Posted by Kevin Hodges, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: We're going across the U.S. to shine light on the great things schools are doing with technology at the statewide level. Texas is up next. There we asked educators and administrators to reflect on how technology has changed what it means to teach and learn. From group projects to collaborative lesson plans, technology has improved the teaching and learning experience across the state. And we’re happy to announce that 100% of Texas’ online standardized tests can be administered on Chromebooks, giving educators an easy, secure way to manage the testing process. To learn more about Google solutions for Education, watch this recent webinar with Arlington Independent School District.

When students want to learn and collaborate with classmates, they no longer have to travel to the library after school or schedule time to work at another student’s house. With teachers and administrators in Texas integrating technology – including Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks – into their curricula, students can learn and work on assignments when they’re not in the classroom. Teachers are preparing students for college and future careers while staying under budget and saving time managing thousands of devices. Inspired by how schools are innovating with technology across the region, we’re highlighting a few of the successes we’ve heard about directly from Texas schools:

Leveling the playing field 

Google Apps for Education isn’t just a way to share information – it’s the learning hub at Arlington Independent School District (case study) in North Texas. Students and teachers at Arlington ISD create more than 50,000 documents in Google Docs during any given week, and students can access this bounty of information when they aren’t in the classroom. For example, physical education students used heart monitors to measure their heart rates during different activities. As a homework assignment, they analyzed the data in Google Sheets and shared their findings with their peers.

With the affordability of Chromebooks, more students have access to devices. When students leave the classroom, they can sign onto Chromebooks on loan through the 1:1 program and access Google Apps for Education to continue learning, regardless of their technology options at home.

Collaborating beyond the classroom walls 

North East Independent School District uses technology to create a collaborative approach across schools, so students on its 70 campuses can share their work with peers and teachers. They’re creating a global learning environment by sharing assignments in Google Docs with students at international schools and with subject matter experts to get real-world feedback. For example, a sophomore history class shared its Middle Ages project with students in Denmark. “These devices have captured student’s excitement to learn, collaborate and think creatively,” says Tom Johnson, senior director of technology at North East ISD.

Introducing affordable devices for 21st century learning 

McAllen Independent School District is introducing 12,500 Chromebooks this winter to give students 24/7 access to technology as part of its new initiative: Transforming Learning in the Classroom, Campus and Community. Students, teachers and parents provided their input on the devices they wanted, and the technology team evaluated the costs. “As we move toward a 1:1 model, we had to consider the cost of providing devices for students, the ability to manage 12,500 devices and the cost of fixing and replacing devices,” says Ann Vega, director of instructional technology at McAllen ISD. After the rollout, more students will have access to tools that will equip them with 21st century skills.

Schools continue to expand what it means to go to school by incorporating digital learning into their curricula. Technology inspires students to think beyond their lesson plans, whether they’re in study hall, waiting for soccer practice or on a family vacation. Check out the schools’ stories and watch Arlington's webinar to learn more.

We’ve heard great stories from many of you about how you’re using technology to do amazing things in your schools, so we're going across the U.S. to see for ourselves! Check out the map below to see where we’ve been. We’d love to hear what’s happening in your state, so please share your story on Twitter or Google+ and tag us (@GoogleForEdu) or include the #GoogleEdu hashtag. 

Posted by Dan Hubert, CEO and co-founder of AppyParking

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Dan Hubert, CEO and co-founder of AppyParking. Read how AppyParking is using Google Maps APIs to help more than 100,000 drivers find real-time available parking spots in congested London areas and show general parking information across 10 nationwide cities.

Parking in London is notoriously challenging. I’ve had to circle the block dozens of times before finding a spot. One night before a show at the Royal Albert Hall is particularly memorable – there was a yellow line on the curb that spanned hundreds of yards in front of the venue, but it wasn’t clear if I could park there. After parking, I found a sign two streets down, saying parking was permitted, but only during the specific window I was there.

This was one of many experiences that inspired me to create AppyParking, a mobile app that uses Google Maps APIs to help drivers across the United Kingdom understand parking regulations and find open spaces. AppyParking serves as a comprehensive database for parking information, detailing what colored curbs mean and the specific rules depending on the time of day. The app color codes parking spots to show drivers where there’s free parking, where restrictions apply and where special types of spaces – such as electric-car charging and motorbike spots – are located. For example, red means restricted, and green means free.

My co-founder, Enric Requena, and I chose Google Maps APIs for the mapping solution to provide rich, reliable data that’s accessible via a user-friendly interface. The app pulls data in varying formats from many sources, so Enric and I developed the Parking Platform, which converts different formats into a usable API. That data is integrated and layered on top of Google Maps using Google Places Autocomplete API for Android, iOS and the web.

With other location-specific developer tools from Google, we’re able to provide our users with a more meaningful and contextual experience. Google Street View shows users where free parking spots are from a 360-degree view and street view. The Directions API is particularly useful in providing driving directions to open parking spots.

We’re also helping commercial fleets find parking information, reduce time spent looking for spots and improve fleet productivity. Fleets pay more than four million pounds per year in parking fines, so knowing where parking is available is extremely valuable for their bottom line.

AppyParking has helped more than 100,000 users find parking spaces faster and with less stress. We’ll continue to expand our app to provide more actionable information for drivers and have added confidence knowing that we can rely on Google Maps tools.

