Google Apps for Education webinar with Arizona State University

Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 2:37 PM

We're passionate about learning here at Google and always revel in the innovations that educators drive when they work with Google Apps. To share some of the latest innovations we've seen in this arena, we're hosting a free, live educational webinar to show the power of Google Apps Education Edition. In this session you'll hear directly from Arizona State University, the first school to deploy Google Apps Education Edition. Learn about their 2006 decision to go with Google Apps, the results they've seen so far, and their future plans for working and teaching with Google Apps. Details follow:

Google Apps for Education
Thursday, June 25, 2009
10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT

We hope you'll join us to learn how Google Apps can help institutions like ASU save money and IT resources, all while making it easier for teachers to innovate and for students to learn and work together.

Read today's news about Google in education, and what schools are learning as they start using Google Apps.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google Apps for Education marketing team

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

What's different with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook

Tuesday, June 16, 2009 at 10:20 PM

We built Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook to make it as easy as possible for people who love Microsoft Outlook to continue to use it when their company switches to Google Apps. In developing the feature, we focused on allowing Outlook users to connect to Google Apps for business email, contacts and calendar. But we also recognized that many people add plug-ins to Outlook for additional features. For that reason, we worked to ensure that as many plug-ins as possible continue to work, like salesforce.com and WebEX.

Unfortunately, some plug-ins don't yet work with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, and we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the more common ones:

• Microsoft Office Outlook Connector
• Acrobat PDF Maker Toolbar
• Outlook Change Notifier

If you would like to continue to use these plug-ins, uninstall Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, and the uninstaller will re-enable the plug-ins.

We'd also like to highlight another known issue that may be of interest. Programs that interact directly with the Outlook data file, including Windows Desktop Search and PGP.com's encryption plugin, don't currently work well with Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook.

Windows Desktop Search will not properly index Google Apps Sync data files, so in order to stop indexing from running indefinitely, the Google Apps Sync installer disables it. We recommend using the default Outlook search.

If you want to re-enable Windows Desktop Search for your Outlook data files, you can uninstall Google Apps Sync. If you are using Google Apps Sync version 1.0.22.1945 or lower, you must first install the latest version and then uninstall Google Apps Sync to re-enable indexing.

You can find more information about what's different in our help center. We're working with Microsoft and other partners to help fix these issues and support additional Outlook features like multiple calendars. We'll keep you posted on our progress.

Posted by Chris Vander Mey, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Innovation in Education

at 1:47 PM

With Google Apps, education can now easily move beyond the walls of a classroom. These days we see more and more teachers using Google Apps to engage students across the country, and even around the globe, in a new way of collaborative learning.

Recently, one New York school used Google Sites to hold an event bringing students, teachers, parents, and other guests from around the world together for a conversation about the future of education. The event, "Dot To Dot," was held live at IS 339, a public middle school in the Bronx, and was broadcast live through streaming video on its site.

All 67 of the school's teachers and hundreds of its students presented projects using videos, blogs, Google Docs and Google Sites. The event was a showcase of student voices, addressing topics ranging from the environment and how we affect our ecosystem, students' vision of freedom, and international human rights and genocide.

Since IS 339 started using Google Apps in 2007, it has fostered an environment of creative expression, responsibility, and collaboration among its students and teachers. IS 339 uses Google Apps for innovative educational practices such as student-run businesses, "good behavior" currency credits that can be used at the school store (also run on Google Apps), and group projects using Google Docs and Sites. Administration has also benefited from the efficiency that Google's web apps have helped accelerate.

Student progress and grading is now a collaborative process using Google Forms and Spreadsheets so that students can have a community of teachers supporting them. The results speak for themselves. In the past five years, IS 339 has moved off of New York State's failing schools list, and its students have moved from 9% to 60% on grade level in math, and from 12% to 40% on grade level in literacy.

When you combine Google Apps and inspirational educators, the results speak for themselves: ease of collaboration and innovation. Kudos to IS339 and the growing community of educators expanding what's possible in learning with the power of Google Apps.

Posted by Ashley Chandler, User Operations for Google Docs and Google Sites

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

Serena Software on switching from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps

Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 9:40 AM

Editor's Note: We're pleased to welcome Ron Brister, Senior Manager of Global IT Operations, and Arron Privatsky, System Administrator, of Serena Software as our guest bloggers today. Serena Software, a leading provider of software to accelerate application development, helps IT departments keep pace with the demands of the businesses they support. Serena’s tools automate software development processes and help business users create powerful mashups – without requiring any coding. Serena is a privately owned company with 29 offices in 14 countries and 800 employees. Founded more than 25 years ago, Serena has more than 15,000 customers including 96 of the Fortune 100.

