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Collaboration and Teamwork with Google Apps. Rypple goes Google.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Editor's note: Today's guest blogger is Jay Goldman, Head of Marketing for Rypple, a lightweight,
social service for continuous feedback and collaboration
. Rypple helps managers and their teams achieve goals faster with a simpler way to stay on track, recognize achievements, give useful feedback, and get people talking. Rypple has
Gone Google
from top to bottom — helping them to grow rapidly.
Rypple
is all about teamwork and collaboration, so having an internal teamwork and collaboration platform is essential to our success. We're a small but growing start-up with a geographically diverse team spread across North America, from San Francisco to Toronto. Staying lean and agile is a key part of our DNA, giving us a strong preference for lightweight and simple solutions, so there was no way we were going to choose a solution that didn't allow us to live it in our infrastructure.
Google Apps
was the clear choice.
We'd Gone Google even before we'd written a line of code on our own application. Setting up our Gmail, Docs, Calendar, and Sites was one of the first things we did at Rypple. Our team exists online, constantly connected through laptops and mobile devices. All roads lead seamlessly back to Apps, where we easily exchange emails, share information, and collaborate in the cloud.
Our customers use Rypple to improve communication and stay on track, so it's no surprise that we're big fans of Google Talk, our inter-office chat medium of choice. Chatting over IM saves us countless trips across the office, making sure we stay focused on building great software. Our knowledge base lives in a Google Site, keeping our team up to speed on the latest developments, marketing strategies, and collateral. On-boarding new employees - a constant concern for a growing start-up - is as simple as logging in to the Apps admin panel and making a few quick clicks.
Our Googley-ness goes even deeper than our choice in email and calendering tools. Google Analytics and Website Optimizer are essential elements of our marketing strategy and significant enablers of our data-driven approach. Their tabs are always open in Chrome, giving us a view into what's happening on our website and how our sales and marketing funnel is performing. And we keep the top of that funnel full thanks to Google AdWords, which drives a considerable portion of our daily traffic.
All of that makes us a cutting edge tech start-up with an infrastructure that helps power our growth. Our love affair with Google goes even one step further: the entire Rypple application is built on
Google Web Toolkit
(GWT). Our development team loves how GWT gives them the tools to build quickly and easily stick to our agile roots. Our customers love how we're able to push a new release packed with features and enhancements every week.
Launching a start-up used to be a really expensive proposition. You needed teams of developers and expensive servers, not to mention all the foosball tables, basketball hoops, and scooters. Here at Rypple, we're proud to be a different kind of start-up, focused on customers, products, and our business model. We're at the vanguard of a new generation: lightweight, agile, and living on the cloud — and we couldn't do it without Google.
Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Apps Team
Because Time is Money: Leveraging Google Apps Open Standards and Google Calendar
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Editor's note:
Continuing our “Going Google Everywhere” series, we’ve invited Stijn Van Vreckem, Founder and Managing Director of XAOP, a small Belgium-based software development company specializing in content integration, to talk about a quick and easy way his company has utilized APIs with Google Apps Premier Edition. XAOP builds software solutions, information integration products and related services for the life sciences industry.
Learn more about other organizations that have gone Google on our
community map
.
Filling in timesheets is a task that needs to be performed monthly or weekly in most service-oriented organizations. For years, I used to write everything down in my notebook to keep track of things.
Because the XAOP team has grown to seven people in the last year – who are usually working in small teams of two or three developers – it became more and more difficult to manage the billing for different projects. It was time to look for a better, more transparent solution to keep track of everyone's time.
After some internal discussions, we introduced a timesheet process based on Google Calendar. We created a calendar in our Google Apps Premier environment for each billable project we want to track. These calendars are shared with the team members working on the project.
Each team member registers his or her activities by simply putting them on the correct project calendar. As a result, everybody on the team can see who is working on which task in the project. At the end of the month, all invoices are created based on the activities of the project calendar.
Users track their time using project calendars in Google Apps.
Now, generating timesheet reports and invoices for clients is easy. Here’s how it works:
A background Ruby application connects each Google Calendar with the Google Data API to collect the activities.
The Ruby application then generates a monthly PDF report of the project calendars.
These reports provide a detailed overview of the activities for each person in the project.
The main disadvantage is that we need a lot of calendars, so cleanup is sometimes necessary. We also wish we could see who created which event so we could more easily manage larger projects. For example, you can see who created an event via the tooltip when you rollover it with the mouse, but this becomes difficult to read easily when more than 3 users fill in the timeslot on the same calendar. Therefore we implemented a convention on some projects to start the title with a person's initials.
But there are many advantages. We now have a lightweight timesheet application that lets everyone fill in their calendars when they have the time. The Google Calendar user interface is very simple and accessible for everybody. Freelancers or other external people working on XAOP projects can be added to the calendar of the project without complexity. This is a web-based solution that can be used via a PC or a mobile phone.