Posted by Ian Cook, head of IT, charity: water

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Ian Cook, head of IT at charity: water, a non-profit organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Learn about how the organization is using Chromebox for meetings to keep the team connected, from its New York City HQ to onsite in Cambodia. 

At charity: water, our mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to every person on the planet. We have a “100 percent model,” which means every dollar donated goes directly to the field to fund clean water projects. This is made possible by a small group of passionate and dedicated supporters who cover all of our operating costs: everything from staff salaries, to flights to the field, to the ink in our printer.

At charity: water transparency is one of our core values, and with the help of Google we maintain transparency in two major ways. We use the Google Maps APIs to show every supporter exactly what we've done with their donation by giving them the GPS coordinates, photos and community information of the exact projects they made possible. We also rely heavily on tools like Chromebox for Meetings to communicate with our global team; our headquarters is in New York, but we have staff that work remotely in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

We switched to Chromebox for Meetings after testing different products, and gathering feedback from our employees. They found Chromebox for Meetings to be the best solution: powerful, easy to use and seamlessly integrated with Google Apps. When we moved into a new, custom office space, we opted to include screens connected to Chromebox for Meetings in all nine of our conference rooms.

We like when technology enables, rather than interrupts, our natural flow of working. At any time, more than half our conference rooms are booked for virtual meetings, allowing us to connect instantly with colleagues around the world. We even have a 48-inch TV mounted at standing height on a media cart, which we move into the common area for company wide meetings. Remote employees can join via Hangouts and participate as if they were standing beside their colleagues. In fact, our first UK-based employee is connected with our New York City headquarters on Google Hangouts almost every day.

With simpler video conferencing, we’ve improved work-life balance by giving everyone, from interns to executive staff, more flexibility to work from anywhere at any time. Chromebox for Meetings is easy to scale and mobile-friendly, which is important since travel is core to what we do. Using Hangouts in conjunction with Chrome device management also allows us to help out employees with IT issues in real time, which is essential for a global team that often works remotely. I can share screens and fix problems whether at the office, at home or on the road.

Our team’s made up of excited, passionate people, running a non-profit much like a fast-paced technology startup. We need tools that help us work more collaboratively, even when a number of our team members are dispersed across the globe. We’ve even started an initiative to hire the best talent for the job, regardless of physical location. We wouldn’t be able to do this without powerful video conferencing technology and work tools that enable mobility. With Chromebox for Meetings and Google Apps, we can work better at achieving our mission while maintaining the transparency that’s at the core of our values.

Posted by Flint Waters, CIO of the State of Wyoming

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Flint Waters, CIO of the State of Wyoming. Since outfitting its conference rooms with Chromebox for meetings, the state spends far less on video conferencing and has transformed how teams communicate and connect with each other and the citizens they serve. See how Wyoming and many other institutions and organizations are using Chromebox for meetings to create a culture of collaboration that translates to greater productivity and better service. 

When I came to work for the State of Wyoming four years ago, five people reported to a contract CIO and operations happened at government speed. The department drew in 300 people from other agencies, and IT teams were assigned to different opportunities. I wanted consolidated IT rather than siloed and needed a culture of urgency and innovation for the state, so we began looking at tools to help us do that. Building on the efforts of the previous administration, the Governor moved all state employees to Google Apps for Work. Today, Chromebox for meetings improves transparency and brings public servants, citizens and elected officials closer together.

Before moving to Chromebox for meetings, we spent $1.5 million a year on a legacy video conferencing system. I felt we weren’t getting enough capability with the technology for the amount of money we were spending. So we phased out all the Tandberg systems and got 178 Chromebox for meetings licenses using a small fraction of our budget.

The cost savings is tremendous, but we’re even more thrilled with the way Chromebox for meetings transforms how we do our jobs and think about public service. Specifically, this technology cuts down on bureaucratic processes and hierarchical protocol. Everyone from the Governor and executives to agency directors use Chromebox for team, cabinet-level and all-hands meetings. Participants can comment and ask questions regardless of their location. We’re also introducing Chromebox for meetings throughout the school system to improve communication between teachers, administrators and students.

With Chromebox for meetings, we’re opening up meetings and making them less formal. We have Chromeboxes in our halls, allowing people to gather around and have impromptu meetings that anybody can join — the closest thing to a watercooler conversation you can get over the Internet. It’s also easier to work together on documents that are viewable on monitors at the stations, making meetings even more interactive and productive.

This technology has also reduced people’s travel time and increased productivity. Wyoming is a large state with a small population and a lot of open road between cities — you can drive for miles on the highway without seeing another car. Chromebox for meetings shortens the distance between offices by allowing people to have a face-to-face interaction without getting in their cars.

I get most excited about the fact that we can be collaborative with Chromebox for meetings. In the future, I’d like to set up an online help desk via live Hangout that’s accessible through the state’s website, so that when web visitors need help, we’d be there to help them right away. We’re connecting people at all levels of government to each other and to the public. With Google tools we can move as fast as our ideas can take us, which is just what we need to bring startup innovation and agility into the halls of government.

Posted by Sundar Pichai, CEO

(Cross-posted on the Google Cloud Blog.)

