Posted by Philippe Creytens at 15:46
The sense or nonsense of conversations –grouping multiple emails on the same subject– has its fair share of supporters and opponents. Conversations are an easy way to bring back to mind the context of certain mails with a minimal effort. Search the conversation, unfold, read the messages and replies again. Done.
However for organizations with multi functionals or scanners there is a problem!
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 15:41
Despite the fact that search is really fast in Gmail, typically new users will stick to what they know: folders. Newbie Google Apps users often prefer to organize their mails in different folders. Trying to convince them that classifying mails and later browsing for them in folders is much more time-consuming compared to search with advanced search commands) is often a bridge too far.
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 15:00
Alias domains in Google Apps are really appreciated in organizations with branches in different countries. For these organizations it is often important that employees are able to use domain names that are different from the primary Google Apps domain.
An example? A Dutch company has used mycompany.nl as their primary Google Apps domain, but they also have employees in a Belgian subsidiary. All employees log into Google Apps with the email address associated with the primary domain. Really easy because resources such as meeting rooms or calendars and documents can easily be shared between employees in both locations.
This makes Google Apps a great fit for organizations active in multiple countries. So, let us stop the sales pitch here.
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 14:04
A few days ago Google Apps Dashboard got extended with more granular administration rights. Until then everything was pretty simple: you were an administrator and could do anything, or, you were not and had no access to the Google Apps domain settings.
After the ability to configure ‘organizational units’, a concept from the LDAP/Active Directory world that enable you to create groups that can you allow or disallow access to certain services, Google takes a next step forward with the introduction of the superadmin and the (normal) admin.
Why is this so important?
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 16:41
Moving from Outlook to Gmail and at the same time no longer using folders is for many one of the hardest things to do. After a mail migration to Gmail typically your folder structure gets converted to labels.
If you previously had a complex folder structure with many levels in Outlook, then the result in Gmail after migration is very long labels… with only the first 26 characters visible.
So what if you really want to keep a hierarchical structure of your mail archives? A few suggestions.
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 16:43
Google may have great ambitions with their OS for tablets, the reality is that Honeycomb tablets are expensive and (hardly) available. The iPad sets the standards.
So you have bought an iPad and want to use it for Google Apps? What are the tricks of the trade? A small summary…
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 13:45
Attempts by Google to compete against the high rollers in the world of social media, Facebook and Twitter, can hardly be called successful.
Google Buzz is supposed be to their answer. After what happened with Google Wave, maybe I will need to rephrase this soon to was.
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 15:00
Recently one of our customers asked me to merge or consolidate two separate Google Apps domains into a third Google Apps instance. Easier said than done and almost like solving a jigsaw puzzle.
Their three separate businesses currently have their own Google Apps instance. Regularly they run into problems related to this: searching in Google Docs is to a high degree domain specific, using a Google Group with users from an external domain for authentication in Google Docs (STILL) leads to issues related to the link of the shared document, setting a ‘global address book” of the three domains is next to impossible, etc. …
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 15:01
The recent announcement that the site of the British Royal Wedding of Prince William is hosted on Google App Engine, did not make me frown my eyebrows. The scalability and uptime of GAE are well-known. GAE runs on the same infrastructure as Google Search. Search remained just as fast as usual when Michael Jackson died and millions of searches were simultaneously being done on Google.
Google App Engine appears to be the ideal platform to host your website. Especially if you are already using Google Apps. True? Or not?
Posted by Philippe Creytens at 13:53
Mid June last year, Steve Jobs stated that the post-PC era has arrived. He predicts that the tablet will become a replacement for the PC for many users. Others seem to think that tablets are to become extra devices, next to laptops or desktops.
For certain tasks, such as editing photos or movies, you need a lot of processing power (read: PC/laptop power). Apparently the faster processors now available in the iPad 2, make this type of work finally possible on a tablet.
Which made me think. Can I work exclusively on a tablet?
