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

Posted by Drew Sidel, Google for Education

Editor's note: Educators and administrators across the state tell us that Michigan schools are seeing great success with Google for Education. From bringing a global experience into the classroom to freeing students to learn from each other and their teachers, from anywhere, technology has improved the learning experience for students across the state. To learn more about Google solutions for Education, join us for a webinar on January 28th at 3pm ET / 12pm PT.

If students in Michigan want to learn about life on a farm in New York or a city in Australia, they don’t need to buy a plane ticket or even leave the classroom. Educators in Michigan are bringing global experiences to the classroom using cloud technology, such as Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks. Inspired by how Michigan schools are transforming classroom experiences with technology, we’re highlighting a few success stories in the region.

Turning moments of curiosity into learning opportunities 

At Grand Haven Area Public Schools, Google Apps for Education put student learning, collaboration and feedback at the center of the classroom. Grand Haven has launched 4,500 Chromebooks for students and staff and has deployed 8,400 Google Apps accounts. Before introducing the new tools, when students had a question, they had to wait until a teacher had time to work with them. In classrooms of 20 students or more, many of these teachable moments would simply get lost in the shuffle.

Technology allows those moments of curiosity to turn into learning opportunities for students. With Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education, teachers are able to provide feedback on assignments to each student individually in a single class period. For example, at Grand Haven, students use Google Docs to share their progress on math assignments with their teachers. Math teachers then check-in virtually with each of the students as they’re working on the assignment to provide them with real-time feedback by adding comments in the Doc. The teachers also use Doc’s revision history feature to see the logic students are using to solve the problem, giving them better insight into how students are progressing.

One high school teacher said she was able to give real-time feedback on an assignment to every single student — during a one hour class period — for the first time in fifteen years of teaching. “It’s much more than just handing a student a device,” says Doug Start, instructional technology coordinator at Grand Haven Area Public Schools: “Google Apps for Education lets our teachers move from being the ‘sage on the stage’ to the ’guide on the side,’ as they now have time to work more directly with students.”

Traveling the world from inside the classroom 

Lincoln Park Public School District (case study) considers technology a key part of its mission to prepare and inspire students to achieve educational excellence. Many of the district’s students don’t have access to technology at home, and others struggle with state standardized test questions that are based on the assumption that students have traveled.

To overcome this challenge, the district launched Google Apps for Education for 4,900 students and introduced 4,400 Chromebooks. Students now have unlimited access to global information online. “We now have the ability to bring virtual knowledge into the classroom. The virtual experience opens up the world for our students and allows them to learn more,” says Cheryl Irving, assistant superintendent for Lincoln Park Public School District.

Collaborating with virtual learning 

To provide students with anytime, anywhere learning, Fenton Area Public Schools launched 1,300 Chromebooks and 4,600 Google Apps for Education accounts for students. “Our Google solutions and services are creating new learning spaces that are spontaneous and less constrained,” says Kevin Powers, technology director at Fenton Area Public Schools.

Teachers are providing students with opportunities to work, learn and collaborate anytime, anywhere using technology beyond the classroom walls. For example, they created live after school study groups via Google Hangouts and Docs, as well as virtual book clubs during the summer via Google Groups. The district also used Hangouts to host a CNN Hero of the Year nominee, who spoke to three elementary classrooms at once.

For students and teachers in Michigan, the classroom is now bigger and richer. With Google for Education tools, students and teachers have global opportunities in the classroom and beyond.

Check out more schools’ stories and join us for a webinar on January 28th at 3pm ET / 12pm PT.

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 John Allen and David Harrington, Google for Education team

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

Editor's note: Schools across Florida are seeing great success with Google for Education. Today we’re featuring tips from School District of Lee County, Okeechobee County School District and Escambia County School District. To learn more, watch this recent webinar with Lee County. And if you’ll be at FETC from January 12-15, visit us in the Expo Hall at #2221.

