Earlier this month we announced a BigQuery integration with Google Drive that allows customers to run queries, gather insights and then share that data with teams in a familiar and easy to understand template, no matter where they are. We also recently added two new security certifications, ISO27017 for cloud security and ISO27018 for privacy. And customers like Land O Lakes are taking advantage of our cloud and APIs to revolutionize their fields — in this case, modern farming.

Ever since I began my career in technology, I’ve been working to advance the way the enterprise runs. I worked on some of the first relational databases for Sybase and Tandem and then, at VMware, helped to create an entirely new industry centered around virtualization. Fast forward to today, and I can say that I’ve never been more excited about the potential for the cloud to transform businesses. There was a period in time where the energy was around consumer applications, but we can now see that people are realizing just how much innovation can be done in the enterprise, and it’s enticing more and more developers. While we’re excited about the innovations that we’re bringing to market, we’re even more excited about how you will take advantage of these new advancements. As the momentum continues in the enterprise, we can’t wait to see what you build next.

How oil and gas company Imaginea Energy built a productivity pipeline

Posted by Greg Bennett, Imaginea

Editor's note: Today we hear from Greg Bennett of Imaginea Energy, an oil and gas company based in Calgary, Alberta Canada. Learn how Google Apps helps Imaginea defy industry stereotypes as they work to produce energy sustainably, securely and profitably.

At Imaginea Energy, our vision is an Oil and Gas industry that is much better for the Planet, and for People, and for Profits. This vision is reflected in our culture, the mindsets of our people as well as in our organizational model. Together, our organizational model and culture promote curiosity, teamwork and 10X thinking — values that affect everything from our team-driven project pitches, to idea generation to the tools that are integral to creating solutions that match our aspirations, like Google Apps for Work.

We switched from our previous platform because our legacy storage, productivity and email tools didn’t reflect our open and transparent culture or our vision of the future. The closed IT environment made it difficult to collaborate together beyond very small teams: file-sharing was non-existent, which created insane revision situations and confusion about document version control. Google Drive changes all of that. We've migrated nearly 260,000 files to Drive, all of which can be accessed from anywhere, on any device, without deploying a rigid shared drive structure.

Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and Forms have absolutely transformed how we work together. With real-time editing, commenting and data collection, we can quickly share ideas and insights and rapidly move work forward together. At a recent meeting we had over 30 people generate 20 pages of new ideas in under two hours. Seamless collaboration and rapid ideation like this simply wasn’t possible before.

Google Apps for Work combined with our flexible working environment provide maximum autonomy, which our employees leverage to increase their productivity both in and out of the office. Visit our headquarters on a Friday and you might find up to 40% of our people foregoing their commute in favour of working from home (or a coffee shop, or a park). This flexibility really works for our company and our team.

With access to information online or offline, the ability to work remotely extends to the vast 30,000 km2 of rolling prairie that our operations cover. Operators can capture data even without internet access. Once they re-connect, all of their offline work is instantly synced, eliminating redundant data-entry and confusion.

Our ability to work from anywhere has been further enhanced by using Google Hangouts. Whether a field operator is at one of our 600+ active wells or a team member is running a training presentation from 7,000 kms away in Europe, Hangouts connects our people face-to-face. Our field staff have cut down on the 500 km round trip visits to headquarters — now they can spend more time on-site, and less time driving by communicating and holding meeting via Hangouts. Reducing driving time increases the safety of our team, and also reduces our environmental footprint and operating costs.

Not only has switching to Google Apps saved us significant time, it will also reduce our IT spend. By mid-2016, we’ll have saved over 50 percent on IT maintenance, money that can be redeployed to develop solutions to business problems and maximising our team’s capabilities.

Google Apps gives us the security we need without compromising information flow or flexibility. The Admin console lets us customize mobile device management and quickly respond to changing security events. On a recent trip to Paris, a company device was stolen on the subway. Within 12 minutes, access credentials were changed and our data was secured. This security extends behind the scenes to every part of Google Apps. We may never have world-leading security experts on our staff, but luckily we don’t have to: Google does. Having trust in our tools, combined with the trust we invest in our employees, means we can focus on creating value without obsessing over security.

At Imaginea, we defy industry stereotypes by focusing on Planet, People and Profit together. When you set out to reimagine an industry like oil and gas, achieving that vision is only possible with the right people and the right tools. With Google Apps, we’ve set course to truly transform our business and the energy industry.

Creative entertainment provider Paint Nite uses Google Apps to create a flexible workplace

Posted by Jeffrey Rennie, Development Programs Engineer

Editor's note: oday we hear from Courtney Osgood of Paint Nite, a Boston-based events company that offers consumers a creative social experience at local bars. Learn how Google Apps helps Paint Nite maintain its close-knit company culture and keep teams connected no matter where they work.

Paint Nite offers a different kind of nightlife experience. Guided by a local artist, our customers spend a few hours sipping cocktails and painting at a local bar.
Working together to create something great is in our DNA, which is why we’ve used Google Apps since the company was founded in 2012.

As we’ve grown, Google Apps has helped us maintain our tight-knit culture while successfully scaling our business. In the past year, we’ve added more than 950 cities and towns that are now hosting Paint Nite events, and more than doubled our employees at headquarters from 40 to 100+.

Work-life balance is a big priority at Paint Nite. Our founders recognize that everyone has commitments outside of work, whether it’s spending time with family, pursuing a hobby or volunteering. Paint Nite offers unlimited vacation time and allows employees to work from home any time. Tools like Google Apps help our employees take advantage of this policy. Teams use Google Hangouts to chat about projects throughout the day, whether they’re at the office, at home or working from a coffee shop. We use Hangouts for our weekly all-staff meeting so all employees can join from anywhere and feel like they’re in the same room.

