Communication and collaboration just got easier with Google Groups

Picture this: you're working on a new project with your team. You ask your IT admin to create a new group that includes all of your team members, keeping in mind that you must ask them to update the group every time people join or leave the group. Maybe you're even wishing that (a) you had a secure, central place to manage this group and communicate with it, and (b) you could easily search group archives for information somewhere other than your inbox.

That's when your admin gives you the good news: creating, managing and sharing with groups just got a whole lot easier. Today, Google Apps is giving business and school IT administrators the ability to let users create, manage and collaborate in groups without needing IT help. This launch is a major expansion to the mailing list functionality and content sharing we released earlier this year.

The following Google Groups features are now included in Google Apps Premier and Education Editions:

• Fast set-up. Employees and students can now create collaborative groups instantly without burdening IT, and manage the group settings to fit their needs.
• Searchable archives. Group discussions are archived by default, allowing users to easily search and view past and present discussions via the web.
• Sharing with a group. Once a group is set up, employees and students can easily share a document, spreadsheet, presentation, shared folder, site, calendar, or video with that group. No need to type in individual email address manually, or remember who joined or left the group. Plus, the shared items will only be accessible by the appropriate people, even as people join and leave the group.
• Reply on behalf of a group. In addition to communicating via email or the web interface, the new functionality lets group managers send a message on behalf of a group.
• IT capabilities. IT administrators still manage if and how users can create groups from the administrative control panel.

Google Apps Premier and Education Edition administrators can now enable the new groups functionality from the control panel by enabling the "user-managed groups" service. You can read more about this announcement on the Official Google Blog. Google Groups will be rolling out to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition domains over the next day, so if you don't notice these features right now, you should see them soon.

We're always developing new features to help you get your job done faster and more efficiently with Google Apps. Stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates as new features continue to come your way, or subscribe to our Google Apps update feed and get the news as it happens.

Posted by Shimrit Ben-Yair, Product Manager

​Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review

Google Apps is helping millions of companies save money, but more importantly, Google Apps helps businesses move beyond the slow, multi-year innovation cycle typical of legacy technologies. We’ve released over 100 significant improvements and updates over the last year, and businesses automatically have access to these updates without having to manage complex and costly upgrades.

Last week I hosted a webcast titled Google Apps Premier Edition Innovation – Year in Review to spotlight the most important improvements we’ve made recently. You can watch the replay below or see it on YouTube.



Innovation happening across the web is rapidly translating into better business email tools, more efficient collaboration choices for coworkers, and more secure, higher reliability technology for companies. We’re excited about what’s in store for Google Apps, and to keep up with future developments, you can subscribe to the Google Apps Updates RSS feed, or sign up for email alerts.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Import, export, and more with the new Google Sites API

One of the benefits of Google Apps is the extensibility and openness of the platform. Today we're pleased to advance that story by introducing a new API for Google Sites in Labs.

The use cases are plentiful for businesses:

• Update Google Sites from 3rd party applications – e.g. your sales team's Google Sites pages can update automatically when new leads are added to your CRM system.
• Migrate files and content from workspace applications like Microsoft SharePoint and Lotus Notes to Google Sites.
• Export Google Sites pages, edit them offline, and re-import the updated content.
• Export your sites, including every page revision, for backup.
• Easily monitor changes across your important internal and public sites, all from a single gadget.
• Push new content like changes to employee policies or a new corporate logo to any site on your domain, even sites created by individual employees.
• Best of all, while this API is brand new, application developers will find it rather familiar – it is, after all, a Google Data API. And like our 16 other Google Data APIs, this one comes with all the standard protocol support around authentication and querying that you'd expect. You'll find everything you need to get started on the Google Code pages, including links to documentation and sample applications.

For those of you interested in applications already built on top of this API, be sure to look at:

• The open source import/export project on Google Code that lets you export entire sites as static HTML, maintaining the structure and page hierarchy.
• SharePoint Move for Google Apps, a product developed by LTech for migrating data and content from Microsoft SharePoint to Google Sites.

We're looking forward to your feedback! Watch this space for updates to the API in the coming months.

Anil Sabharwal, Google Enterprise team

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Data portability and Google Apps

Earlier this morning, you may have seen Google's Data Liberation announcement, which stemmed from our core belief that it ought to be easy for users to move their data into or away from Google's cloud.

This principle not only applies to individual users, but also to businesses, schools and other organizations that choose Google Apps to provide better tools at a fraction of the cost of traditional solutions. It should be easy to bring legacy data into the cloud, share data between Google Apps and other IT infrastructure, and get data out of the cloud if it ever makes sense to stop using our service. I invite you to read more about Google Apps data portability on the Data Liberation site.

And while we're on the topic of data portability, stay tuned here for information about moving content to and from Google Sites. We're looking forward to sharing more about this with you soon.