The state of Florida is leading the way for digital instruction. A recent state mandate requires that K-12 students have access to digital learning resources. The shift from paper-based to digital content is prompting students to research and publish their work online while encouraging teachers to innovate in the classroom. We recently asked instructional technology administrators in Florida who use Google Apps for Education, Google Classroom and Chromebooks to share their recommendations for introducing new technologies and tools in the classroom. Here are their top five tips:

1. Create an IT support community 

Providing IT support across campuses can be a drain on resources, so instead of hiring a huge IT team, ask tech-savvy teachers to serve as resources for technology questions. They need not be experts, but rather can act as liaisons to direct teachers and students to the right channels and communicate with the IT team about any overarching challenges.

The School District of Lee County (case study) uses this model to streamline IT support and strengthen its community. “The small group of teachers act as on-the-ground support,” says Dwayne Alton, director of IT support. “They facilitate conversations and figure out what tech matches the students’ and teachers’ needs.”

2. Encourage teachers to share their success stories 

Tech-savvy teachers often find innovative ways to incorporate new technologies in the classroom, and can be great advocates for helping other teachers identify new ways of teaching. Ask teachers to share the unique ways they’re using new tools. For example, Scott Rust, a high school english teacher at Escambia County School District, keeps students attentive and on task when he’s taking attendance by having them fill out five questions in Google Forms. “All of my students participated in the assignment, were engaged and well behaved,” Rust says. “It was amazing to start class on such a positive note — and as a side benefit, all of the students’ answers from Google Forms downloaded into a single spreadsheet.”

7th grade students at Caloosa Middle school in Lee County collaborating in Google Docs

3. Make professional development flexible 

Some teachers will be excited to have new teaching tools, but others may prefer to use the whiteboard or pen and paper. Provide teachers with a variety of opportunities to learn how to use technology to improve their teaching, boost productivity and make learning more interactive.

Okeechobee County School District hosts C@mp IT, a two-day professional development summit with workshops about how to use devices in the classroom. If your schools don’t have the resources or time for a summer summit, consider after-school training sessions or online video training.

4. Consider how technology can improve state-wide testing 

Technology can ease some of the hassle of student testing. When Okeechobee County School District used laptops and PCs for the Florida Standards Assessment testing, the IT team had to prep the devices and make sure no applications ran in the background. Chromebooks streamlined the testing process, as the IT team only had to switch the devices to kiosk mode.

Similarly, Escambia County School District uses Chromebooks for testing to reduce the administrative burden. Says Jim Branton, coordinator of technology services at Escambia County School District: “The ability to test a grade level all at the same time without scavenging computers from all over campus into makeshift labs made scheduling and administering the tests significantly easier than years past.”

Introducing new technology reduces the amount of time spent on testing, some schools have found. “In our two 1:1 middle schools, it would take two weeks to get all the students through testing. Now with Chromebooks, it should take less than a week,” says Shawna May, director of information technology at Okeechobee County School District. “That’s less time taken away from instructional class time.”

5. Share a resource hub with how-to resources 

Some teachers spend a good chunk of class time teaching students how to use technology most effectively in their studies, rather than teaching them class material. Create a resource hub so teachers have an easy place to find resources, including video tutorials and how-to documents, that they can use to teach students how to use devices and digital learning tools. “Teachers can send students a 3-minute video about how to turn in a Google Doc using Google Classroom, so they don’t have to use valuable class time showing students how to use the tools,” suggests Michelle Branham, coordinator of instructional technology at Okeechobee County School District.

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 Stephen Fang, Google for Education team

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

Editor's note: New York is seeing great success with Google for Education. We talked to educators and administrators to reflect on how technology has changed what it means to teach and learn in New York. From group projects to collaborative lesson plans to online assessments, technology has improved the learning experience for students across the state. To learn more about Google’s solutions for Education, join the webinar with Amherst Central School District today at 2pm ET / 11am PT.