Since the launch of our first product for businesses, the Google Search Appliance, in 2002, we’ve been building more and more products that help make businesses more productive. From Gmail to Docs to Chromebooks and Google Cloud Platform, we are now helping millions of businesses transform and support their businesses with our Cloud products. In fact, more than 60% of the Fortune 500 are actively using a paid Google for Work product. And all of Google’s own businesses run on our cloud infrastructure. Including our own services, Google has significantly larger data center capacity than any other public cloud provider – part of what makes it possible for customers to receive the best price and performance for compute and storage services.

All of this demonstrates great momentum, but it’s really just the beginning. In fact, only a tiny fraction of the world’s data is currently in the cloud – most businesses and applications aren’t cloud-based yet. This is an important and fast-growing area for Google and we’re investing for the future.

That’s why we’re so excited that Diane Greene will lead a new team combining all our cloud businesses, including Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps. This new business will bring together product, engineering, marketing and sales and allow us to operate in a much more integrated, coordinated fashion.

As a long-time industry veteran and co-founder and CEO of VMWare, Diane needs no introduction. Cloud computing is revolutionizing the way people live and work, and there is no better person to lead this important area. We’re also lucky that Diane has agreed to remain on Google’s Board of Directors (she has already served three years here) – as she has a huge amount of operational experience that will continue to help the company.

I’m equally excited that Google has entered into an agreement to acquire a company founded by Diane: bebop is a new development platform that makes it easy to build and maintain enterprise applications. We think this will help many more businesses find great applications, and reap the benefits of cloud computing. bebop and its stellar team will help us provide integrated cloud products at every level: end-user platforms like Android and Chromebooks, infrastructure and services in Google Cloud Platform, developer frameworks for mobile and enterprise users, and end-user applications like Gmail and Docs. Both Diane and the bebop team will join Google upon close of the acquisition.

With these announcements, we’re excited to take the next step in helping businesses take advantage of the cloud to work better, operate more securely, run more efficiently and grow faster.

Posted by Patrick Wynn, Product Manager, Google for Work

Joining a meeting should be as easy as walking into a room. That should be the case whether you’re meeting in person, or face-to-face over video. This week we’re rolling out an update to Google Hangouts that makes joining a video call as simple as clicking a link in an invitation. No filling in forms, no need for a Google account, just simple, easy access to meetings. Connect with teammates and get things done, while maintaining the control and security you need in a work environment.

Say you’re a business about to talk through new product plans with your supplier, and you decide it’d be great to also get the thoughts of a key customer. No problem.

1. Invite your external guests with Google Calendar
2. They click a link in the event description and fill in their name
3. In order to help give you control and security over your meetings, you’ll get a prompt to accept / deny their entry whether you’re using web, mobile or Chromebox for meetings.

With Hangouts security features like locking video meetings to only people within an organization and muting and ejecting participants, there’s always the right level of security to match your organization’s needs.

Learn more about Hangouts today.

Posted by Ivan Passos, Product Manager, Google Apps for Work

Today we’re rolling out a few updates to Google+ that make it easier to focus on the features our Apps customers tell us they find the most useful. There’s a new homestream to quickly browse through content, Communities that make it easy to safely share ideas and Collections that enable organizations to curate their work and keep it in one easy-to-find place.

The fully redesigned homestream is built to be fast and simple. The new design makes it easier to use whether you’re at your desk browsing through posts or sharing an update on the go from a smaller mobile device screen.

Domain-restricted Communities are a popular way for organizations to share content and ideas amongst teammates, with the peace of mind that they’ll stay private. We’ve already seen how a global fashion brand uses Communities to inspire conversation about products and branding among employees across the world and how a Japanese startup is keeping their staff up-to-date as they build a vaccine.

Collections let you keep all your related content in one spot and make it easier to discover and browse. For example, earlier this year we dedicated a week on the Google for Work G+ page to our awesome System Admins, in order to keep all that content together, we put it into a Collection. It’s a handy way to collate posts, whether they’re showing off your new product or keeping your customers in the know about your Black Friday sales.

For more information on the launch check out the Official Google Blog. Explore the new-look Google+ yourself on the web today and on iOS and Android later this week.

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Senior Product Manager, Chrome & Android, Google for Work & Education 

Editor's note: To learn more about managing intelligent Chrome devices, join our Chrome product team for a Hangout on Air on Thursday, November 19th at 10AM PST.

More and more businesses across the globe are using DIY-service models and integrated mobile, digital signage and kiosk technology to personalize their customer experience.

While the customer experience is enhanced, the administration experience needs to stay simple. That’s why we developed the web-based Chrome Device Management Console, which allows business owners to remotely manage their fleet of devices across all their storefronts. "We tried many different solutions, using Google for signage was the easiest to push, control and manage throughout the enterprise,” said Alan Mariotti, Vice President of Technology and Security at Chico’s. In fact, IDC found that Chrome customers they spoke to averaged a three-year ROI of 319% for Chrome devices when used in kiosk mode, with an investment break-even time of approximately 4.8 months.

Today we’re introducing a more streamlined console just for digital signs and kiosks called Single App Chrome Device Management (Single App CDM), priced at $24 per device per year. Single App CDM offers ongoing reporting that monitors the health of your kiosks and signage at all times. You’ll get alerts if a device goes down and can remotely reboot the device without dispatching a technician. You can also get live updates about system usage and capture screen grabs to see exactly what viewers see.

