Tag Archives: Google Hangouts

Google Apps for Work: POPSUGAR’s secret weapon in the shifting media landscape

Posted by Bjorn Pave, Director of Information Technology, POPSUGAR

Editor's note: Today’s guest author is Bjorn Pave, Senior Director of Information Technology at POPSUGAR, an independent media and technology company that provides women with highly engaging content and commerce brands. Founded in 2006, POPSUGAR is in seven countries with more than 75 million unique monthly visitors. 

When I joined POPSUGAR in May 2013, we were rapidly transitioning from an ambitious startup to a major presence in entertainment and lifestyle media. The executive team had just decided to switch from Office 365 to Google Apps, and it was my job to make sure the transition went smoothly from a technical and user base perspective. Moving away from the familiar Microsoft-supported work environment could be difficult and I wanted to ease any resistance to change. Employees caught on quickly as to how the platform would increase collaboration and support our rapid growth.

Our Los Angeles based production team clamored for tools to help manage their film shoots. Talent schedules were unpredictable, and teams in multiple locations needed real-time access to production details on their mobile devices. Some of them had used Google tools before and started campaigning the executive team for Google Apps. POPSUGAR founder and CEO Brian Sugar was keen to make the company-wide switch, and his wife, Lisa Sugar, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, wanted a better tool to manage the complex production calendars for each website that POPSUGAR manages.

With expert support from Cloud Sherpas, we migrated to Google Apps for Work. We created an experiential campaign called “Countdown to Google” to launch the switch. We also sent creative how-to emails and scheduled group training sessions. Our employees (more than 70 percent) were already familiar with Google Apps. The bigger challenge was tailoring workflows to meet each department’s business requirements. The result was a huge success. Two and half years later, we operate independently of almost any Microsoft service. Here are the biggest benefits we’ve seen with Google Apps for Work:

Boosted productivity with an immediate impact in our editorial process. Prior to using Google Apps, it took our editors 24 hours to interview a celebrity, create a blog post and to publish the post online. Now, the process is cut down to 1- 2 hours, which gives us a huge competitive advantage over other online publications. We now reach our audiences faster. Team meetings are also more productive. Everyone works with the same Google Doc to take notes, track the agenda and assign action items in real time. With the right tools, we created a better environment for inclusive collaboration.

Fosters collaboration between offices. Our offices are in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, and we’re able to function as one team regardless of location. Chromebox for meetings was an easy solution that let employees and contractors communicate with each other around the world. We insisted on providing video capability because communication can be subtle, and those subtleties are lost if team members can’t see each other during a discussion. Now, when our West Coast-based Shopstyle team checks in with the European team first thing in the morning, it’s face-to-face and personal.

Saves 70 percent per year. Switching to Google Apps saves us approximately $110,000 annually, because we no longer pay for upgrades or unused services bundled in enterprise license agreements. For example, Google Hangouts saves us a few thousand every month by eliminating the need for additional video conference software or traditional conference call lines.

Google platform is reliable. An IT department’s worst nightmare is an email outage, or loss of work when a server is down. Google Apps is cloud based and updates automatically, no matter how many people are working in the same document. Because of the reliability of cloud-based servers, my team has the bandwidth to focus on innovation, creating new solutions to support our growth and stay on top of our business objectives.

Our voice matters. While millions of companies have gone Google, Google continues to make sure each customer can share their unique perspective. We’re involved with the Google Apps’ development program, and we participate in beta testing of new features, which is great for our IT roadmap. We use the Google Apps Marketplace to find third-party applications that build off of and complement our Google Apps tools.

Nine years after launching, POPSUGAR has grown to over 450 employees, in addition to managing a multitude of specialist contractors, in 5 locations around the globe. We’ve established a reputation for being leaders in the shifting media landscape, but we aren’t complacent. Our global audience is constantly expanding as more and more unique users rely on POPSUGAR as their primary source for entertainment, fashion, fitness, beauty and lifestyle news and product curation. The Google for Work platform is a key enabling technology for us, as collaboration, innovation and reliability are essential to support our vision for the future.

charity: water unifies a global team with Chromebox for Meetings

Posted by Ian Cook, head of IT, charity: water

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Ian Cook, head of IT at charity: water, a non-profit organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Learn about how the organization is using Chromebox for meetings to keep the team connected, from its New York City HQ to onsite in Cambodia. 

