Set sharing settings by department
Sometimes different file settings make sense. You might, for example, have a research department that needs to keep information confidential and a sales team that needs to share presentations with their clients. To help manage these different sharing needs, now when you make selections in Drive settings from the Admin console, you can turn off sharing outside the domain for one organizational unit, while still allowing others to work and share files with anyone they need to.
Create custom Drive alerts and track more events with Drive audit
To keep track of when specific actions are taken in Drive, you can set up custom Drive alerts. So if you want to know when a file containing the word “confidential” in the title is shared outside the company, now you’ll know. And there are more events coming to Drive audit, including download, print and preview.
For all Google Apps for Work customers:
Set up custom admin alerts to find out when things change
There are lots of moving parts to running a company, and now it’s easier for IT to find out about the things they care about with custom alerts — like when a new app is installed or a shared calendar is deleted — and get those right in their inbox.
Let people reset their own passwords
Recovering passwords isn’t the most pleasant thing we do in our lives. But now IT can let employees securely reset their own passwords, so they don’t lose valuable time being locked out of their account. If this doesn’t make sense for your organization, admins can simply turn this ability off.
Available for all to use:
Disable downloading, printing and copying of any file with IRM
With Information Rights Management (“IRM”) you can disable downloading, printing and copying from the advanced sharing menu – perfect for when the file you’re sharing is only meant for a few select people. This new option is available for any file stored in Google Drive, including documents, spreadsheets and presentations created in Google Docs.
Share quickly with anyone outside your organization
When it comes to sharing, like giving final inventory lists to your caterer or last minute logos to your design agency, you want to make sure people can see it right away — whether they use Drive or not. Now, you can share with any email address and they’ll be able to view the files you share —without having to sign-in to a Google account. Admins can disable this feature for certain departments that want to require sign-in before , while enabling it for others.
All the above are rolling out over the next month.
Stay tuned for more
We’re also working on the ability to establish trusted domains, so businesses and schools that have multiple Google Apps domains or want to work with trusted partners or customers, can select multiple Google Apps domains that are OK to share with from Drive and Classroom. And on expiring access, because occasionally you only want to share files for a temporary amount of time. With expiring access you can set a future date when access will be removed. Stay tuned, there's more to come from Drive and Drive for Work.
Xero was started by several developers nine years ago in an apartment above a coffee shop in Wellington, New Zealand. Today, we have more than 1,000 employees in 15 cities across the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand and provide online accounting software to more than 400,000 global customers. With more than 200 percent five-year average sales growth as of June 2014, our biggest challenge now is managing the fast-paced growth while maintaining our nimble, tech-forward startup culture.
We like to keep work in small groups and move quickly. Our teams work closely on projects even when they’re located in different offices around the world. And since we like to stay on the cutting edge of technology, we’re using Google Apps, which allows us to stay coordinated and productive.
Our pain point in IT was finding a way for teams in different cities and offices to meet and collaborate at the same time. We used a variety of video conferencing technologies, including PCs, HDMI/VGA and projectors. They were difficult to set up, meetings were delayed and productivity suffered. As we continued to grow, this struggle intensified, and we realized that we needed to find a solution fast. We needed to streamline our meeting room setups and get the most out of Hangouts. When we heard about Chromebox for meetings, we jumped at the chance to try it out.
We started with six Chromebox for meetings units. Today, we have nearly a hundred. They’re in every meeting room. We use them for room-to-room conferencing and all hands meetings. The global team uses them to connect every two weeks and the CEO addresses the entire company via Hangout on Air.
Chromebox for meetings allow us to keep things simple. There’s very little infrastructure or wireless connections needed on our side, so no cables necessary. Setup is fast and the integration with Gmail makes joining Hangouts as easy as clicking a button. It’s easy to share documents and work on them together. Then there’s the cost savings. Instead of spending between $40,000 and $60,000 on a video conferencing system, we spent one-tenth of that on a Chromebox and a display.
We may be a larger company now, but we still want to move and act quickly. No matter how large we become, our values align with those of fresh innovative companies that respond rapidly to market demand, customer needs and competition. Thanks to Chromebox for meetings, we can keep the startup feel and agility while growing at breakneck speed.
We built EV Explorer using several of Google’s mapping APIs: JavaScript, Directions, Places and Geocoding. EV Explorer downloads the appropriate map and helps people visualize the data they’re inputting. If people don’t know their work address, they can type in the name of their business and Places API geolocates it. The Geocoding API converts any address into latitude and longitude. We query the Directions API when we’ve got the specific points for home and work. The app then draws the route using polylines between the two locations.
We chose Google Maps APIs because Google’s mapping database consistently ranks among the most comprehensive, up to date, and user-friendly. With Google Maps, a user can type in “Safeway” and “San Francisco” to see all the Safeway locations in the city and choose among them. If they mistype something or include incomplete information, auto-correcting tools offer suggestions and corrections.
In building the site, I kept one thing in mind: You won’t make it until you break it. That means you need to experiment, try new things, get your hands dirty, and make random stuff. You’ve got to push the APIs to their limits. And by doing just that, we delivered what we set out to do: Help people understand the wider benefits of electric vehicles and show them how much they could save by switching to electric.