Serena Software recently selected Google Apps Premier Edition for its messaging and collaboration needs, saving more than $750,000 and countless IT hours. Members of Serena Software will be on hand next Thursday, June 18, to talk about that experience in a live webcast. Register here.

My name is Ron Brister, and I’m Senior Manager of Global IT Operations at Serena Software. I'm here with Arron Privatsky, System Administrator for Serena. Serena is a leading provider of software to accelerate application development. Because we are software experts, it’s no surprise that we are always looking for the best solutions.

For us, it was becoming increasingly clear that our messaging infrastructure was lacking. Inbox storage space was a constant complaint. Server maintenance was extremely time-consuming, and backups were inconsistent. Then we found that – calculating additional licenses of Microsoft Exchange, client access licenses for users, disaster recovery software, and additional disk storage space to increase mailbox quotas to 1.5GB – staying with our existing provider would have cost us upwards of $1 million. That was a nearly impossible number to justify with executives.

We thought about replacing our on-premise solution, but to tell the truth, we were skeptical. I, personally, had been a Microsoft admin for 15 years, and Microsoft technologies were ingrained in my thought processes. But Google Apps provided many pluses: Gmail, Google’s Postini messaging security software and 25 GB of mailbox space, as well as greater uptime and 24/7 phone support.

Apps also offered reliable mobile access and included other Google productivity and collaboration applications, such as Google Docs for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations – all at $50 per user per year. The cost savings would amount to a whopping $750,000 per year. All this added up to the ability to save the company money and to transition to a more advanced, flexible infrastructure.

Once we selected Google Apps, we decided on a “Big Bang” migration. Employees would switch over on their own, migrating their old emails to Gmail if they chose to, or simply starting with a clean inbox. We did not support local email clients, opting to support only the Gmail web interface through Mozilla Firefox to best accommodate the company's mixed Linux, Mac and PC environment.

We also enlisted four small groups of early adopters who would try the Google solution first, and then assist IT and support their peers during the full-scale migration. We used a lot of Google’s existing support documents to help us during the migration.

The overall move to Google Apps took all of six hours. We waited for the phones to ring, but all we heard was silence – in fact, we sat there playing meebo for quite a while – and still, nothing happened. We cut the cord all in one stroke to avoid the hassle of living in two environments at once. We made the switch globally, all in one day – and, due to the advantages of this cloud computing solution, we’ve never looked back.

I expect that what I am saying is probably setting off a lot of questions in your head. We welcome you to join us for a live webcast to learn more:

Thursday, June 18, 2009
1:00 p.m. EDT / 10:00 a.m PDT / 5:00 p.m. GMT

We'll give you more details and take questions on our recent switch to Google Apps. We hope that you'll join us.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Google Apps team

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

Google Apps deployment just got easier

Wednesday, June 10, 2009 at 10:09 AM

For many businesses, switching to a new email and calendar platform can seem like a daunting task. What about the technical issues? What about getting users on board? Well, for businesses that want to quickly take advantage of all the benefits and innovations of Google Apps, we have great news.

Today, we're announcing the launch of our new Google Apps Deployment for Enterprise site, which we built using Google Sites. On the site, we've gathered several resources to help businesses make the move to Google Apps faster and easier. Businesses with many employees and complex IT environments, in particular, will find these time-saving resources useful in managing the transition to Google Apps.

The site's resources are grouped into two categories: deployment planning and user adoption. The planning resources help IT administrators, project planners, and others become familiar with all the Google Apps features and tools available, determine a deployment strategy, and track deployment activities.

We also describe our Google Guides Program, a peer-to-peer technical support methodology, which can make your deployment easier. Whether you choose to handle deployment entirely in-house or enlist the aid of a Google Solutions Provider, we think you'll find these planning resources essential for understanding the deployment process and ensuring a successful outcome.

At Google, we believe that better communication leads to better results, so we've also designed a host of user adoption resources to make it easier for businesses to communicate to their users. For example, our communications and quick-start templates can be quickly customized based on both the platform from which users are migrating (Microsoft Outlook or Lotus Notes) and the features being enabled, and our eLearning videos can help users get up to speed at their own pace.

Here's a look at our current set of resources:

But this is just the beginning. We'll continue to add new resources to the site and enhance the material that's already there. We developed many of the site's resources by working closely with some of our Enterprise customers, and we want to continue in that spirit of cooperation. We'd especially like to hear about your best practices and new approaches to making a Google Apps deployment faster and easier.

So check out our new deployment site and send your feedback and ideas to deployment-site-feedback@googleapps.com.

Posted by Matt Ceglia, Technical Writer, Google Enterprise

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