Learning isn’t just about listening to a lecture or reading a textbook. Similarly, educational transformation isn’t just about introducing technology. It’s about encouraging students to think differently, work together and make their education personal. Schools in New York are giving students more freedom and flexibility to learn and collaborate with the help of tools like Google Apps for Education, Chromebooks and Google Classroom. We’re highlighting a few ways New York schools are transforming their classrooms and benefiting from technology:

Enabling teachers to think outside the box

At Massapequa Public Schools (case study), teachers are providing students with a variety of learning resources, from articles and text-based guides to videos and audio content. For example, when students were studying Pythagorean theorem in math class, the teacher filmed a video showing students the math concept, a² + b² = c², so they could reference the information from home. When students have access to digital learning materials at home, they’re able to learn anytime, anywhere.

With Google for Education, students have access to learning resources anytime, anywhere. Says Bob Schilling, executive director for assessment, student data and technology services at Massapequa Public Schools: “Students watch videos and access their teacher’s resources at home in order to be introduced to concepts, then spend class time applying those concepts in authentic experiences. That changes the value of a 40-minute class period.”

Getting moms and dads involved in education 

Amherst Central Schools (case study) wants parents to be a bigger part of their children’s learning and is using technology to get them more involved. With Google Apps for Education and Google Classroom, parents can see whether their child has started a project or needs a nudge. Students access their work wherever they are and can share progress with their families. For example, Jake, a third grader, shared his presentation about Canadian culture and history with his parents as he worked on the assignment so they could see what he was learning.

Teachers also create instructional videos to help parents take on the role of the teacher at home. While Michael Milliman, grade 5 math teacher at Smallwood Drive Elementary School, taught students a complex problem, parents could reference the 30-second video that Milliman created. “Learning is meant to be a social and collaborative process,” says Anthony Panella, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Amherst Central Schools. The district is helping extend the social aspect of learning to include parents.

Teaching students technology and teamwork skills for the future 

Rochester City School District’s (case study) main goal is to teach students skills that they can use during their education, in their careers and beyond. Many students don’t have access to technology at home, so Rochester City School District is teaching them how to use technology. And since students need to know how to work with others regardless of the line of work they pursue, teachers are also helping students learn teamwork by assigning group projects aided by collaboration tools. For example, fifth grade students collaborated in person with their peers on a biome project and provided feedback to their teammates using the chat and commenting features in Google Docs.

Schools continue to provide students with innovative online learning resources that help students learn more and teachers personalize education. Check out the schools’ stories and register for the webinar with Amherst Schools happening today 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 Anibal Chehayeb, Google Classroom Software Engineer

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

We built Classroom to save teachers time, and we know that grading is one of those tasks that can involve a lot of little time wasters. In fact, students have turned in more than 200 million assignments via Classroom to date, which adds up to a lot of grading hours. Today, we’re launching new features to help make grading a little faster and easier.

• Export Grades to Google Sheets: In addition to .csv files, you can now export your grades directly to Google Sheets. The Sheets template includes a class average and an average per student. If you have ideas about how we can make this export to Sheets even more useful, please leave us feedback by clicking the question mark at the bottom left of the Classroom page, then choosing “send feedback.” 
• Easier to update grade point scale: We know not all assignments are out of 100 points. You've always been able to change the point value, but a lot of teachers had trouble finding this feature. So we’ve made it easier to change the grading scale to any number you need it to be. 
• Keyboard navigation for entering grades: When you’re entering lots of grades, you need a fast way to navigate from student to student. We’ve added the ability to use the up and down arrows to move directly from the grade entry area for one student to another. 
• Sort by name on grading page: In addition to sorting students by completion status (done, not done), you can now sort by first or last name. 
• And in case you missed it last month, you can now add a private comment for a student when you’re returning their work. 

In addition to these grading improvements, we’ve been hard at work on other updates. We’ve polished the look and feel of Classroom on the web with icons to help differentiate items in the stream and added a cleaner look for comments and replies. We’ve also recently updated our Android and iOS mobile apps, so they’ll now load even faster. You can post questions for students on the go, and Android teachers can reuse previous posts. Finally, you can now post a question from the Classroom Share Button, which you can find on some of your favorite educational websites.

We hope you’ll find these updates helpful, and you’ll get a chance to relax and refresh over the winter break (or summer, for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere). Look for more Classroom updates next semester.