Posted by Brian "Fitz" Fitzpatrick, Engineering Manager

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

Launched: Email retention policies and email delegation

A few weeks back, we let you know that Google Apps Premier Edition would soon support two new business-focused features: email retention policies and email delegation. Today we're happy to share the news that both features have been rolled out to Google Apps Premier Edition customers.

Email retention policies help companies comply with industry and government regulations by allowing their admins to determine how long an email should remain in the system before being automatically deleted. Email delegation allows employees to specify other users allowed to manage email for them – especially useful to executives and administrative assistants.

Premier Edition administrators can enable these features from the administrative control panel under the 'Email Settings' tab.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Product Manager

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

Launched: Email retention policies and email delegation

A few weeks back, we let you know that Google Apps Premier Edition would soon support two new business-focused features: email retention policies and email delegation. Today we're happy to share the news that both features have been rolled out to Google Apps Premier Edition customers.

Email retention policies help companies comply with industry and government regulations by allowing their admins to determine how long an email should remain in the system before being automatically deleted. Email delegation allows employees to specify other users allowed to manage email for them – especially useful to executives and administrative assistants.

Premier Edition administrators can enable these features from the administrative control panel under the 'Email Settings' tab.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Product Manager

Find customer stories and research product information on our resource sites for current users of Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes/Domino.

New Interface Thursdays: Best practices for location extensions

A few weeks ago, we introduced location extensions - the new way to run local ads in AdWords. Today, we wanted to tell you a bit more about location extensions and give you some best practices for setting them up in your account.

First, it's important to know that there are two ways to set up extensions. You can set up extensions at the campaign level or at the ad level.

Setting up campaign level extensions means that Google will dynamically match a campaign's text ads with the most relevant address in your account based on information like a user's location or a user's search terms. Keep in mind that the address will only be shown when it's relevant to the user's location or search terms. We'll use a fictional chain of coffee shops, Bob's Coffee, to illustrate when you'd want to add campaign level extensions:

Add campaign level extensions when you want to...

• Use the same ad text across a number of business locations. For example, Bob has a "buy one cup, get the second free" discount at all his coffee shops. Bob can create one ad and run campaign level extensions because his ad text for this discount is applicable to all his locations.
  
  
• Direct ads for all of your locations to the same landing page. For example, all of Bob's stores feature the same drinks and prices, so he has a single webpage to greet online users regardless of their location.
  
  
• Create and edit a lot of ads quickly. For example, Bob's Coffee is introducing a "$1 latte Tuesdays" promotion at all its stores. If Bob creates a new campaign for this promotion and sets up campaign extensions, he only has to create one ad, and that ad will be able to show with any of the addresses associated with that campaign.

If you think these settings are right for your campaigns, you can learn more about how to set up campaign level extensions.

Ad level extensions allow you to override a campaign's location extension settings. When you use ad level extensions, you are selecting one address to show with a specific ad.

Create ad level extensions when you want to...

• Associate a single address with a specific marketing message. For example, Bob wants to test out a promotion at just one location before implementing it for all stores. He is going to offer a "Case of the Mondays" special, a free upgrade to a large coffee when you a buy medium coffee on Monday. Bob has created an ad to go with this promotion and only wants this ad to show for the one location where he's running the promotion. He doesn't want AdWords to match the ad to any of his other addresses, so he overrides the campaign setting with an ad level extension.
  
  
• Direct each ad to a specific landing page. Bob has also created a separate landing page within his website to promote the "Case of the Mondays" promotion. He wants to direct most of his users to the main webpage via his regular campaigns, but wants to direct viewers of the "Case of the Mondays" ad to a page specifically for the promotion.

If ad level extensions better meet your needs, read more about how to start using them. Remember, you can use a mix of campaign and ad level extensions in your account.

Adding addresses to AdWords

When you're setting up your extensions, you should also know that there are two ways to give your addresses to Google: use the Local Business Center or enter addresses manually into AdWords.

If you're a primary business owner, you should use Local Business Center to give your addresses to Google. The Local Business Center is a free tool that allows you to manage your business listings. Addresses you enter manually or through bulk upload here will affect how your free business listings and ads appear on Google.com and Google Maps. If you plan to use Local Business Center, you can learn more about how it works with extensions.

If you're not the primary business owner of the locations in your ads, you can manually enter addresses into AdWords. An example of a non-business owner might be a wireless hotspot company that provides Internet access at Bob's Coffee. The company doesn't own any of the Bob's Coffee locations, but might want to advertise that their Wi-Fi services are available at a Bob's Coffee location.

Whichever method you choose, you can add addresses from the same place in AdWords, in the Audience section of the Settings tab.

To learn more about location extensions, check out the location extensions overview section in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Inside AdWords crew