And speaking of admins, we want to make sure they have the control they need when it comes to deciding which add-ons are best suited for their organizations and teams. For example, in particular cases — like in education — it might not be desirable to let all end-users install their own add-ons. With this update, admins will continue to have a “disable add-ons” option for their users, but they can also whitelist add-ons via the Google Apps Marketplace for their entire domain or a specific team.
With these updates, customers can now get all the add-ons they want with all the control they need. Learn more about managing Google add-ons for your organization.
“Google is one of the world leaders in cloud environments,” says Tony Pereira, director of business development at Avaya. “They have built an impressive architecture with security features that they are constantly evolving to make the most of cloud efficiencies.”
OnAvaya™ takes advantage of the unique capabilities of Chrome devices. You simply provision a Chromebook and headset and your customer service agents can work from home or wherever there's an Internet connection and have full Avaya contact center functionality. In the event of a snowstorm or network interruption, you can shift your support operations to any site that has Wi-Fi. Since employees no longer need a physical phone, you'll save costs on additional hardware.
With Customer Engagement OnAvaya™ Powered by Google Cloud Platform, customers will be able to support growth in their business and seasonal spikes without huge capital investments. And since we manage the technology on our end, implementation time for OnAvaya™ customers should drop from months to weeks – or even days.
The solution will be available to certified Avaya business partners as well as Google for Work service partners starting in the spring of 2015. Learn more about the OnAvaya™ solution on their blog.
We’re thrilled to welcome Avaya to the Cloud Platform family!
Though they were introduced in 1985, domain names didn’t gain much awareness and use amongst the public until the World Wide Web became available to all during the ‘90s and it became clear they were an important part in unlocking its power. Using these online addresses, people began to spread messages, start businesses and access information that otherwise would have been nearly impossible to find. Popularity and demand for these names grew so much that people were soon willing to pay millions of dollars for the perfect one.
Today there are 270+ million registered domain names; in fact, about 17 million were added just last year. To create more naming options for people online, hundreds of new top-level domains are being added, and many, like .TODAY, .NINJA and .BIKE are already available. We wrote about this back in 2012, and since then we’ve launched three of our own: .HOW, .SOY and .みんな.
As .COM turns 30, we’re looking back on the history of domain endings and all they’ve made possible. Today there are more choices than ever before for people to find the perfect name for their businesses, projects and ideas on the web. If you’re interested in learning more about this history, or you’d like to register your own piece of the web, head over to Google Domains to claim your .DOMAINS from a .COM to a .GURU.
Here’s to .COM’s 30th, and all that’s yet to come in how we name destinations on the Internet.
How does Squarespace work and create?
As a company, we’re committed to respecting the intricacies of the creative process at work. It means waiting to release software until we’re happy with it, having respect for delicate ideas before they reach maturity, and tightly integrating small, multi-disciplinary teams on projects from the outset. As a company that believes in the benefits that technology can bring, we’re also highly reliant on modern tools and development processes. We integrated Google Apps with Squarespace 7, as we already use it to run so much of our own company.
When did you start using Apps at Squarespace? Why?
We started using Apps seven years ago, when the company was around four people. Before that, we used a mix of things I set up myself – such as a tiny mail server run off a box in our office and very basic shared file storage. We were overwhelmed with spam, concerned about security, and constantly had to upgrade our software. I used Gmail for my personal mail and knew it was fast and had great spam filtering. When Google Apps became available, it was a very natural move for us.
How do you continue to share information as the company scales?
Information sharing at scale is something we’re constantly iterating on as an organization. By integrating lightweight solutions such as Google Docs and Sheets for many processes, we’re able to seamlessly share information throughout the org without worrying about something getting out of date. Everyone can see live updates. If someone goes on vacation or transitions to a different role, it’s easy to transfer information and pick up loose ends.
Open communication seems really important to your culture. How do you maintain it?
Right now, we have more than 450 employees spread out across three offices. To keep connected to our remote offices, we use Hangouts. After being frustrated by endless IT issues and wait times when setting up basic conferencing across our offices, we started using Chromebox for meetings a few months ago. Now I can walk into a room, press a button and have a meeting right away. This works for us because we’re minimalists when it comes to the tools we want in our ecosystem. We want to use tools that are modern and simple — and we want to use as few of them as possible.
If you’d like to learn more about these new devices and management features, visit us at the Digital Signage Expo in booth 2218 to see them in action or online. You can also register now for Chrome Live, a digital conference we’re hosting April 22-24.
We built GoodHome using the Google Maps APIs because of its familiarity, ease of use and comprehensive features. The development team at T3 created the GoodHome prototype using three Google Maps APIs: Static Maps, JavaScript and Street View Image APIs. They customized the maps by drawing layers, integrating a weather API and using CSS to create animations that brought the experience to life. The development process went smoothly and took just three months from concept to completion.
GoodHome is more than informative, it’s compelling. A visitor who uses the GoodHome tool is over 350% more likely to request an insurance quote than one who doesn’t. Forty percent of people type more than one address into the map, and on average, visitors stay on the site for six to seven minutes.