Posted by Christoffer Lorang Dahl, Digital Director, SMFB, Oslo, Norway

Editor's note: Today we hear from Christoffer Lorang Dahl, Digital Director at SMFB, an advertising agency based in Oslo, Norway. In the 14 years since it was founded, SMFB has delivered award-winning campaigns for local and international clients including Geox, Ikea and Statoil. Read how SMFB created a whole new work environment around Google Apps for Work and made its clients, collaborators and 65 staff happier in the process.

It’s hard to be a 21st century creative agency when we’re bogged down with a 20th century-like IT platform. As SMFB’s Digital Director, I work with creatives and account managers to make digital ideas happen. With at least five projects on the go on any given day, my hands are full, but I always make time to help out with IT, too. One year ago, this informal role took up at least three hours of my work week, while the rest of the team collectively lost 10 working hours a day to spam and a calendar system so clunky it was almost unusable. It was time for a change, so we trialled two possible solutions and chose Google. Not only did we see huge potential in Drive, we guessed that staff would be familiar with Gmail and adapt quickly. We were right.

Google Apps solved the core problems we wanted to address. Gmail fixed our issues with spam, and Google Calendar is exactly the synchronised, reliable and easy-to-use calendar we were looking for. Because of its straightforward interface, everyone can use it to book meeting rooms and tell designers which teams to work with on which days. We used to run everything through a server in Sweden, and when it crashed, none of us could work. We’ve never experienced any downtime since switching to Google.

As well as fix the problems we knew we had, Google Apps for Work has rejuvenated our creative process. It’s hard to put someone in an office and tell them to “be creative.” That’s not how creativity works, but it’s exactly what we used to do. A typical day at SMFB used to begin with a briefing from the account director to the creatives. After that, the creatives would head to their offices to come up with ideas, which they would share by late afternoon so that they could get feedback by the next day. Now creatives start every morning with a Hangout, spend the day in a cafe, under the sun or wherever they like, and share their ideas on Docs. The account director and account manager — even the clients — can pitch in on the process, concepts and copy, which constantly evolve. And we never experience the confusion that results from multiple drafts and versions floating around. Film scripts do change, but if the wrong draft is sent to an animator or a director, the consequences can be dire.

Once we have a project concept, we compile a budget together in Sheets and contact external production companies. We handle at least five of these at a time, and they change from one day to the next, but because Drive documents can be shared with anyone, we can send these external companies briefs, handle agreements and manage the whole process on one platform. Anyone can immediately see how a project is progressing by looking it up on Drive — something that’s vital for running campaigns on social media, where every second counts.

I like to help my colleagues, and Google’s simple administration interface makes it easy. When a workmate accidentally deleted crucial files, I retrieved them from Drive, which lets you recover documents from up to 10 users for up to 25 days. And rather than just react, I suggest better ways of doing things — like creating a group email account for a new project, which I can have ready in two minutes. It’s a whole new way of working. So much so, in fact, that I recommended Google Apps for Work to our partner agency, Forsman & Bodenfors. Now they’re on it, too.

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education 

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

Many schools have told us that Chromebooks have helped them transform learning. Those in Texas and North Carolina have shared stories of students using Chromebooks to better connect with their teachers and peers and expand their learning opportunities (you’ll see more stories in the coming weeks from districts in New York, Florida and Michigan). But beyond opening new avenues for learning, Chromebooks are also helping schools save money, allowing them to meet tight budgets and provide computers to more students.

Plymouth-Canton Community Schools — one of the largest districts in Michigan — for example, told us that they’ve been able to save $200k in the 3rd grade alone, by purchasing Chromebooks over alternative devices. They've been able to leverage those savings to purchase charging carts, protective cases for the devices and additional power adaptors so that students can charge the Chromebooks at home and at school. The same has been true outside of the US. Earlier this year, Academies Enterprise Trust, a network of 76 schools across the United Kingdom, anticipated that they could save £7.7m in hardware and maintenance costs by using Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks.

