Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

We’ve all been frustrated by technology that gets slower, less reliable and less useful over time. Google Apps is different – it actually gets better automatically week after week without patches or updates to manage. People can absorb this stream of innovation without being distracted from their workflow, so this month we’re taking a look back to highlight the most interesting ways that Google Apps has grown up over time. Last week, we started with Gmail and Google Calendar.

Today we’ll break down how Google Docs and Sites support better teamwork, mobile productivity, ease of use and trustworthiness – four areas where Google Apps excels. We’re holding a webinar next Thursday to explore these developments (details below), so join us if you’re interested in learning more. We hope you’ll find a few capabilities here that you didn’t know about before, or haven’t tried in some time.

Designed for Teams
Google Docs and Sites were built from the ground up to make teamwork seamless. Being able to simultaneously edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations without the hassles of attachments is just the start.

• Great documents come from great discussions, so in addition to collaborative editing, Google Docs also enables conversations right alongside your content. Comments can be directed to specific co-editors, who can then respond in the document’s discussion panel or over email.
  
• Sometimes you want to collaborate freely with others in a spreadsheet, but other situations call for a bit more control. Data validation lets you enforce cell input restrictions. You can also protect sheets – making them view-only – or hide sheets entirely within a collaborative workbook.
  
• Forms in Google Docs also offer a structured way of collecting information in a spreadsheet from others. Questions can be multiple choice or open-ended, and your surveys can include branching logic to display different questions to a respondent depending on how they respond to earlier questions.
  
• When a document, spreadsheet or presentation isn’t able to truly capture an idea, try a collaborative drawing. The same real-time co-editing found in those other formats is part of the drawing editor, too.
  
• Across documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, revision history lets you see any edit made by any collaborator since the file was created, which comes in handy when you need to revert changes or view a previous version.
  
• Google Sites can really bring a collection of information together neatly – including embedded documents, spreadsheets and presentations – into a collaborative team, project or public website. Anyone with edit access can contribute and share, no programming skills required.
  
• In today’s world of distributed contributors, working across language barriers can be critical. With automatic document translation, site translation, and even a translation spreadsheet function all powered by Google Translate, being productive in multiple languages has never been easier.
  
• If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, so we added built-in analytics within Google Docs and Google Sites, which provides content owners with aggregate stats and metrics about who’s accessing their files and sites.
  
• Beyond collaborative documents, spreadsheets, presentations and drawings, you can upload and share any type of file with Google Docs, including pictures, videos, and special file formats like CAD drawings. Simply upload to Google Docs and decide who should have access. You can even set permissions to a mailing list, which automatically adjusts access as individuals are added to and removed from the group.
  
• Shared collections is a great way to efficiently manage sharing access across a group of files. Instead of sharing file-by-file, you can share a whole folder of information all at once.
  
• And if you’re looking to bring more efficient collaboration to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint without upgrading to Office 2010, give Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office a try.

Productive Anywhere
Mobile access to email, contacts and calendar information is pretty common now, but access to documents, spreadsheets, presentations and team sites across all major smartphone platforms is unique to Google Apps.

• Unlike software and files that live on one specific computer, you can access and work with information in Google Docs and Google Sites from any computer without hassles like software licenses and VPN connections.
  
• Beyond simple mobile document viewing, you can edit documents and spreadsheets from Android and iOS devices. This can be a faster way to make a simple change than firing up your laptop.
  
• The Google Docs mobile app for Android allows you to browse, search, open and share your Google Docs files from your phone or tablet. This app even lets you convert mobile phone pictures into editable documents.
  
• Google Sites are also optimized for smaller screens through automatic mobile rendering. When you’re viewing a site on a small screen, we can automatically display a version of the site that’s easier to use on your phone or tablet.

Simple & Affordable
Google Docs and Sites bring together the best of two worlds: the power of the web and the richness of traditional software applications, all at a dramatically lower cost than buying, installing and managing client software.

• Google documents and spreadsheets have quietly rolled out many basic word processing and spreadsheet capabilities that people use on a daily basis. If it’s been a while since your last encounter with Google Docs, try out headers and footers, pagination, customizable charts, range sorting, data filtering, conditional formatting, in-cell dropdown and validation, a solver tool and pivot tables, just to name a few.
  
• Magic autofill completes spreadsheet lists based on a theme, not just a simple autofill pattern. For example, if you start with Brazil, France, and Tanzania, magic autofill will suggests names of other countries. Hold the Control key while autofilling (Option key on a Mac) to trigger magic autofill.
  