At charity: water, our mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet. We have a “100 percent model,” which means every dollar donated goes directly to the field to fund clean water projects. This is made possible by a small group of passionate and dedicated supporters who cover all of our operating costs: everything from staff salaries, to flights to the field, to the ink in our printer.

At charity: water transparency is one of our core values, and with the help of Google we maintain transparency in two major ways. We use the Google Maps APIs to show every supporter exactly what we've done with their donation by giving them the GPS coordinates, photos and community information of the exact projects they made possible. We also rely heavily on tools like Chromebox for Meetings to communicate with our global team; our headquarters is in New York, but we have staff that work remotely in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

We switched to Chromebox for Meetings after testing different products, and gathering feedback from our employees. They found Chromebox for Meetings to be the best solution: powerful, easy to use and seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. When we moved into a new, custom office space, we opted to include screens connected to Chromebox for Meetings in all nine of our conference rooms.

We like when technology enables, rather than interrupts, our natural flow of working. At any time, more than half our conference rooms are booked for virtual meetings, allowing us to connect instantly with colleagues around the world. We even have a 48-inch TV mounted at standing height on a media cart, which we move into the common area for company wide meetings. Remote employees can join via Hangouts and participate as if they were standing beside their colleagues. In fact, our first UK-based employee is connected with our New York City headquarters on Google Hangouts almost every day.

With simpler video conferencing, we’ve improved work-life balance by giving everyone, from interns to executive staff, more flexibility to work from anywhere at any time. Chromebox for Meetings is easy to scale and mobile-friendly, which is important since travel is core to what we do. Using Hangouts in conjunction with Chrome device management also allows us to help out employees with IT issues in real time, which is essential for a global team that often works remotely. I can share screens and fix problems whether at the office, at home or on the road.

Our team’s made up of excited, passionate people, running a non-profit much like a fast-paced technology startup. We need tools that help us work more collaboratively, even when a number of our team members are dispersed across the globe. We’ve even started an initiative to hire the best talent for the job, regardless of physical location. We wouldn’t be able to do this without powerful video conferencing technology and work tools that enable mobility. With Chromebox for Meetings and Google Apps, we can work better at achieving our mission while maintaining the transparency that’s at the core of our values.

Guest access to Hangouts video calls without a Google account

Last year, we introduced a new feature for Hangouts on the web allowing Google Apps customers to share links to Hangouts video calls so that external meeting guests may request to join if not explicitly invited. We completed the rollout of this feature across all platforms earlier this year.

Starting today, we’re making this feature even more useful by removing the requirement that guests have a Google account in order to join a Hangouts video call. Here’s how it works: guests without a Google account who have been provided with the video call link by the organizer will be asked to provide their name and then request to join the call.
request-join-guest-hangouts.png
Any attendee from the domain organizing the video call can then allow the guest into the meeting.
hangouts-guest-accept-reject.png
We’re also making this easier for guests who do not use Google Calendar by ensuring a link to the video call is visible in the description of the event.

This new feature is available now for guests joining with a web browser, making it easy for Apps customers using Hangouts to meet with anyone - inside or outside their organization, with or without a Google account. Customers with Chromebox for meetings will also have an even easier method for guests to present content in meeting rooms. Check out the Help Center for more information: Hangouts | Chromebox for meetings

Launch Details 
Release track:  
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace: 
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Hangouts | Chromebox for meetings
Google for Work blog post

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Meetings made simple with guest access

Posted by Patrick Wynn, Product Manager, Google for Work

Joining a meeting should be as easy as walking into a room. That should be the case whether you’re meeting in person, or face-to-face over video. This week we’re rolling out an update to Google Hangouts that makes joining a video call as simple as clicking a link in an invitation. No filling in forms, no need for a Google account, just simple, easy access to meetings. Connect with teammates and get things done, while maintaining the control and security you need in a work environment.
Say you’re a business about to talk through new product plans with your supplier, and you decide it’d be great to also get the thoughts of a key customer. No problem.

  1. Invite your external guests with Google Calendar
  2. They click a link in the event description and fill in their name
  3. In order to help give you control and security over your meetings, you’ll get a prompt to accept / deny their entry whether you’re using web, mobile or Chromebox for meetings.

With Hangouts security features like locking video meetings to only people within an organization and muting and ejecting participants, there’s always the right level of security to match your organization’s needs.

Learn more about Hangouts today.