To more fully understand the total cost of ownership and savings impact of Chromebooks, we commissioned IDC to conduct interviews with 10 schools using Chromebooks to support teaching and learning in 7 countries. The study comprised of 10 schools in 7 countries representing 294,620 students in all, across United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and New Zealand. The interviews consisted of a variety of quantitative and qualitative questions designed to obtain information about the economics of deploying Chromebooks for these school systems as well as the impact of using Chromebooks on their students and faculty. Some of their key findings:

According to one school district in the study, Chromebook’s price point enabled the school system to reach a 1:1 user-device ratio, something it couldn’t have done before given the cost of their previous devices. They said, “We now have a 1:1 device solution with Chromebooks … Without Chromebooks, either we would have fewer devices or we would have had to spend four times as much to get to the same point.” For this district, being able to expand the number of students who have daily or consistent access to educational content on Chromebooks represents a substantial advantage and supports their core missions.

You can read the full whitepaper here, and calculate how much time and money Chromebooks can save for your school.

Posted by Steen Andersson, Group Product Manager, Google Drive

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive Blog.)

When you store important files in Google Drive they’re not only safe, they’re accessible from any device. And finding them again from any device should be super easy so we’re rolling out a new search experience to get you better results — even faster.

Drive lets you search across all your files, regardless of the device they came from. To make that easier, you can use these new ways to find your files:

• Narrow your search to a file type from the search box on Android, iOS, and the web.
• Open advanced search instantly from the search box.
• Access recent files or search Drive from the home screen using 3D Touch on iOS.
• Search Drive using the iOS search bar without opening the Drive app.

Several behind-the-scenes improvements give your search queries even better results than they did before. And to get more specific results, anyone can now do the following:

• Search for shared files by file owner using their name or email address.
• Use advanced search options like the date a file was modified, words it contains, or who it was shared with.

This is all part of an ongoing effort to make Drive the easiest place to find your files. Look for these features as they roll out in the coming weeks.

Posted by Suzanne Frey, Director, Security, Trust, and Privacy, Google Apps

Every company has data that it must keep secure — whether that data is about confidential innovations, strategic plans or sensitive HR issues — keeping all of your data safe from inadvertent or purposeful leaks needs to be simple, quick and reliable. Google for Work already helps admins manage information security with tools such as encryption, sharing controls, mobile device management and two-factor authentication. However, sometimes user actions compromise the best of all of these controls; for example, a user might hit “Reply all” when meaning to send a private message with sensitive content.

Starting today, if you’re a Google Apps Unlimited customer, Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for Gmail will add another layer of protection to prevent sensitive information from being revealed to those who shouldn’t have it.

How Gmail DLP works Organizations may have a policy that the Sales department shouldn’t share customer credit card information with vendors. And to keep information safe, admins can easily set up a DLP policy by selecting “Credit Card Numbers” from a library of predefined content detectors. Gmail DLP will automatically check all outgoing emails from the Sales department and take action based on what the admin has specified: either quarantine the email for review, tell users to modify the information or block the email from being sent and notify the sender. These checks don’t just apply to email text, but also to content inside common attachment types ― such as documents, presentations and spreadsheets. And admins can also create custom rules with keywords and regular expressions.

Check out the DLP whitepaper for more information including the full list of predefined content creators, and learn how to get started. Gmail DLP is the first step in a long-term investment to bring rule-based security across Google Apps. We’re working on bringing DLP to Google Drive early next year, along with other rule based security systems.

As we round out the year, let’s take a look at what we did in 2015 to enhance the security, privacy and control you have over your information.