GoodHome also helps our agents build better relationships with customers. When an Allstate customer receives a link to the GoodHome website from their agent, the map automatically opens up to the customer’s home address. The personalized interaction helps agents connect with their clients and provide a great consulting tool that opens the door for a conversation. We plan to introduce GoodHome to all 10,000 Allstate agents across the country so they can spread the tool to their customers.
We’re excited to play a role in enhancing the home insurance experience for consumers. The power of Google Maps has helped us make a product that we hope will help people see their homes in a new way and think differently about what it means to protect what matters to them.
With Google Apps for Work, you can update your team about how that client meeting just went from Gmail, chat with your manager in Hangouts about specific questions the client had, add those questions to a Google document so the team can start researching back at the office, and now, schedule the follow-up meeting in Calendar, all from your iPhone.
And if you end up leaving your phone in the taxi on the way back to the office, Google Apps Mobile Management has you covered. Apps Mobile Management allows admins to set up mobile security policies, like requiring passwords and remotely wiping data when necessary. And it’s included with Google Apps and Google Drive for Work, so you can keep your work data safe.
However, in a recent study, half of female respondents reported self-doubt about their job performance and careers, compared with fewer than a third of male respondents. The root of this gap starts early: between elementary school and high school, girls’ self-esteem drops 3.5 times more than boys’.
Research shows that in order to close this confidence gap, girls need to see other successful women who do what they love. Whether it’s starting a business, joining the Army, being a construction foreman, playing sports in college or raising a family, having these role models and receiving encouragement from them assures girls that they can chase — and catch — their dreams. No matter how tough that might be, no matter what kind of obstacles get in the way.
That’s why this year, in honor of International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month, we want to inspire the next generation of female leaders to dream, hack, hustle and create. We want to think about the future Sandra Day O’Connors, Oprah Winfreys, Edith Clarkes and Amelia Earharts. Eighty years from now, who will we celebrate during Women’s History Month? Who will we applaud and commemorate for changing the way we look at science, technology, business and education? They could they be our granddaughters, nieces, mentees. Let’s inspire them now. We invite you to join the conversation and share your own stories on Twitter and Google+ using #InspireGirls.
Day 1: Leading the future
On Friday, May 8 from 10am-3pm EST, hear from educators, students and business leaders on the topic of leadership in education. Short keynotes and panels will help answer the question “how do we prepare our students for a future that is ever-changing?” Topics will include creating student ownership, leading change and fostering innovation in schools.
Day 2: Shaping the classroom today
On Saturday, May 9, join any of the 90+ sessions, run by educators for educators and held throughout the day across time zones. These sessions are designed to help you immediately in your school. We’ll have tracks for four groups: teachers, leaders, IT and general interest. Topics will include supporting literacy in early learners, successful device deployment and empowering digital citizens.
Even if you can’t attend on the scheduled dates, do register to stay informed. We’ll share the conference schedule and list of speakers in April. We’ll also be recording the sessions, so you can check out anything you missed.
In the meantime, tell us what sessions you want to see by responding to this Tweet or this Google+ post using #GoogleEduOnAir.
We use the Google Maps APIs, including the Geolocation and Javascript APIs, to show patients a map of nearby pharmacies before they start a video call with a medical professional. For our users, maps make it easy and convenient to connect with physicians and pick up prescriptions at the pharmacy. But maps can be helpful for other businesses in other ways. And now that we see the great value of incorporating reliable map functionality into our app, we'd love to share how you can do the same:
Choose a familiar interface. Use a map that’s easy for people to navigate – if it’s hard to understand and requires extensive instructions, they won’t use it. We picked Google Maps because our patients know them well.
Configure maps for many platforms. If your users find maps helpful on your desktop website, they’ll want to use maps from any browser or device. We’ve made sure our maps work just as well on iOS and Android devices as they do on a desktop computer.
Maintain accuracy. In our case, we have to update the geolocation information for about 65,000 pharmacies across the country every evening. We use the Google Maps Geocoding API, which minimizes the time it takes to keep our map accurate. We keep a database of all pharmacies from Surescripts, a healthcare network, and each night we get an update to that database that adds, removes, and updates pharmacies and their locations. We use the Google Maps Javascript API to place the pharmacies on our map when a patient is asked to select a pharmacy.
Meet compliance standards. In order to comply with medical regulations, Doctor On Demand must connect patients with physicians licensed in their state. We use the Google Maps Reverse Geocoding API to accurately determine the state a patient is located in before connecting them with a physician.
Help users save time and make better choices. Before we built our pharmacy map, patients had to tell doctors which pharmacy they wanted to use. Then doctors emailed us the details. However, our support team had to follow up with doctors and patients to make sure we had the right pharmacy, since patients might say something like, “the drugstore down the street from my house.” Today, there’s no doubt about which pharmacy is the right one, since patients can clearly see their local outlets on the map.
Our pharmacy map inspires us to think about new ways to use maps in the future – like plotting the movement of cold and flu outbreaks and sharing this data with patients and doctors. We see a direct connection between maps and improving patient care. In the greater scheme, Google Maps improve the health of our patients, and, the health of our business.
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