The RSPCA rescues, rehabilitates and rehomes hundreds of thousands of animals a year with help from Google Apps for Work

Posted by Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director IT Resources, RSPCA

 Editor's note: Today we hear from Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director Resources-IT at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the UK’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity with 1600 employees across England and Wales. In 2014 the £43 million that the organisation received in voluntary donations helped rescue more than 128,000 animals from cruelty, abuse and neglect. Read how the RSPCA is using Google Apps for Work to help give these animals a new chance.

I often refer to our IT spend as kitten food, since that helps us focus on its value. Every pound we save with our solutions helps to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals across the country. So when our legacy email system reached the end of its working life, we wanted great value for money in the short term and opportunities for cost-saving and innovation further down the line. With Google Apps for Work, we got both.

We started the rollout with the IT team, then added superusers, then everyone else. We called these stages “ready,” “steady” and “GO.” In the “steady” stage, we trained up superusers and gave them t-shirts and flags so their colleagues knew who to turn to for advice. We installed timers on everyone’s desktops with a day-by-day “Countdown to Google” that created a real sense of excitement about the change and used Forms to gather post-go live feedback from 1,000 members of our team. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

From the start, we saved significantly on equipment costs alone. Our previous system operated from more than 40 servers, all of which have been decommissioned and will never have to be replaced. At £3,500 per server, that saved us £140,000 just on equipment. And digital signage now costs one tenth of the price we used to pay, from £1,500 per store to a solution using Chromebox and Slides that costs just £150 per store. Chromebooks have proven so cost effective that we bought 150 this year and plan to adopt them further. And because they connect to Drive, we don’t need to carry heavy paperwork around, which is good for the environment, our budget, and our backs. Also, when we needed to add 500 staff to our email platform, we did it in a matter of days with no additional infrastructure other than the provision of Android smartphones.


Every year we find new homes for more than 50,000 animals, and Google Apps tools make that rehabilitation process so much faster. Our 500 RSPCA inspectors are out in the field every day, investigating animal cruelty and complaints. Under our old system, none of them were connected to a central email hub, but now they all have Gmail and Drive on Android phones and access to Chromebooks, so they can instantly share test results, check documentation, send pictures and request temporary accommodation for an animal at one of our animal centres. And as soon as an animal is ready for rehoming, the quest begins to find new owners. We used to make promotional videos that we would burn to DVDs and deliver to our shops and centres by hand once a month, but now we can use Slides and a Chromebox to send promotions instantly to our screens, the same day an animal’s ready for a new home. No driving, no hassle with DVDs.

We’re committed to creating a more united, mobile, flexible workforce by the RSPCA’s 200th anniversary in 2024, and with Google Apps for Work, we’re well on the way to making that a reality. Working together in Docs isn’t just making our internal processes more transparent, it’s connecting people from parts of our organisation that otherwise operate independently and allows us to share knowledge and advice across the country. Hangouts let us meet face-to-face online and keep workflow moving with instant messaging. We’re also using Calendar to keep in synch and Sheets to work out duty rosters and book holidays.

Every time a supporter puts a pound in one of our collection tins, they want it to be spent wisely. By streamlining our services with Google Apps for Work, we make sure that more of that money serves the animals who need it. In the end, it could be food for a kitten, or a puppy, a horse, a seal, a hedgehog…

Narvik Kommune brings social services to the Arctic with Google Apps for Work

Posted by Per Jakobsen, CIO, Narvik Kommune, Norway

Editor's note: Today we hear from Per Jakobsen, head of IT operations and development at Narvik Kommune, a Norwegian municipality 343 kilometres north of the Arctic circle. Read how Google Apps for Work is being used at Narvik Kommune to make life simpler for staff, so that they can spend less time doing paperwork and more time managing healthcare, childcare, schools, transport and housing services for the people that depend on them.

Norwegians value the human touch in social services. We call this “warm hands,” and we know nothing can replace it. But as a municipality, we need cool efficiency to make sure that our carers, teachers and medics are in the right place at the right time for 20,000 citizens across more than 2,000km².
Photo by Pål Jakobsen

Every day, Narvik Kommune coordinates 1,600 employees across 58 locations — but our old email system was holding us back from doing our best work. An obsolete user interface made it difficult to navigate, spam was a chronic problem, and we depended on expensive consultants for maintenance. Buying 750 Google Apps for Work accounts hasn’t just resolved these issues at a reasonable and predictable price; it’s made Narvik Kommune more efficient, more reliable and more mobile. We worked with Avalon Solutions, a Google Apps Premier Partner in the Nordics, who contributed to the successful migration.