• To verify the good work we do on privacy, we were one of the first cloud providers to invite an independent auditor to show that our privacy practices for Google Apps for Work and Google Apps for Education comply with the latest ISO/IEC 27018:2014 privacy standards. These confirm for example, that we don’t use customer data for advertising.
• To make security easier for all, we've expanded our security toolset:
• We introduced Security Keys to make two-step verification more convenient and provide better protection against phishing. For admins, we released Google Apps identity services, which allows secure single sign on access with SAML and OIDC support and we delivered device (MDM) and app (MAM) Mobile Management across Google Apps.
• We launched Postmaster tools to help Gmail users better handle large volumes of mail and report spam.
• For Google Cloud developers, the Cloud Security Scanner allows you to easily scan your application for common vulnerabilities (such as cross-site scripting (XSS) and mixed content).
• For those who want the power and flexibility of public cloud computing and want to bring their own encryption keys, we announced Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys for Google Cloud Platform.
• To give more transparency on how email security, even beyond Gmail, is changing over the years we published the Safer Email report.
• We introduced new sharing features, alerts and audit events to Google Drive for Google Apps Unlimited customers. For example, administrators can now create custom alerts and disable the downloading, printing or copying of files with Information Rights Management (IRM). New sharing settings give employees better control within their organization unit and now admins can let them reset their own passwords.
• Google Groups audit settings allow better tracking of Groups memberships. For all, the launch of google.com/privacy gives better control over personal data and Android for Work makes it easier to keep personal and work data separate on employee devices.

Companies are moving to the Cloud for all kinds of reasons, but Security and Trust remain critical and predominant differentiators between providers. That’s why millions of businesses trust Google to do the daily heavy lifting in security ─ preventing, testing, monitoring, upgrading and patching, while working towards the future. Because Google was born in the cloud, we’ve built security from the ground up across our entire technology stack, from the data centers to the servers to the services and features we provide across all of your devices. No other Cloud provider can claim this degree of security investment at every single layer.

While 2015 was a great year, there’s a lot more in store for 2016. To learn more about how our technology is evolving, please join us at the Enigma conference in San Francisco on January 25th to discuss electronic crime, security and privacy ideas that matter.

Posted by Vijay Umapathy, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Official Gmail Blog.)

Our calendars should help us make the most of our time — scheduling meetings at work, remembering brunch with friends, and keeping track of all our other commitments. But often our to-do list is elsewhere, separate from the Calendar that organizes our day, and we end up overcommitted or miss something important because we forgot to check our list.

Now there's a single way to manage your day: starting this week, you can create Reminders in Google Calendar to keep track of your to-dos alongside your scheduled events.

Reminders stick around
You might already create calendar entries to remind you to call the doctor or pick up groceries on the way home. But while those entries come and go, Reminders stick with you over time so you can track them until they are actually done. If a Reminder isn't completed, it will appear at the top of your Calendar the next day. And the next. When you do finally call the doctor or pick up those necessities, just swipe the Reminder away ... and you're onto the next to-do.

Reminders help with the details
Another way Reminders are more useful than events is that Calendar adds things like phone numbers and addresses automatically. So if you add a Reminder to make call or run an errand, the number or address will be right there when you need it. Just like Inbox by Gmail, Calendar uses information from your contacts, as well as Google's knowledge graph to provide this extra bit of help.

Reminders work across Google
You can also create Reminders from Inbox, Keep, and Google Now. This means you can create a Reminder when you're checking your email and it will show up on your calendar right away. Plans change? Just move the Reminder to a better time. Or if your hands are full, you can record your Reminders in Google Now 一 like, "Ok Google, remind me to buy birthday candles" 一 then mark it as done later in Calendar.

Reminders will be rolling out this week with the latest versions of Calendar on Google Play and the App Store. And don't worry, we're working on bringing Reminders to the web as well.

Posted by Barry Kelly, Enterprise Architect at United Biscuits 

Editor's note: Today we hear from Barry Kelly, Enterprise Architect at United Biscuits, a leading international manufacturer and marketer of biscuits and cakes, producing brands including McVitie’s, Jacob’s and Carr’s. Read how the company’s employees use Google Apps to work together globally and deliver significant incremental sales.

Christmas is a peak trading period for us here at United Biscuits, as people up and down the country stock up on their favourite snacks and treats to get ready for the festive period. We make 30% of our yearly sales then, so it’s important to get every area of the business focussing on driving seasonal sales. But with thousands of employees based all over the country, we had to find a way to work as a single team and get around the geographical challenges.

By using Google Apps for Work we’ve become a stronger team: we share over 700,000 documents on Drive, spend 1,600 hours a month meeting together on Hangouts, use Sheets to help coordinate marketing efforts and rely on Sites to continually develop our company intranet for better communication.