• Spreadsheets can also help you automatically pull statistics, facts and figures from the internet with the GoogleLookup function. For example, =GoogleLookup("Paraguay"; "internet users") returns the latest statistic, along with a source citation.
  
• In documents, you can tap the web for dictionary definitions. Definitions for new words are available in real-time, unlike static dictionaries in traditional software.
  
• Google Docs also supports browser drag and drop actions that you may have learned in traditional desktop software. You can drag pictures from your desktop to embed images in documents, and drag files from your computer to upload files into Google Docs. Many types of files can be converted in high fidelity so you can continue editing as a team, and optical character recognition (OCR) turns images of text and PDFs into editable files as well.
  
• Templates are also a fast way to get started on a new project. Google Docs offers thousands of document, spreadsheet and presentation templates, and Google Sites also includes many starter site templates to help team projects get going.
  
• Getting familiar with our keyboard shortcuts can really speed up simple tasks. Next time, try out our keyboard shortcuts for documents, spreadsheets, presentations and sites.

Pure & Proven Cloud
As with Gmail, the collaboration tools in Google Apps for Business are backed by a service uptime guarantee and transparent system performance information. And compared to sharing information using old tools like thumb drives, Google Apps can help businesses keep their data a whole lot safer, too.

• Our 99.9% uptime SLA guarantees reliable access to Google Apps, and our commitment doesn’t have any exceptions for planned maintenance. This is because our systems are designed to handle updates without interrupting service for customers.
  
• Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
  
• Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
  
• Google Docs and Sites have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
  
• With default https connections, your information is encrypted as it travels from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
  
• Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As with Gmail and Google Calendar, Google Docs and Sites have been on a fast innovation path (85 improvements last year alone!) that you just can’t get from typical software upgrades every three to five years. So if you missed any of these new features over the years, give them a go – you’re bound to find a few that’ll help you work more efficiently. And if you’d like to hear more about many of these updates, join us for a free webinar next Thursday.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Docs and Google Sites
Thursday, August 4th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

Google Apps has come a long way since its introduction a few years ago, with continuous improvements every week rather than disruptive shifts every few years. It’s like watching your kids grow up; you don’t notice the changes from day to day, but look back at a photo from last year and the differences can be striking.

Over the next two weeks, we’ll take a look back to revisit key innovations from the last few years in four categories that define Google Apps: team collaboration, mobile productivity, ease of use, and trustworthiness. Today we’re starting with Gmail and Google Calendar, and many of the capabilities below have become customer favorites. If you’d like to hear more about these developments, we invite you to join our webinar on Wednesday (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps makes working in teams easier. Gmail and Google Calendar support teamwork in ways that traditional applications just can’t offer. Give these features a try if they’re new to you, or take a fresh look if it’s been a while:

• Have an instant message conversation right from your inbox, and once you’re chatting, switch to a voice, video or group chat. It all works in the browser, not in another application.
  
• When a contact isn’t online to chat, call their phone right from Gmail with your computer’s speakers and microphone.
  
• Gmail helps you connect with the right people when you send traditional email messages, too, with full-fledged capabilities first tested as Labs features. By analyzing signals in your email, Gmail recommends recipients you might have forgotten, and displays a warning when you might have added the wrong person.
  
• Once you’ve started an email conversation, Gmail’s people widget shows how you’ve interacted with recipients recently over email, in meetings and through shared documents.
  
• Google Apps supports over 40 languages, and automatic translation can really help break down language barriers. Gmail’s message translation feature instantly converts foreign text to your native language. Translation bots provide real-time translation in chat, so you can even IM with people in other languages.
  
• Finding a good meeting time with a group of busy people can be a chore, so we introduced the smart rescheduler in Google Calendar Labs. This tool automatically explores everyone’s schedule to find the best times when attendees can all get together.
  
• Appointment slots also simplifies meeting scheduling by letting you establish open meeting times that other people in your organization can sign themselves up for, like “office hours”.
  
• Once you’ve set up a meeting, we know there’s often meeting-related content to be shared with attendees. The event attachments Lab in Google Calendar lets you add Google Docs files to meetings, so everyone has the right information at their fingertips.
  
• And sometimes you just need help managing email, contacts and calendar, and that’s where account delegation comes into play. Gmail and Google Calendar allow you to designate others who can manage your email, appointments and contacts on your behalf.

Productive Anywhere
Communication tools wouldn’t be much good if you were required to work from your desk, which is why we support full access to email, contacts and calendar on any modern browser and all major mobile device platforms.