We’ve gained several hours each week now that we use stable and secure Google servers, instead of wasting time servicing a spam filter and antivirus software and troubleshooting email instability. And the minimal training necessary to use Google Apps tools means departments throughout Narvik Kommune are discovering creative and productive ways to use them — all on their own:

  • Working together under tight deadlines in Sheets: Our economy team uses Sheets instead of Excel, so they can update documents simultaneously during hectic periods and avoid the delays and confusion caused by multiple copies when union representatives and others are involved in compiling records.
  • Collecting and sharing information across teams with Sites: HR uses Sites to reach out more effectively through the organisation when collecting and presenting information on large internal procedures.
  • Staying on top of meetings with Calendar: All teams use Calendar on our smartphones to organise meetings (and receive SMS notifications before they start).
  • Digital discussion notes on Docs: All teams use Docs to take notes during discussions, which keeps everyone better aligned and saves time and cost on printing.
  • Building budgets on Drive: Our councilman and managers across the administration used Drive to compile our last annual budget, saving time on a joint task that we would previously handle with fileshare documents that could only be opened and edited by one person at a time.

Most importantly, Google Apps for Work keeps our internal data secure. We have the added peace of mind knowing that our information is protected on one of the most secure infrastructures in the world.

With the flexibility of Google Apps tools, we can prepare for a smooth relocation while the Narvik town hall shuts down for two years of renovation and our core team spreads across three locations instead of one. We’ll use Hangouts on five Chromeboxes to meet and collaborate face-to-face, so we don’t lose that important personal interaction among teams.

We’ve been so impressed by the power of Google Apps, that we’ve extended the advantages of Google Apps tools to local students. We implemented Google Apps for Education accounts for each of the 2,000 pupils at our nine primary and lower secondary schools, and we’re trialling Chromebooks and Classroom. Digitizing public services with Google hasn’t just brought us national attention — it has freed up resources to invest in our future.

Looking back at Marie Curie’s radical discovery: How the Mother of Modern Physics might have used Google Apps

Posted by Erzsi Sousa, Product Marketing Manager

Editor's note: We’re jumping into our Delorean to explore how some of our favorite historical figures might have worked with Google Apps. Today, in honor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we imagine how Marie Curie’s discovery of radioactivity, which won a Nobel Prize and revolutionized modern cancer treatment, might have played out in a Google Apps universe.

Consider what Marie Curie accomplished in the face of adversity and with few resources. Despite being refused a place at the French Academy of Sciences and almost denied her first Nobel Prize for being a woman, she continued her work undeterred, securing a second Nobel Prize in Chemistry and developing methods for treating cancer with radiation therapy. To celebrate her, we explore how she might have worked in a different time — by using some of the tools we use today.

The radioactivity in Curie’s lab was so strong that it harmed her health — archivists today still use protective gear to handle her papers. Instead of carrying these radioactive documents, Curie could have kept them in the cloud with Google Drive, allowing for easy access whenever and wherever she needed them, without risking her well-being. Drive’s organization features could also have helped her organize her files and notes in folders, easily distinguishable by color and category.

Her easy access to files would also be secure with Drive’s built-in security stack. And to prevent anyone from stealing her discoveries, Marie Curie could have conveniently protected all of her files using the Security Key for 2-step verification along with password protection. This would ensure that she was the only one who had complete access to all of her work (she may even have thrown on a screen protector to shield her work from spying eyes on the train). To share the right documents with only the right people, Marie could have used sharing controls to give different groups access to relevant research.

With the voice typing feature in Google Docs that supports 40 languages, she could have dictated her numerous notes in her native Polish without stopping her research. She could have then used Google Translate to convert her papers into other languages, so that the global science community could see what she was working on.


Curie could have used Gmail’s Priority Inbox to create labels and organize her messages related to research, teaching and fundraising. Each label filters emails into its own section in her inbox, making it easy to notice new emails when they arrive. She might have created a “Physicist Community” label for correspondences with Pierre and other influential scientists like Henri Becquerel and Albert Einstein. She might also have used a “Fundraising” label to organize messages from members of the press and government who funded her research, including U.S. presidents Warren G. Harding and Herbert Hoover.

Even Marie Curie could have been the victim of seemingly neverending reply-all email threads. With Gmail, she could have avoided these distractions by muting the message so responses are automatically archived. For example, Curie could have muted the message from her Sorbonne colleagues who abused “reply all” in RSVP emails or broke out into a physics debate, letting her focus on important emails only.