Google Apps tools have also delivered huge sales increases that add to our bottom line. Richard Williams, Field Sales Controller has been leading our seasonal in-store promotion days — or Making A Difference Days (MAD), as we call them. These now bring in additional significant revenue each year, thanks largely to the motivation and inspiration teams get from being part of our Google+ community. These specific days see up to 200 employees from across the company working together to improve our customer offer and taking on roles they’d normally never do. MAD days are a chance for people at every level to contribute to the customer-facing parts of the business during our busiest time of year.

On our MAD Day last Christmas, teams used Google+ to instantly share over 700 photos and videos with colleagues in other stores, and teams inspired and encouraged each other to go the extra mile. By allowing teams to share ideas across regions instead of work alone in a single store, Google+ revolutionised the day, and staff left feeling exhilarated rather than exhausted.

Google technology has transformed our merchandising days — and, with this year’s Christmas activity not far away, we’re confident our sales figures will reflect this. And by year end, every single United Biscuits employee will be a member of our Google+ community, meaning knowledge and ideas will continue to be shared and developed across the business, no matter where we’re based.

Posted by Bjorn Pave, Director of Information Technology, POPSUGAR

Editor's note: Today’s guest author is Bjorn Pave, Senior Director of Information Technology at POPSUGAR, an independent media and technology company that provides women with highly engaging content and commerce brands. Founded in 2006, POPSUGAR is in seven countries with more than 75 million unique monthly visitors. 

When I joined POPSUGAR in May 2013, we were rapidly transitioning from an ambitious startup to a major presence in entertainment and lifestyle media. The executive team had just decided to switch from Office 365 to Google Apps, and it was my job to make sure the transition went smoothly from a technical and user base perspective. Moving away from the familiar Microsoft-supported work environment could be difficult and I wanted to ease any resistance to change. Employees caught on quickly as to how the platform would increase collaboration and support our rapid growth.

Our Los Angeles based production team clamored for tools to help manage their film shoots. Talent schedules were unpredictable, and teams in multiple locations needed real-time access to production details on their mobile devices. Some of them had used Google tools before and started campaigning the executive team for Google Apps. POPSUGAR founder and CEO Brian Sugar was keen to make the company-wide switch, and his wife, Lisa Sugar, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief, wanted a better tool to manage the complex production calendars for each website that POPSUGAR manages.

With expert support from Cloud Sherpas, we migrated to Google Apps for Work. We created an experiential campaign called “Countdown to Google” to launch the switch. We also sent creative how-to emails and scheduled group training sessions. Our employees (more than 70 percent) were already familiar with Google Apps. The bigger challenge was tailoring workflows to meet each department’s business requirements. The result was a huge success. Two and half years later, we operate independently of almost any Microsoft service. Here are the biggest benefits we’ve seen with Google Apps for Work:

Boosted productivity with an immediate impact in our editorial process. Prior to using Google Apps, it took our editors 24 hours to interview a celebrity, create a blog post and to publish the post online. Now, the process is cut down to 1- 2 hours, which gives us a huge competitive advantage over other online publications. We now reach our audiences faster. Team meetings are also more productive. Everyone works with the same Google Doc to take notes, track the agenda and assign action items in real time. With the right tools, we created a better environment for inclusive collaboration.

Fosters collaboration between offices. Our offices are in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and London, and we’re able to function as one team regardless of location. Chromebox for meetings was an easy solution that let employees and contractors communicate with each other around the world. We insisted on providing video capability because communication can be subtle, and those subtleties are lost if team members can’t see each other during a discussion. Now, when our West Coast-based Shopstyle team checks in with the European team first thing in the morning, it’s face-to-face and personal.

Saves 70 percent per year. Switching to Google Apps saves us approximately $110,000 annually, because we no longer pay for upgrades or unused services bundled in enterprise license agreements. For example, Google Hangouts saves us a few thousand every month by eliminating the need for additional video conference software or traditional conference call lines.