• On your computer, Gmail and Google Calendar run in the browser without any other specialized software, so you can be productive just as easily at work, at home or on the road from PCs, Macs, Linux computers and netbooks. Features like Priority Inbox even work when you're on the go.
  
• With Android phones and tablets, just sign in with your Google Apps account, and your data automatically syncs to the Gmail, Calendar and Contacts apps on your device.
  
• Google Sync enables email, calendar and contacts synchronization on iOS, Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices.
  
• Push synchronization is also available for BlackBerry devices through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

Simple & Affordable
We built Gmail and Google Calendar to stay out of your way and help you handle tasks quickly. At $50 per user per year or $5 per month with no commitment, Google Apps packs a powerful punch in an intuitive package that anyone can use.

• With 25GB of email storage for every employee, the ability to handle attachments up to 25MB apiece and room for 25,000 contacts, Gmail is designed so you can stop worrying about account capacity and focus on more productive things.
  
• With all that space for email, you need a fast and reliable way to find old messages, and the power of Google search is essential. Gmail’s search options quickly tame even the largest message archives.
  
• Priority Inbox learns patterns in how you use email, and automatically filters incoming email to put the most important messages – email from your boss perhaps – right at the top. We found this feature alone saves people 6% of the time they spend on email.
  
• Keeping spam out of your inbox is another big productivity booster, and Gmail's spam filters are continuously improved to weed out unsafe and unwanted messages.
  
• Like the great cilantro debate, some people like their email as threaded “conversations”, while others prefer a traditional inbox displaying individual messages. You can have it either way in Gmail now, threaded or unthreaded.
  
• Instead of downloading attachments and opening them with another application, Gmail lets you view over a dozen different attachment types right in your browser. It’s faster, safer and more affordable than opening attachments with other software.
  
• Beyond attachments, Gmail lets you preview other types of content without leaving your inbox, like YouTube videos, Google Docs, Google Maps locations and Picasa slideshows. You can even build custom content gadgets for other types of data residing in your existing business systems.
  
• Gmail also helps you avoid email snafus, like forgetting to add an attachment. You’ll see an attachment warning if it looks like you meant to send a file but didn’t add one.
  
• When you write a message and immediately have sender’s regret, just use the undo send Lab to recall the message. This lets you edit and resend, or just discard the message.
  
• If working with a mouse just isn’t fast enough, try Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. You can power through your inbox faster than ever by learning a few simple keystroke combinations.
  
• Google Calendar helps frequent flyers manage their appointments with time zone auto-detect. This feature recognizes where in the world you are, and automatically adjusts your schedule to reflect local time.
  
• Last but not least, an oldie but a goodie: quick add in Google Calendar. Instead of filling out a form to create a new event, just summarize your event in natural language (like “Revew budget with Clark next Tuesday at 2pm”), then click “Add”.

Pure & Proven Cloud
Not only do Gmail and Google Calendar help boost productivity, they’re more reliable than traditional systems. Many customers also feel that their data is safer than ever with Google Apps.

• Over the course of 2010, Gmail was available 99.984% of the time, and so far in 2011 we're at 99.99%. That’s less than seven minutes of downtime per month, a 40-fold improvement over traditional systems.
  
• Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
  
• Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
  
• Gmail and Google Calendar have completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, and have achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
  
• With default https connections, your messages are always encrypted as they travel from your web browser to our servers. This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
  
• Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone). With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.

As you can see, we’ve been busy making Gmail and Google Calendar better and better, so if you haven’t explored some of these recent improvements, maybe it’s time to take another look. We’ll be hosting a free webinar on Wednesday where we’ll cover many of these updates in a bit more detail, so please join us if you’d like to hear more.

A look back as we move ahead: Gmail and Google Calendar
Wednesday, July 20th, 2011
9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT
Register here

Update: webinar schedule updated to reflect correct start time from the registration page.

Join us for a live webinar on Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT with Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director at Roland. Dave will share why Google Apps was the ideal choice for his organization, as well as his experience and perspectives on what it takes to make the switch to Google Apps.

When: Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT

Who: Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director, Roland Corporation and Adriana Boden, Enterprise Senior Manager, Google

Register Now: Thursday, June 16, 12:00PM EDT/9:00AM PDT.

When: Wednesday, June 8th, 2011 9:00am PST / 12:00pm EST

Who:

• James Hamrick, Director of IT at Gables Residential
• Eric Geiger, VP of IT Operations at Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago
• Adam Swidler, Senior Manager with Google