Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Enterprise

This month we’re adding Staff Picks to our monthly App Tuesday posts to better help businesses identify and try great applications from the Google Apps Marketplace. With our inventory growing to well over 300 applications, these efforts help bring to the forefront new and interesting applications for your business.

Our vision for 100% web is to provide a seamless workflow with our apps and the best apps on the web. Whether you need project management solutions, finance tools or a database for your customer interactions, with Marketplace apps you can benefit from convenient integrations such as single sign-on, Gmail integration and Calendar and Docs synchronization.

We want to extend a warm welcome to some of the notable apps that have joined our Marketplace in the last month:

• Nutshell CRM - a customer management app that helps you manage leads and customers through a unified interface and mobile access
• Olark - a customer management app that helps boost sales on your website through a live chat widget
• Weebly - a website tool that makes it easy for you to create a great website with no technical expertise
• Symphony 440 - an application platform that enables you to create your own apps for CRM, project management and other workflow needs

We also want to highlight this month’s Staff Picks, which are chosen based on great functionality, ease of use, and deep integrations with Google Apps:

• Mavenlink (slideshow) - a project management solution for professional services delivery
• Solve360 (slideshow) - a CRM that integrates with Gmail, Calendar and Docs to help manage client projects
• Smartsheet (slideshow) - a project management app based on great functionality, ease of use, and deep integrations with Google Apps
• GQueues (slideshow) - a task management app that lets you share lists, assign tasks, get reminders and stay organized

Instead of managing on-premise solutions for your everyday business needs and dealing with constant software updates, patches and access issues, try running your business through Google Apps and the Google Apps Marketplace.

Posted by Anya Kuligina, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Apps

More than three million businesses have made the switch to Google Apps and are now able to enjoy tremendous collaboration boosts, not to mention saving a penny or two! In this webinar, we invite you to learn how one customer is using Google Apps to communicate and collaborate more effectively and efficiently.


Roland Corporation US is a leading manufacturer and distributor of electronic musical instruments. As with almost all business, Roland’s internal operations strategy is not by any means simple. The Marketing department alone, for a single campaign, has to produce product videos, artist demos, photographer bookings -- all while coordinating with various media agencies to make it all come together in a cohesive campaign. With all of these moving pieces, Roland needed a better ways for people to work together as a team. After exploring various options, Roland tuned to Google Apps for chart-topping functionality!

Join us for a live webinar on Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT with Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director at Roland. Dave will share why Google Apps was the ideal choice for his organization, as well as his experience and perspectives on what it takes to make the switch to Google Apps.

When: Thursday, June 16 at 12pm EDT

Who: Dave Williams, Information and Technology Director, Roland Corporation and Adriana Boden, Enterprise Senior Manager, Google

Register Now: Thursday, June 16, 12:00PM EDT/9:00AM PDT.

Posted by Dave Standish, Federal Civilian Account Manager

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has selected Google Apps as the agency-wide e-mail and collaboration platform for its 25,000 employees, contractors and associates working across the country and around the world. NOAA CIO Joseph Klimavicz made this announcement at “Innovation for the Nation” today in Washington, DC.

As an agency that enriches life through science, NOAA's work stretches from the surface of the sun to the depths of the ocean—and touches the lives of every American and many others around the globe each day. NOAA provides dependable weather forecasts, life-saving storm warnings, vital climate monitoring, sustainable fisheries management, safer navigation, protection for our fragile oceans and coasts and job-creating coastal restoration.

Now the NOAA workforce will have cutting-edge email and collaboration tools to keep pace with fast-accelerating environmental change. Planners, emergency managers, health officials, citizens and other decision-makers count on NOAA's internationally-recognized science and services to help make wiser choices in a changing world.

When the need for a modern email system arose, NOAA issued an RFP in January, in keeping with the Obama Administration’s “Cloud First” policy, to find cloud-based email and collaboration solutions that would best serve the agency’s needs, including meeting its stringent security requirements.

Since NOAA wants its highly distributed workforce to enhance sharing information and strengthening teamwork as soon as possible, speed and ease of deployment were key factors in the decision to select Google and our implementation partners ERT Inc., Unisys, and Tempus Nova.

By the end of the year, NOAA's workforce will migrate to Google Apps from its existing systems, giving employees tools like video chat and real-time document collaboration, and support for a broader range of mobile devices. NOAA is also promoting new telework options; Google Apps will enable staff to access their e-mail, documents and data from anywhere, on any internet-connected device—a valuable asset for the agency. As a cutting-edge science agency, NOAA is taking a leading role in bringing up-to-the-minute workplace technologies to the federal government.

Posted by Scott McIntyre, Director of State and Local Government, Google Enterprise Team

Editor's note: Today over 100 government IT leaders are gathering in Washington D.C. for “Innovation for the Nation,” the inaugural government leadership forum hosted by Google. At this event we announced six government agencies that have recently chosen Google Apps for better innovation and collaboration while reducing costs.

In the past few months, dozens of government agencies representing tens of thousands of public sector employees have made the switch to Google Apps for Government to improve employee productivity while saving critical budget dollars. Today, at Google’s “Innovation for the Nation,” a gathering of over 100 government IT leaders in Washington D.C., we announced these six government agencies across the country are among the latest to go Google:

Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), South Carolina
With the mission to promote and protect the health of the public and the environment, DHEC needed a robust email system to handle sensitive and confidential communications. The agency recently evaluated a number of cloud solutions via an open RFP process, and decided to switch its 4,200 employees to Google Apps for Government. With security certification from the federal government, Google Apps gives DHEC peace of mind in adhering to its high security standards. It will also enable the department to operate more efficiently, conserving financial and personnel resources while improving collaboration among DHEC employees.