Single App CDM can be used with a variety of Chrome devices – like the ASUS Chromebit, which is available for purchase today – to share relevant content quickly and simply, with the flexibility and security to seamlessly integrate into a broad spectrum of signage configurations. For example, the menu boards at a coffee shop or cafe could be powered by Chrome devices like the Chromebox, Chromebase and Chromebit, running a Chrome Kiosk app that displays relevant, dynamic content. Combined with our rich partner ecosystem of Chrome Kiosk apps from StratosMedia, Telemetry, Arreya, SignageLive, Wondersign, Nutrislice, Chrome Sign builder and many others, we have a solution to support any scenario.

To learn more about how other organizations are using Chrome OS to deliver signage, check out this new IDC white paper.

Posted by Danny Chi, director of engineering at Tripping.com

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Danny Chi, director of engineering at Tripping.com. Read how Tripping.com and Google for Work Partner Navagis used Google Maps APIs to improve user experience and increase Tripping.com’s revenue and traffic – which has gone up by more than 2,000% over the past 12 months.

At Tripping.com, we aggregate vacation rentals from dozens of sites to help vacationers find the right listing from more than five million properties in 150,000 destinations. Our goal is to make it the world's largest website for researching vacation homes and short-term rentals.

To do that, we need to create the best customer experience to drive traffic and to turn website visitors into guests. That’s why we chose the Google Maps APIs, which let us build an easy-to-use interface with fast loading times and the ability to scale. The APIs also allow the maps to zoom in and out, and accurately confirm rental addresses from the sites we search.

Going with Google Maps APIs gave us access to vast and accurate location data. We also tapped into a world-class ecosystem of partners by choosing Google for Work Partner Navagis to help with licensing and technical advice on how best to start using Google Maps APIs.

When a user visits Tripping.com, they search for where and when they plan to vacation. We send the search to multiple vacation-rental sites, and we use the Google Maps JavaScript API to layer the results onto a Google Map. The left side of the screen displays the map with pins. The right side of the screen displays a photo of each rental. Users can click a pin to display the photo of the rental, and click the photo for more details and to complete their booking.

The Google Places API helps the site automatically scale the map to match searches. For example, if the user searches rentals in Paris, the Places API indicates the correct zoom level to display listings. If, instead, he searches for the Eiffel Tower, it will do a tighter zoom. The Places API also helps ensure accurate address data since in some cases the rental owners don’t provide complete address information.

With the help of the Google Maps APIs, Tripping.com’s traffic has grown 2,918%, to more than two million unique monthly visitors. So thanks to the Google Maps APIs, we’re not only keeping our visitors happy—we’re also seeing great business benefits as well.

Posted by Elena Kelareva, Product Manager, Google Maps APIs

Location-based and time-relevant data are changing the way we live, work and travel. As consumers, we can access incredibly detailed information about where we are and where we’re going with a few taps on our mobile devices. Location and time-relevant data play an important role in helping to answer everyday questions like “what’s the best route to take when running errands?” or “what time is my taxi arriving?” At work, we rely on this data to make better decisions, like how to optimize utilization of assets or organize a team. Google Maps and Google Maps APIs have played a key role in helping us make these decisions, both at home and at work.

Today, we’re bringing predictive travel time – one of the most powerful features from our consumer Google Maps experience – to the Google Maps APIs so businesses and developers can make their location-based applications even more relevant for their users.

Predictive travel time uses historical time-of-day and day-of-week traffic data to estimate travel times at a future date. This makes it easier than ever to predict how long it will take to get somewhere and suggest the best route even when the departure time is far in the future.

Since traffic conditions in the future will vary greatly, we give companies the ability to set an optional traffic_model parameter to choose whether an optimistic, pessimistic or best_guess estimate of traffic conditions is most appropriate for their application. Some examples:

• If your application is used for scheduling deliveries, and you want to ensure you’ve allowed enough time between deliveries so your drivers won’t be late, you might want to use the pessimistic travel time estimates.
• On the other hand, if you’re building a thermostat app, and you want the house to be warm by the time your user arrives home from work, you might want to use the optimistic travel time estimate to calculate when the user is likely to arrive.
• If you want to give your user an estimate of the most likely travel time to their destination, the default best_guess traffic model will give you the most likely travel time considering both current traffic conditions and historical averages.

We worked with the real estate website Redfin to show developers what’s possible with predictive travel times. Redfin will use the Google Maps Distance Matrix API to help make better predictions for drive time between homes.

“Taking the guesswork out of knowing how long it will take to drive between homes will help us provide a better customer experience to our users” – Curtis Howell, Product Manager Customer Engagement, Redfin

Predictive travel time is available for both Standard Plan and Premium Plan customers in the Direction and Distance Matrix API, and for Premium Plan customers only in the JavaScript Maps API.

To get started with the predictive travel time, visit our documentation on the Directions and Distance Matrix API and try it out by signing up online for the Standard Plan or reach out to your account manager. To become a Premium Plan Customer, please reach out here.

Posted by Helen Hwang, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editor's note: We're going across the U.S. to shine light on the great things schools are doing with technology at the statewide level, with North Carolina up first. North Carolina is a strong Google partner. From the rollout of broadband infrastructure to the adoption of Google for Education, Google for Work and Google Cloud Platform in schools, nonprofits, labs and startups, Google technology is helping to liberate learning, empower employees and give researchers tools that can help solve real world problems.