Google Apps helps teams stay organized, which is important given how quickly the company is growing. Our employees love using Google Calendar, which makes it easy to schedule meetings with colleagues who are working remotely. Calendar also lets us book conference rooms in advance, which is a small but critical feature for a rapidly growing company with limited meeting space.

Google Apps also saves us time. Our data analytics team, for example, uses Google Forms to manage dozens of data requests each day. At Paint Nite, we rely on our data to make decisions or share information — a digital marketing manager needs to know how many cities we operate in for a new advertisement, or our communications team wants to share year-over-year growth figures with the local newspaper. Before they started using Forms, our analysts spent hours each week sorting through requests manually. It was an inefficient and frustrating process. Now, if anyone at Paint Nite needs company data, he or she can submit a request using Google Forms.

As we continue to scale from a local startup to a international brand, it’s crucial that our teams stay connected, whether people are working from our main office, at home or on the road. Google Apps helps us do this while maintaining the close-knit, flexible work environment we've grown to love.



St Kilda Mums helps mums, powered by Google Apps for Work

Posted by Mary Gourley, Google for Work, Public Sector (and proud mum of three)

For all the amazing things mums do, they deserve much more than just one day to recognize their greatness. As Sunday approaches, Google Australia is celebrating an organization that makes Mother’s Day an everyday affair.
St Kilda Mums provides new and pre-loved baby goods to mothers in need. What began as a living room operation seven years ago has grown to four warehouses and more than 1,000 volunteers accepting and distributing nursery gear to thousands of families.



So what’s their secret superpower for supporting thousands of mums across Melbourne? Technology. Products like Google Forms and Drive on mobile devices and desktops allows St Kilda Mums to organise incoming donations and better coordinate logistics across the network of staff, social workers and volunteers. The requests are received instantly in the warehouse, matched with the donated stock and dispatched to the family in need.
We're proud to play a small role in enabling St Kilda Mums through Google Apps for Work. We applaud the staff at St Kilda Mums, volunteers and all the mothers out there who keep the world turning with their love and power. And to all my fellow working mums, you’re my heroes!

Happy Mother’s Day from all of us at Google Australia.

Shoes of Prey embraces a “design your own” experience for bespoke shoes and workplace technology

Posted Mike Knapp, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Shoes of Prey

Editor's note: Today’s guest post is by Mike Knapp, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Shoes of Prey. Shoes of Prey creates handmade, bespoke women’s shoes designed by the customer.
Like a lot of tech companies these days, Shoes of Prey started as an exchange of ideas between a few friends — in my case, casual discussion with longtime friends from college, Michael and Jodie Fox. That day, a little magic happened for us when we landed on an idea that would spark interest for customers around the world — an online platform built to inspire creativity and truly honor individual expression. Shoes of Prey allows customers to design their own made-to-order shoes from anywhere via our online store, as long as they have Wi-Fi access.

The flexibility and freedom to be as creative with our personal expression as we choose is at the core of what we offer to customers, and we want the same from our workplace technology. We use cloud-based tools like Google Apps that allow employees to work how they want, from wherever they please.

Sharing information is particularly crucial now that we’re a global team with offices in the U.S., the Philippines, Australia, Japan and China. We save thousands of dollars we’d otherwise spend on travel by meeting face-to-face over Google Hangouts and working simultaneously in shared Google Docs.

Being able to write a document with people in three different offices at the same time is incredibly powerful. We compile our weekly global newsletter in a single shared Doc. Each team contributes its updates when ready, and there’s no need for multiple meetings and back-and-forth email attachments. Most teams share their weekly meeting notes in Docs as well.

We also use Google Sheets to manage financial budgeting across teams and have a singled shared master Sheet to track monthly expenses and cash flow. Each team updates its expenses in a designated Sheet and then the team lead or manager updates the master, which is access-controlled.

With Google Apps, we can maintain a highly collaborative culture and keep our data secure. Thanks to sophisticated sharing settings in Docs, we’re able to share customer and employee information only with intended recipients, grant specific permissions and adjust who has access even after sharing a link. We know that we have Google’s security experts watching out for us, which gives us peace of mind.

We’ve grown our company using Google Apps from day one, and I can’t imagine working any other way. Once you've worked this way, there’s no other way to work. And we’ve saved thousands of dollars by not having to hire people to manage servers or perform software updates, as these are automated with Google. Google Apps keeps our talented workforce from getting bogged down with outdated or mundane processes so that it can continue to create the best experience — and shoes — for our customers.

Google Calendar for Android: Find a time for my meeting

Posted by Stella Schieffer, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

Smartphones have made productivity portable. You no longer have to be at your desk to catch up on meeting notes, dial into a conference call, or send an email. But scheduling meetings on the go is still difficult, as you have to open your laptop to check everyone’s calendar and find a time that works.

Starting today, if you use Google Apps for Work or Edu, you can schedule meetings from anywhere with "Find a time" in Google Calendar for Android.

With a single tap, “Find a time” helps you find meeting times that work for everyone—even if they're in different time zones—based on their availability and the times they usually have meetings. If there are no times that work, Calendar will look at which conflicting meetings can most easily be rescheduled. Designed specifically for organizations where sharing your calendar with colleagues is the norm, here's how it works:
“Find a time” makes suggestions, but you're still in control. You can tap to see everyone's schedule at a glance—perfect for making sure the timing works for all. And if you manage someone else's calendar, you can use the feature to schedule meetings on their behalf as well.

Download Google Calendar for Android to get easy, on-the-go scheduling. And yes, we're also working on bringing “Find a time” to iPhone, as well as easier ways to schedule on the web.