Google platform is reliable. An IT department’s worst nightmare is an email outage, or loss of work when a server is down. Google Apps is cloud based and updates automatically, no matter how many people are working in the same document. Because of the reliability of cloud-based servers, my team has the bandwidth to focus on innovation, creating new solutions to support our growth and stay on top of our business objectives.

Our voice matters. While millions of companies have gone Google, Google continues to make sure each customer can share their unique perspective. We’re involved with the Google Apps’ development program, and we participate in beta testing of new features, which is great for our IT roadmap. We use the Google Apps Marketplace to find third-party applications that build off of and complement our Google Apps tools.

Nine years after launching, POPSUGAR has grown to over 450 employees, in addition to managing a multitude of specialist contractors, in 5 locations around the globe. We’ve established a reputation for being leaders in the shifting media landscape, but we aren’t complacent. Our global audience is constantly expanding as more and more unique users rely on POPSUGAR as their primary source for entertainment, fashion, fitness, beauty and lifestyle news and product curation. The Google for Work platform is a key enabling technology for us, as collaboration, innovation and reliability are essential to support our vision for the future.

Posted by Riccardo Zanni, Chief Technology Officer, Bricocenter

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Riccardo Zanni, Chief Technology Officer of Bricocenter, a chain of 77 home improvement stores in Italy with headquarters in Milan. Bricocenter uses Google Apps for Work to help employees share useful information with colleagues and stay in touch with customers in the store and on the road. 

Think about those flashes of inspiration you have when you’re in the middle of a DIY project — like finding the perfect bathroom sink, or a lounge chair for the terrace. We want Bricocenter to be the first place people think of to make that inspiration a reality. Our sales teams work hard to connect to people in their communities and help with their DIY projects, and we’re building and strengthening these customer relationships even more with Google Apps for Work.

Before we started using Google Apps, our 1,400 employees were largely disconnected from customers and from each other. We previously used Microsoft Office 365, but the aging PCs in our stores ran the applications very slowly – and in some cases, didn’t allow employees to use email at all. Each store has as many as 10 people sharing three PCs. Slow software forced sales people to take more time to read and answer email, which meant less time spent on the sales floor helping customers. Also, we were limited in how many software licenses we purchased due to their high cost, so not every employee had an email address through our email service provider or access to productivity apps.

Because our previous solution couldn't be easily used on a web-based browser, we were told that the only solution was to upgrade or replace all of our store PCs in order for the software to work the way we needed. Even worse, we’d suffer several days of email downtime during the changeover. Needless to say, this plan didn’t make sense for our budget or work environment.

We think technology should follow the way we work – not vice versa. That’s why we chose Google Apps for Work, and partnered with Google Apps Reseller, Revevol, to help us through a seamless migration process to ensure our teams could work the way they wanted.

Google Apps for Work didn’t require hardware upgrades and it functioned well with our existing PCs because it can be accessed from any modern browser. Every employee received a Gmail address without the need to purchase extra licenses or create time-consuming group profiles, as we had to do with our former solution.

Our choice of Google Apps dovetailed perfectly with our pilot plan to outfit 500 sales people with smartphones, so they could stay connected to colleagues and customers outside of the stores. Now they can access email and company documents on their phones, and stay in touch with store managers, colleagues and customers.

Faster, wider access to email is only part of our Google Apps story. People are using Google Drive to store documents and presentations that would have been impossible to collaboratively create and share with our previous provider. Now that all employees have Gmail addresses, everyone can use Google Apps to create presentations and share them with all of their coworkers.

Anyone at Bricocenter, even people who don't know any HTML code, can spin up a site in just a few clicks with Google Sites. For example, our finance department created their own internal site to share helpful content – embedded easily in the site from Google Slides – about best practices for accounting.

Google Apps helps us to get more work done faster. I recently needed to ask store managers about the performance of the GSM mobile networks in their stores. Instead of waiting several days for email responses, I used Google Forms to create a survey for store managers, and sent them the survey links using Google Forms. I collected all the feedback I needed in just one day.

We often talk about the importance of getting closer to our customers as a core company value. Google Apps shrinks the distance between store employees and customers, between employees and managers, and between work and home life so more dream DIY projects can become a reality.