North Carolina’s Research Triangle has a rich tradition of fostering quality education, research and entrepreneurship – prime areas for investment and innovation. In fact, Google is now laying thousands of miles of state-of-the-art fiber optic cable that will expand internet connectivity in the area. In the spirit of building next-generation technologies, the Google Cloud Platform and Google for Education teams hosted an inaugural Innovate with Google event at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill.

Startups, researchers and educators come together to innovate 

The event brought together more than 200 educators, startup executives, life science researchers and others who are innovating with Google. They’re building new teaching models, services and scientific advancements designed to improve lives.

Attendees heard from Jonathan Rochelle, Google’s director of Product Management, who discussed innovation used by billions of people. He gave the example of his own XL2Web startup that became Google Sheets and Expeditions, which allows teachers to take students on virtual field trips.

A panel of educators, students and entrepreneurs shared stories of creating change with technology. Brittany Wenger, Duke University student and Google 2012 Science Fair winner, shared her experience of teaching herself how to code and building a platform powered by Google App Engine that predicts breast cancer with 99 percent accuracy. Dr. Valerie Truesdale of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools talked about the district’s Chromebook program (83,000 devices across 168 schools), which began with researching what age group most needed the devices. Sarah Noell of North Carolina State University discussed how faculty and students are working together to design engaging lessons that inspire creativity.

Learning, building and scaling 

Attendees chose from breakout sessions in genomics, startups and education. In the education track, teachers and school administrators shared how they’re rethinking traditional teaching and learning methods with help from Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks. Teachers also got hands-on with tackling current educational challenges with a 10X Design Thinking workshop. Jamel Mims of the Urban Arts partnership led a challenge on how to align pedagogy with art and culture to engage students. He shared his approach of teaching history through rapping. Ellie Gamache of American Underground led a group on how to foster community between local schools, universities and startups to drive innovation and embrace diversity.

Attendees worked in small groups with tools like pipe cleaners, popsicle sticks, construction paper and Play Doh to brainstorm ideas to solve different educational challenges.

The genomics breakout sessions appealed to attendees whose work with big data uses the very same cloud computing platform that powers the Google backbone and services like Search, Maps and Google Genomics. The non-profit organization Autism Speaks, for example, discussed how they’re sequencing 10,000 whole genomes and building the world’s largest private collection of autism-related DNA samples. They shared how they already uploaded nearly 100 terabytes of data from more than 1,300 genomes onto Google Cloud Storage and how they make this genomic data available to researchers for free via the Google Cloud Platform, searchable through BigQuery.

The future looks bright for students, teachers, scientists and entrepreneurs in North Carolina. From research on Autism to creating new companies to enabling students to collaborate on projects remotely, Google tools are providing the building blocks people need to turn their big thoughts into reality and build a better tomorrow.

We’ve heard great stories from many of you about how you’re using technology to do amazing things in your schools, so we're going across the U.S. to see for ourselves! North Carolina was the first state we visited. Check out the map below to see where we’ll head next. We’d love to hear what’s happening in your state, so please share your story on Twitter or Google+ and tag us (@GoogleEdu) or include the #GoogleEdu hashtag.

Posted by Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director IT Resources, RSPCA

Editor's note: Today we hear from Billie Laidlaw, Assistant Director Resources-IT at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), the UK’s oldest and largest animal welfare charity with 1600 employees across England and Wales. In 2014 the £43 million that the organisation received in voluntary donations helped rescue more than 128,000 animals from cruelty, abuse and neglect. Read how the RSPCA is using Google Apps for Work to help give these animals a new chance.

I often refer to our IT spend as kitten food, since that helps us focus on its value. Every pound we save with our solutions helps to rescue, rehabilitate and rehome animals across the country. So when our legacy email system reached the end of its working life, we wanted great value for money in the short term and opportunities for cost-saving and innovation further down the line. With Google Apps for Work, we got both.

We started the rollout with the IT team, then added superusers, then everyone else. We called these stages “ready,” “steady” and “GO.” In the “steady” stage, we trained up superusers and gave them t-shirts and flags so their colleagues knew who to turn to for advice. We installed timers on everyone’s desktops with a day-by-day “Countdown to Google” that created a real sense of excitement about the change and used Forms to gather post-go live feedback from 1,000 members of our team. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

From the start, we saved significantly on equipment costs alone. Our previous system operated from more than 40 servers, all of which have been decommissioned and will never have to be replaced. At £3,500 per server, that saved us £140,000 just on equipment. And digital signage now costs one tenth of the price we used to pay, from £1,500 per store to a solution using Chromebox and Slides that costs just £150 per store. Chromebooks have proven so cost effective that we bought 150 this year and plan to adopt them further. And because they connect to Drive, we don’t need to carry heavy paperwork around, which is good for the environment, our budget, and our backs. Also, when we needed to add 500 staff to our email platform, we did it in a matter of days with no additional infrastructure other than the provision of Android smartphones.