Today, XAOP team members don’t need to keep track of the projects. They only need to keep their calendars up to date. Invoices are now generated automatically and we can provide transparent reporting on each hour of work.
XAOP recently invested in new mobile phones and our time management solution worked without any changes. Because these HTC devices (Hero and Magic) integrate seamlessly with Google Apps, we can fill in our timesheets from anywhere.
Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team
Do you have an informative and fun Google Apps story to share? Please
submit it here
.
Google Commerce Search lands in Oz
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
As we
just announced
on the Google Australia blog, Google Commerce Search is extending its availability beyond the U.S. and U.K. to include Aussie retailers. With this launch, Australian e-commerce sites will be able to respond to the growing proportion of shoppers who turn to the web to research and purchase products – and unfortunately often have a hard time finding what they’re looking for.
Launching today at the
Online Retailer Conference & Expo
in Sydney, Google Commerce Search can now bring the same speed, relevancy, and ease of use that retailers like
Smart Furniture
in the U.S. and
Chemist Direct
in the U.K. have chosen for their sites.
If you’re an e-commerce company in Australia and won’t be attending the conference in Sydney this week, you can learn more by visiting the
website
or contacting us
here
.
Posted by Anna Bishop, Google Commerce Search team
109-year-old mechanical contracting company "goes Google"
Friday, July 2, 2010
Editor’s note:
Today’s guest bloggers are Aaron McCarthy, IT Director for Limbach Facility Services, Cristine Leifheit, Team Lead. McCarthy and Leifheit recently spearheaded the move to Google Apps for Limbach’s 500 employees. A mechanical contractor founded in 1901, Limbach Facility Services switched from Lotus Notes®/Domino® to "go Google" and gain 25GB mailboxes and built-in disaster recovery capabilities at no extra charge.
Aaron McCarthy holds 13 years of IT experience, 7 of which are with Limbach Facility Services. He has a Bachelor in MIS from Oakland University (Rochester, MI) and a Master in Business Information Technology from Walsh College (Troy, MI). Cristine Leifheit, PHR has worked with the Human Resources Department of Limbach for the past 11 years. She served as the Communications Team Leader throughout the selection and implementation of Google Apps alongside the Limbach Corporate IT Department.
Aaron and Cristine will be joined by Google Apps partner Cloud Sherpas on a live webcast on Thursday July 8, 2010 at 2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT.
Register today
.
At Limbach, we had a Lotus Notes/Domino system and, despite it being a recent version, the Notes system was hampering the innovation of our 500 employees. As a construction company, we have a workforce that is typically non-tech savvy. We are constantly learning what is required to bridge their needs while providing the advanced tools required to improve the way we do business.
We formed a “2012 Committee” comprised of non-technical staff from nine branches to better set up the company for the future. Part of their job was to re-evaluate our email system. When a new hire and recent college graduate on the committee suggested moving to Google Apps, management initially scoffed.
We did a line-by-line comparison of Google Apps, Microsoft® Exchange, and Lotus Notes and were quickly convinced of the value of Google Apps. We could get 25GB mailboxes—eliminating the constant strain on our small IT staff of four to meet ongoing requests for larger mailboxes. We also got built-in disaster recovery capabilities at no additional charge. Google’s mail capabilities were unmatched, but then we considered that Google Apps also provides great collaboration tools.
We did a small pilot with committee members and then a broader one with 50 users that helped us understand our full deployment requirements. The pilots were a wise move, and they helped us transition to Google Apps smoothly. Things moved quickly; we were able to decommission two servers just two months after deployment.
Today, we use the full suite of Google Apps tools, including Google Sites for our intranet. Google Apps has also become a platform for innovation. One safety manager used Google video chat to broadcast a helicopter lift of an HVAC system onto a roof to staff members at a branch office. We also added a cloud-based workflow tool from the Google Apps Marketplace.
It’s been a positive experience for us and we’d be happy to share out insights. Please join us for an interactive webinar!
Getting 25GB Inboxes and Built-in Disaster Recovery with Google Apps
Thursday, July 8, 2010
2:00 p.m. EDT / 11:00 a.m. PDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT
Posted by Serena Satyasai, the Google Apps team
Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of
Microsoft® Exchang
e and
Lotus Notes®/Domino®
.
Riley Chartered Accountants "goes Google"
Friday, July 2, 2010
Editor’s note: For this week’s guest blog post, we head to Plymouth, England to hear from Jon Stacey, a partner at
Riley Chartered Accountants
, an eighteen strong firm of Chartered Accountants. Riley offers accounting, tax and business development services to clients throughout the UK.
Riley have been enthusiastic adopters of cloud computing for a couple of years now. As a UK firm of Chartered Accountants based in
Plymouth, England
we have been technology driven since the business started in 1981. Our ability to communicate as a team and with our customers is paramount and the recording and storing of what we do in the most efficient and accessible format is critical.