With Google Hangouts, Curie could have broadcast her physics classes to a global audience using Hangouts on Air. As the first woman professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, making her classes available online could have given more women access to lectures from a renowned physicist during a time when many universities wouldn’t admit female students. She might even have started her own grassroots movement, using live video chats to bring advanced science into the homes, coffee shops, underground classrooms, etc., of whoever chose to tune in.

Marie Curie accomplished award-winning work, even without access to the most advanced lab technology of the time. It’s humbling to consider that despite any limitations she encountered, Curie’s pioneering work in radioactivity remains so relevant today as we continue to make advances in not just physics and chemistry but also engineering, biology and medicine, including cancer research, on the basis of her discoveries.

Launching Salesforce Lightning with a global community, a live event and Hangouts

Posted by Sarah Franklin, VP of Admin Marketing, Salesforce

Editor's note: Today we hear from Sarah Franklin, VP of Admin Marketing at Salesforce, the leader in enterprise cloud computing and the sixth largest software company in the world. See how the company brought its community together and announced a recent product release using Google Hangouts. 

It’s not every day that we have the opportunity to bring together people from 119 locations across the globe. The Salesforce marketing team put our heads together to decide how to announce Salesforce Lightning — a metadata-driven platform that is highly customizable, and empowers people to work faster and smarter — differently than previous product releases. We decided to focus on what’s always been at the center of our company: our customers. For us, the solution was simple and collaborative. We chose Google Hangouts to introduce Lightning, so we could share this exciting announcement with our community of developers and users in 20 countries via live video.

We chose Hangouts because we wanted to show our community that we’re committed to using innovative tools. We’d already been using Hangouts in a variety of ways, such as connecting with colleagues in different offices (and sending each other emojis) and hosting webinars with our admin community, so we knew it was a great choice to bring many people together from around the world.

Whether it was 7 a.m. or midnight in their local timezone, people gathered at universities, community centers and local pubs to join the product launch. The day after our announcement, we also hosted a second private Hangout with over 200 people across Europe, the Middle East and Africa in case they missed the launch due to timing. These events created a deeper sense of camaraderie among an already strong community. We sent our community leaders a webcam and tripod, so it was easy and cost effective to get a group together since all they needed was an internet connection. Hangouts gave us the opportunity to encourage dialogue between admins, developers, partners and users in a fun and immediate way.

Many companies measure the success of a product launch based on the press they receive or the number of website visits they get in a single day. We flipped that. Our goal was how could we involve our community and put our customers at the center of this launch. We defined success by the number of customers we involved. More than 19,000 people from our community, from Bangalore to Tokyo to New York City to Paris and hundreds of places in between, tuned in to join the launch.

Our executives were floored when they saw people from all around the world on the screen. We overcame the language barrier by having translators onsite in some of the non-English speaking countries to make sure everyone felt included. We created a personal connection with customers who spoke different languages and brought together engineers, users, executives and the marketing team who have a common passion for our customers’ success.

By focusing on forward-looking technology, we hosted an event that made more than 19,000 people feel like they were in the same room. And with our core focus on connecting companies to their customers, we couldn't think of a better way to introduce our products to the world than with Hangouts.

Hangouts services to be served from ‘hangouts.google.com’

Following the launch of the new standalone Google Hangouts homepage, Hangouts-related services and web traffic will be served from ‘hangouts.google.com’ in addition to existing host names.

This change is happening gradually over the coming weeks. There is no required action for Apps customers.

Launch Details
Release track:  
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release for Hangouts-related services (G+, Gmail, etc) over the coming weeks

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
All end users

Action:
FYI


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Custom status messages and more with the latest version of the Hangouts Android app

A new version of the Hangouts Android app is coming to Google Play this week. New features include:
  • Custom status messages: As launched previously for web and iOS, people using the Hangouts Android app can now add custom status messages and see the status messages of others in the Contacts view.
  • Accept or reject external guest requests: External participants to a Hangouts video call can now be accepted or rejected on the Hangouts Android app, just like on iOS and web today.


This brings support for custom status messages and the ability to accept/reject external participants to all platforms for Hangouts (i.e. Android, web, iOS).

Launch Details
Release track:  
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Video calls shared with a link
Help Center: Custom status messages
Get the Hangouts Android app on Google Play

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
Get these product update alerts by email
Subscribe to the RSS feed of these updates