Every year we find new homes for more than 50,000 animals, and Google Apps tools make that rehabilitation process so much faster. Our 500 RSPCA inspectors are out in the field every day, investigating animal cruelty and complaints. Under our old system, none of them were connected to a central email hub, but now they all have Gmail and Drive on Android phones and access to Chromebooks, so they can instantly share test results, check documentation, send pictures and request temporary accommodation for an animal at one of our animal centres. And as soon as an animal is ready for rehoming, the quest begins to find new owners. We used to make promotional videos that we would burn to DVDs and deliver to our shops and centres by hand once a month, but now we can use Slides and a Chromebox to send promotions instantly to our screens, the same day an animal’s ready for a new home. No driving, no hassle with DVDs.

We’re committed to creating a more united, mobile, flexible workforce by the RSPCA’s 200th anniversary in 2024, and with Google Apps for Work, we’re well on the way to making that a reality. Working together in Docs isn’t just making our internal processes more transparent, it’s connecting people from parts of our organisation that otherwise operate independently and allows us to share knowledge and advice across the country. Hangouts let us meet face-to-face online and keep workflow moving with instant messaging. We’re also using Calendar to keep in synch and Sheets to work out duty rosters and book holidays.

Every time a supporter puts a pound in one of our collection tins, they want it to be spent wisely. By streamlining our services with Google Apps for Work, we make sure that more of that money serves the animals who need it. In the end, it could be food for a kitten, or a puppy, a horse, a seal, a hedgehog…

Posted by Per Jakobsen, CIO, Narvik Kommune, Norway

Editor's note: Today we hear from Per Jakobsen, head of IT operations and development at Narvik Kommune, a Norwegian municipality 343 kilometres north of the Arctic circle. Read how Google Apps for Work is being used at Narvik Kommune to make life simpler for staff, so that they can spend less time doing paperwork and more time managing healthcare, childcare, schools, transport and housing services for the people that depend on them.

Norwegians value the human touch in social services. We call this “warm hands,” and we know nothing can replace it. But as a municipality, we need cool efficiency to make sure that our carers, teachers and medics are in the right place at the right time for 20,000 citizens across more than 2,000km².

Photo by Pål Jakobsen

Every day, Narvik Kommune coordinates 1,600 employees across 58 locations — but our old email system was holding us back from doing our best work. An obsolete user interface made it difficult to navigate, spam was a chronic problem, and we depended on expensive consultants for maintenance. Buying 750 Google Apps for Work accounts hasn’t just resolved these issues at a reasonable and predictable price; it’s made Narvik Kommune more efficient, more reliable and more mobile. We worked with Avalon Solutions, a Google Apps Premier Partner in the Nordics, who contributed to the successful migration.

We’ve gained several hours each week now that we use stable and secure Google servers, instead of wasting time servicing a spam filter and antivirus software and troubleshooting email instability. And the minimal training necessary to use Google Apps tools means departments throughout Narvik Kommune are discovering creative and productive ways to use them — all on their own:

• Working together under tight deadlines in Sheets: Our economy team uses Sheets instead of Excel, so they can update documents simultaneously during hectic periods and avoid the delays and confusion caused by multiple copies when union representatives and others are involved in compiling records.
• Collecting and sharing information across teams with Sites: HR uses Sites to reach out more effectively through the organisation when collecting and presenting information on large internal procedures.
• Staying on top of meetings with Calendar: All teams use Calendar on our smartphones to organise meetings (and receive SMS notifications before they start).
• Digital discussion notes on Docs: All teams use Docs to take notes during discussions, which keeps everyone better aligned and saves time and cost on printing.
• Building budgets on Drive: Our councilman and managers across the administration used Drive to compile our last annual budget, saving time on a joint task that we would previously handle with fileshare documents that could only be opened and edited by one person at a time.

Most importantly, Google Apps for Work keeps our internal data secure. We have the added peace of mind knowing that our information is protected on one of the most secure infrastructures in the world.

With the flexibility of Google Apps tools, we can prepare for a smooth relocation while the Narvik town hall shuts down for two years of renovation and our core team spreads across three locations instead of one. We’ll use Hangouts on five Chromeboxes to meet and collaborate face-to-face, so we don’t lose that important personal interaction among teams.

We’ve been so impressed by the power of Google Apps, that we’ve extended the advantages of Google Apps tools to local students. We implemented Google Apps for Education accounts for each of the 2,000 pupils at our nine primary and lower secondary schools, and we’re trialling Chromebooks and Classroom. Digitizing public services with Google hasn’t just brought us national attention — it has freed up resources to invest in our future.

Posted by Alex Vogenthaler, Group Product Manager, Google Drive

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog.)

When you store your important files somewhere, you want to have peace of mind that they'll be safe and easy-to-access later. That's why everything in Drive is always encrypted. And why we encourage all of our users to complete a simple Security Checkup every now and then. Of course, this should include file sharing as well -- it should be super easy to control who sees what.

With this in mind, we're making a number of improvements to Drive today, so you can store your photos and documents safely and get them where they need to go.

Get sharing notifications
You may have noticed recently that it’s easier to select and share multiple files and folders on iOS and Android — but checking your email may not be the fastest way to find out when something’s been shared with you. So starting today, you’ll receive mobile notifications to alert you immediately when files or folders are shared with you and a single tap can take you right to them.

Request and grant file access
Drive lets you quickly grab a link to files and folders so you can share them using other apps, but if you share a link before you’ve granted access, the person you’re sending it to won’t be able to open it. Now, the Drive for Android app lets recipients request access with a single tap. And on Android and iOS, file owners will be notified of the request instantly so they can quickly grant access.