Our office systems were previously almost totally reliant on Lotus Notes, which we’d started using in 1998. However, over the years we started to see deficiencies that began to hinder business -- challenging technical management issues, the clunkiness of the user-interface even after major updates, and access issues. These problems were especially noticeable because the quality of the personal email systems we had all started to use at home had surpassed that of the system we were using at work.
Finally, changes in our key team forced us to look properly at other solutions and we settled on migrating our e-mail, calendars and instant messaging to Google in August 2009. The migration was handled painlessly by
Glo-Networks
and we moved the majority of our communication IT to web-browser access without a hitch.
That first step was a revelation. Not only was our information now accessible from anywhere in the world, from any computer or device with an Internet connection, the move massively freed up resources of people (and cash) and removed the restrictions on our thinking about IT. We still have certain legacy databases on Lotus Notes but have started to wind these down as more content is now cloud based. We found that
Google Apps
allowed us to store all of our templates for letters, spreadsheets and many of our management tools too.
Google Docs has become our go-to source for new files, collaboration and systems development. This morning I spent half an hour collaborating on an internal project with two of my partners - one of them was in another office, another at home while I was at my desk talking to them both on the phone. The speed of decision making is enhanced by the ability to see what others are doing as they amend and delete cells within a spreadsheet or words in a proposal letter. And then there’s Chat with video chat - something which we didn’t take much notice of while we were assessing Apps, but which is becoming more and more useful as we build our team.
Using Google Sites, we have developed a dashboard for the Riley team and easy-to-create websites within minutes. The simple interface, clean design and ability to pick up on templates designed by both the Google team and other businesses mean that someone, somewhere has often done some of the hard work for you.
More recently, we’ve started to use
Google Apps Marketplace
to drive the development and integration of our CRM requirements, mail and contacts. This is an on-going process and we are currently evaluating a number of solutions for this need - something which all the providers have made extremely easy.
We have also been able to dispense with the office-based back-up solution which was the bane of many of our lives. There have also been no problems with software updates – I’m sure that they exist but they happen painlessly when we don’t notice or incrementally as the developers finish a feature. We don’t have to buy an upgrade path or worry about compatibility – it just happens.
Posted by Ashley Chandler, The Google Enterprise Team
As the world turns to FIFA, FIFA.com turns to Google
Thursday, July 1, 2010
We’re right in the middle of football fever worldwide and as the number of competing teams dwindles, the interest is only growing. Of course, many of these eyeballs around the world are turning to FIFA.com to get the latest scores, updates, and analysis.
Given the traffic flowing through FIFA.com, FIFA understands the importance of search on their website. Indeed, according to a recent independent Forrester Research, Inc. report, a 2008 survey found that “70 percent of online users stated that “ease of search” is the most important factor influencing how they select news resources”.
1
For this reason, FIFA has chosen the Google Search Appliance to power search on their website.
With the Google Search Appliance, FIFA.com is able to provide a user-centric, universal search experience across all types of content—news, statistics, images and videos. For instance, when you type in “Messi,” you first see a box at the top showing “player statistics,” followed by FIFA news results in order of relevance, then images and videos specifically pertaining to Messi.
Additionally, features like “Did you mean” direct people to the right results. For instance, if you type in “mesi,” FIFA.com will ask you if you meant “Messi.” Or if you type in a country name, say “Argentina,” the top result will be a link to a country-specific page.
By focusing on the user, FIFA.com offers their fans a compelling experience, with search as a core element. And we’re happy to play a small role in helping millions of fans around the world keep up to date on their favorite sport.
1
Site Search Best Practices: Methods for Creating a Positive Search Experience, Forrester Research, Inc., March 5 2010.
Posted by
Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Enterprise Search
Rapid innovation powered by the cloud – another reason to Go Google
Thursday, July 1, 2010
The web is the epicenter of innovation, and Google’s multi-tenant infrastructure lets us push improvements to our customers seamlessly, enabling businesses that have
Gone Google
to move beyond the slow, multi-year innovation cycles typical of legacy technologies.
Users automatically get new features just by refreshing their browsers, and improvements roll out to organizations without patches or hardware upgrades to manage. Rapid innovation powered by the cloud also has another advantage over traditional technology cycles: users adapt to a continuous stream of manageable improvements better than they tolerate large, disruptive changes in the tools they use every day.
Last week I hosted a webinar to spotlight some of the more than 50 improvements and new features we’ve brought to Google Apps just in the last 6 months. You can watch the replay below or
watch it on YouTube
:
We’re excited about what’s in store for Google Apps. We’re always making our products better based on feedback from millions of users, and to keep up with the latest features, you can subscribe to the Google Apps Updates
RSS feed
, or sign up for
email alerts
.
Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Google Apps Marketing Manager
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