Rockingham County, NC
Rockingham County’s IT department had the tough job of maintaining a legacy email system with three different client applications for 500 county employees who had no simple way to collaborate with one another. After evaluating different on-site and hosted options, the county chose Google Apps for Government. Now employees from different departments -- from Emergency Services to Finance -- can share documents and calendars, video chat, and create intranet pages that all county employees can access. The IT department’s burden of supporting a legacy email system is gone, replaced by an easy-to-maintain solution that requires fewer resources while offering employees new, modern communication tools.

Washington County, New York
Washington County had been struggling with an aging email system. Email storage was limited and employees spent hours cleaning their inbox in order to avoid being locked out of their email entirely. At a crossroads of rebuilding the existing on-premise infrastructure, or moving to an alternate solution, the county decided to switch to Google Apps for Government. Now 420 county employees can rely on Google’s data centers to run the email application, which guarantees 99.9% uptime with no planned downtime, provides 25GB of individual mailbox storage, and frees IT up to focus on other critical initiatives.

City of Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines has faced budget challenges for the past 15 years. This year, the City Council voted unanimously to move all 1,900 city employees to Google Apps. Google Apps offers powerful new collaboration functionality that will enable City employees to be more productive -- including voice and video chat, corporate video, and secure access to documents from any mobile device. With the money saved from the old software licenses, the City was also able to add email security and archiving services from Google.

Village of Westmont, Illinois
After evaluating online email solutions to replace its in-house email server, the Village of Westmont recently moved all 220 employees to Google Apps for Government. With Google Apps, employees receive a robust email application as well as an entire productivity suite that allows them to easily collaborate on documents and presentations. Google Apps also allows workers in departments such as public works, code enforcement, police and fire to have easy access to their documents when they are in the field via mobile devices.

Amador County, California
Like many counties, Amador County faced the challenge of ongoing budget cuts and thin IT resources. By switching to Google Apps, the County estimates it has saved $20,000 annually versus other email solutions. Google’s collaborative tools also gives the County’s 400 employees a simple way to share files for projects, streamline scheduling meetings, and create websites. All of these reduce demand on IT support staff, and save the County the billable IT expense.

Across the nation, more and more governments are choosing to go Google. In doing so, they're realizing a multitude of benefits. Google Apps helps all employees be more productive in their jobs, frees IT staff from software and hardware maintenance, and dramatically reduces the costs of these systems -- allowing governments to focus resources on other critical initiatives.

Posted by Jim Chow, Global Partner Programs, Google Enterprise

Resellers are one of the key drivers of customer adoption of Google Apps, Earth, Maps, and Enterprise Search. Over the last few years, the Google Reseller Program has grown to include over 3,000 resellers across 70 countries. We are excited to see our partners share our commitment to customer success. We will continue investing in our Reseller Program to ensure that all of our partners have the support and technical expertise they need to enable successful customer deployments.

Beginning today, we will start to recognize high-performing partners as Premier Resellers. Authorized Resellers remain a core focus for our Reseller program, and we will continue to invest in resources, tools and training to help Authorized Resellers succeed. For Authorized Resellers to become Premier Resellers, we have an objective set of eligibility criteria based on revenue, technical expertise and customer success. We are committed to working with each of our resellers to help them meet these specific qualifications.

We're also introducing additional categorizations to help customers identify resellers who focus on specific Google products and specific size companies.

As our reseller partners continue to help customers succeed, we hope these new standards will help them strengthen their business by providing clear benchmarks for them to strive for and meet. Current and prospective Google Resellers can learn more about the different categories and about becoming a Premier Reseller, including eligibility criteria and benefits, by visiting our Google Reseller Program website.

Posted by Joseph Scarr, Software Engineering Intern

(Cross-posted from the Google Docs Blog.)

In March, we launched discussions in Google Docs, replacing comments with discussion threads, @mentions, email notifications, and much more. This week, we’re launching a handful of improvements based on your feedback.

Improvements to the discussion pane
The discussion pane now shows the selected text for each comment thread, making it easy to figure out which part of the document each discussion pertained to. We’ve also given the pane a visual tuneup.


Document statistics

Ever wonder if people are actually looking at the document you’ve shared? Wonder no longer. By clicking the Discussions button and then the Document stats link, you can now see the 7-day activity of your doc.

Collapse discussions

Sometimes, discussions can get a little long and start to clutter your workspace, particularly if guy-who-always-replies takes the discussion on a tangent. Now, long discussions are automatically collapsed and expanded on click.

Email notifications

Email notifications have also undergone a facelift. Instead of sending the entire discussion in reverse chronological order, we now show you the selected text and most recent comment, with the full thread in chronological order below.


We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback about these improvements. Let us know what else you’d like to see in discussions on our Product Ideas page.

Posted by Yong Zhu, Software Engineer

As a business person, you probably share the frustration of struggling to gain access to corporate tools and portals that are essential to your job. This can be as simple as a budgeting tool your predecessor forgot to extend your ownership privileges to, login details for a corporate microblogging account, or maybe even the control panel you need to access to customize your website search engine.

We'll be the first to admit that ownership transfer historically hasn’t been easy with Google Site Search (GSS). In fact, we used to require GSS owners to completely recreate their search engine in order to assign a new owner. Thankfully, we've just announced major simplifications to this process. Adding a new owner is now as simple as clicking a button and adding your new owners contact details - quick and easy as it should be.


Read our custom search post for more details.