Preview files without a Google Account on Android
Until now, you needed a Google Account to view shared files on your Android device. Now, you can do this without a Google Account just like on the web.

Some of the features mentioned are already available. Look for the rest to roll out in the coming week or so.

Posted by Andrew Toy, Product Management Director, Android for Work

Editor's Note: Android for Work Live airs today at 11AM PST. Register here.

The Internet, like previous transformational technologies, emerged as a new and distinct tool before becoming business as usual.

Mobile at work is going through a similar transition, with organizations now interweaving the next generation of mobile productivity into the lives of every employee and through every workflow.

Android for Work: a shared vision for business mobility We launched Android for Work earlier this year to help businesses put Android’s choice and flexibility to work for them. More than a “packaged” product, Android for Work is a dynamic, expanding ecosystem of more than 80 partners with a shared vision for transforming business.

Android for Work expands on the platform’s multi-layered security, capabilities and APIs, and provides powerful ways for manufacturers, developers, mobility managers and carriers to create the next generation of solutions for work, beyond basic email and productivity.

Marshmallow: BYOD and single use After enabling “bring your own device” (BYOD) use cases and streamlining application deployment in Lollipop, we’ve taken the next step to improve enterprise mobility in Marshmallow. Workers now enjoy an enhanced BYOD experience with work status notifications and contacts integration. Administrators can simplify certificates, seamlessly set up new accounts, apply more granular permissions and provision new users using NFC.

New work APIs in Marshmallow also enable easy deployment and management of devices in dedicated single-use scenarios, such as defined tasks, kiosks and ATMs.

Going deep on security Android for Work builds upon the expanded security features such as runtime permissions, verified boot, hardware-isolated security, SELinux, application sandboxing and protections within Google Play Services.

By going deep on security, it made sense that most security-conscious companies such as BlackBerry are collaborating with us to support Android for Work. Additionally, following the announcement of its first Android device, PRIV, BlackBerry announced their support for monthly scheduled updates, matching the Android patch schedule. You can find details of their announcement here.

Together along with Nexus, Samsung and Blackphone by Silent Circle, patching is predictable and responsive.

The freedom to choose Businesses are responding to Android’s choice and flexibility, enjoying the range of price points and form factors – from the ultra stylish to the ultra rugged. They’re also deploying an array of business apps and building their own custom solutions on the open framework.

More than 19,000 organizations are already testing, deploying or using Android for Work. During Android for Work Live, we’ll showcase how new customers including Guardian Life Insurance deploys Android for BYOD; Peninsula Hotels provides guests with Android tablets for room controls, information and service; and Safelite repair technicians use Samsung devices for communication, scanning, navigation, payment and training.

Android for Work Pilot Program for select EMM partners For up to 3000 companies, who set up Android for Work with a participating EMM in their production network, between now and December 31, 2015, we’ll be providing a Nexus 5X. Learn more.

Posted by Simon King, European Operations Director for Imagination

Editor's note: Today we hear from Simon King, EMEA Operations Director for Imagination, a full-service, independent global design, communications and experiential agency serving clients that include Ford, Shell and Canon. With 1,200 people working across 20 global offices, Imagination uses Google Apps to increase efficiencies and save money. Learn how they’ve created efficiencies worth in excess of 800,000 pounds to the business over the past 5 years by adopting Google Apps.

Our team works together across the globe to deliver creative campaigns for some of the world’s most well-known brands. But imagine this: a team of 1,200 sharing a 750,000-asset library that’s virtually impossible to keep track of. Now add a manual and time consuming recruitment process and you’ll begin to understand how technology is every bit as crucial to our business as creativity. Google Apps for Work offers the exact tools we needed to overcome these challenges.

Google Drive has created efficiencies worth in excess of 100,000 pounds per year to the business by more than halving the time we spend searching for files in our cloud-based asset library. We no longer waste time with daily file searches hampered by misfiled, duplicated or out-of-date data, as each and every uploaded asset is tagged with metadata that makes it instantly searchable. With an average of 28 searches per day, each one taking just one minute to complete, the Google Drive asset library has revolutionised the way we work.

The cloud technology also means any member of staff with authorised access can download any file, no matter where or when it was created. Today our teams operating in 80 different countries can access the entire Imagination portfolio – anytime, anywhere – knowing they’ll be able to find the right files instantly. We’ve used it to create presentations in Moscow hotel lobbies, and review work in Sydney that was created a few moments before in London, all by easily pulling up files in our asset library on Google Drive. As one of our EMEA Client Services Directors explained to me, “Having the entire Imagination portfolio wherever I am is a game changer for business development.”

We also use Google Forms to simplify the process of recruiting. Google Forms have replaced a lengthy and time consuming paper-based recruiting process, with the digital system creating efficiencies worth in excess of 60,000 pounds every year in our London office alone. Each of the completed Forms triggers an email to relevant staff members, giving us a single, simple way to procure resources. By linking Google Forms and Sheets, our staff can manage critical resourcing no matter where they’re working, whether it’s from home or in an airport lounge. It’s added increased rigour to a crucial business process, and removed the potential for errors.

Google Apps reduced the time to get new joiners productive — we simply share access to Google Drive, using Drive’s advanced security settings to share relevant information with the right people, and they’re ready to work. From day one, they have instant access to more than 25 years of Imagination’s work and experience, and with two-factor login authentication, we can be sure we’re protecting confidential information.

As one of the early adopters of Google Apps in 2010, we’ve made use of all it has to offer to reach our primary goal: Transforming business through creativity. The technology has helped us minimise the back office challenges and maximise how we communicate and share our achievements with our colleagues globally. Google Apps has helped us create a real competitive advantage and save thousands in the process. Imagine that.

Posted by Rahul Sood, Managing Director, Google Apps for Work

The promise of the cloud is to make businesses more effective, more mobile and more secure. Today, more than 2 million paying businesses have chosen Google Apps for Work to advance communication, collaboration and productivity across work teams. In addition to all the goodness that Google Apps offers, many businesses look to the cloud for things like customer relationship management and telephony tools. Through our relationships with Google for Work Technology Partners, today we'll start recommending applications that help our customers get the most out of the cloud.

Great apps, recommended by Google When we launched Google Apps in 2006, there weren’t many cloud apps on the market. Today, almost 10 years later, cloud software options abound. In some cases, this can make deciding on the right solution harder for customers. It can be difficult to assess which apps are secure, reliable, high-performing and well-integrated with the tools customers use most. And many businesses have neither the time nor the capability to do this assessment across all of the apps they might consider. To make this journey easier for our customers, Google will begin recommending apps from other providers. These apps are reviewed by Google and an independent third-party security firm to make sure that these solutions are safe and reliable, and meet our requirements for high quality integrations. An example is Smartsheet Project Management, which seamlessly integrates with Google Calendar, Gmail, Drive and Single Sign-On to deliver a great user experience, while meeting the security and integration requirements of a robust web solution.

The initial set of applications being added to the Recommended for Google Apps for Work program includes:

• ProsperWorks for CRM
• Smartsheet for project management
• Ringcentral & Switch for cloud-based communications
• AODocs & Powertools for document management
• Ping Identity & Okta for identity and access management

This list will continue to grow as we review and add more apps.

Updates to the Google Apps Marketplace The Google Apps Marketplace carries hundred of apps, including those that we’ve reviewed and recommended. These apps have been installed hundreds of millions of times by Google Apps customers. We recently updated the Google Apps Marketplace to make it easier for employees to find the right apps and added new notifications to let employees know when they have access to apps that just became available. To make it even easier to get your favorite apps on all of your devices, we’ll begin to feature a number of apps that also have Android mobile versions, with links to their Google Play for Work counterparts.

These updates will help Google Apps for Work customers find the best apps for their needs, while making it simpler for employees to use any app on any device.

Posted by Bálint Miklós, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog.)

With the holidays approaching and emails coming in at a furious pace, we can all use a little help. Inbox is already on hand assisting you with the next step, organizing your trips, and even suggesting reminders.

But when you're checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even some of them. What if there was a way for your inbox to guess which emails can be answered with a short reply, prepare a few responses on your behalf and present them to you, one tap away?

Well, starting later this week, Inbox will do just that with Smart Reply.

Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.

There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the Google Research Blog.

And much like how Inbox gets better when you report spam, the responses you choose (or don't choose!) help improve future suggestions. For example, when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)

Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week on both Google Play and the App Store in English. If you've got a lot of emails on your plate, now's a great time to try Inbox and get through them faster than ever.

Posted by Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Android, Chrome OS and Chromecast

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog.)

Over the last few days, there’s been some confusion about the future of Chrome OS and Chromebooks based on speculation that Chrome OS will be folded into Android. While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there's no plan to phase out Chrome OS.

With the launch of Chrome OS six years ago, we set out to make computers better—faster, simpler and more secure—for everyone. We’ve since seen that vision come to life in classrooms, offices and homes around the world. In fact, every school day, 30,000 new Chromebooks are activated in U.S. classrooms—that’s more than all other education devices combined. And more than 2 million teachers and students in more than 150 countries have the Share to Classroom Chrome extension, which launched in September and gets students onto the same webpage, instantly. Meanwhile, companies such as Netflix, Sanmina, Starbucks and of course Google, are using Chromebooks given the ease of deployment, the ability to easily integrate with existing technologies, and a security model that protects users at all levels, from hardware to user data. (Chromebooks are so secure you don’t need antivirus software!) IT administrators can manage tens of thousands of Chromebooks through a single web console, making them ideal for both classrooms and the workplace.

For everyday use, we’re proud that Chromebooks are continually listed as a best-selling laptop computer on Amazon.com. In an effort to make computing even more accessible, earlier this year we introduced the first $149 Chromebook—a fast, affordable laptop. And in the next couple weeks the Asus Chromebit will be available—an $85 device that turns any display into a computer so you can replace your old desktop with an affordable computer the size of a candy bar, or let businesses transform a billboard into a smart digital sign.

This year we've also worked to redefine the different forms Chrome OS can take, introduced the first designated Chromebook for Work, and brought more of your favorite Android apps to your Chromebook via Apps Runtime on Chrome (a.k.a. ARC). But there’s more to do. We have plans to release even more features for Chrome OS, such as a new media player, a visual refresh based on Material Design, improved performance, and of course, a continued focus on security. With our regular six-week software cycle and guaranteed auto-updates for five years, Chromebooks keep getting better over time. Finally, stay on the lookout for dozens of new Chromebooks in 2016.