Edit spreadsheets on the go with the Drive mobile app

Posted by Shrikant Shanbhag, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Drive Blog.)

With the holidays fast approaching, life speeds up and work can’t always wait.

While on the move, you can now edit Google Sheets on your mobile device, just like you can with Google Docs. From the Drive app on your iPhone, iPad or Android device, you can create a new spreadsheet or edit an existing one. You can switch fonts, resize columns, sort data, and more. And just like on your computer, you’ll be able to see other people’s edits instantly as they’re made.

Beyond spreadsheets, you may notice a few other tweaks to the Drive app, including better text formatting when you copy and paste in a Google document. And if you’re using an Android device, you can now edit text within tables in documents and add a shortcut on the homescreen of your device to any specific file in Drive.

Whether it’s 2013 budget planning or your company’s holiday gift list, the Drive app on your mobile device makes it easy to get things done wherever you are.

Get the Google Drive app today from the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Gmail and Drive - a new way to send files

Posted by Phil Sharp, Product Manager, Gmail 

(Cross-posted from the Gmail blog.)

Since Google Drive launched in April, millions of people have started using Drive to keep, create and share files. Starting today, it’s even easier to share with others: you can insert files from Drive directly into an email without leaving your Gmail.

Have you ever tried to attach a file to an email only to find out it's too large to send? Now with Drive, you can insert files up to 10GB -- 400 times larger than what you can send as a traditional attachment. Also, because you’re sending a file stored in the cloud, all your recipients will have access to the same, most-up-to-date version.

Like a smart assistant, Gmail will also double-check that your recipients all have access to any files you’re sending. This works like Gmail’s forgotten attachment detector: whenever you send a file from Drive that isn’t shared with everyone, you’ll be prompted with the option to change the file’s sharing settings without leaving your email. It’ll even work with Drive links pasted directly into emails.


So whether it’s photos from your recent camping trip, video footage from your brother’s wedding, or a presentation to your boss, all your stuff is easy to find and easy to share with Drive and Gmail. To get started, just click on the Drive icon while you're composing a message. Note that this feature is rolling out over the next few days and is only available with Gmail's new compose experience, so you'll need to opt-in if you haven't already.

Getting Indonesian universities connected

Posted by Raden Arief Setiawan, Brawijaya University 

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Raden Arief Setiawan, Head of Information and Technology Assessment and Development at Brawijaya University in Indonesia.

The world has been paying more attention to Indonesia these days to see how the world's fourth most populous nation moves into the digital century. While we're excited about our progress so far, there is still much work to do. Being a member of the G20, Indonesia has lots to offer the global economy in terms of both growing markets and a young workforce. This puts particular pressure on national universities to better prepare the next generation of leaders to enter the competitive worlds of science and business.

Despite the advances of information technology, many state universities face challenges in getting the latest systems in place. Despite having an internal email system for all its faculty and students, Brawijaya University faced numerous challenges of maintaining the infrastructure. The email system, along with server hardware, consumed a significant portion of the IT budget, and managing the email system alone took hundreds of man-hours.

Students and faculty members had to be resourceful, at times sharing single email accounts to transfer files and download the latest class notes. This was far from an ideal solution, but a solution nevertheless, considering the situation.

Now, with the help of the free and cloud-based Google Apps for Education system, 45,000 Brawijaya students and teachers have access to a whole new way of doing things: an updated, secure email system bearing the proud institution’s name; collaboration tools in the form of Google Docs and Groups, as well as access to the world wide web from various access points around the campus. For the administrators, Google Apps for Education was an easy choice due to the system’s openness, ease of access, and the way it can be connected to existing systems without having to buy new licenses and hardware.

We are proud to join other educational institutions around the world by fully embracing technology to change the way our university community will communicate, collaborate and learn. This will help develop a culture that simulates the ever-competitive global working environment, providing the nation’s best minds for the future.

Google Enterprise Blog: Some new ways to get things done in Google Drive

Posted by Josh Hudgins, Product Manager, Google Drive 

In case you haven’t noticed them already, here are a handful of small updates that will make it easier to find, organize, and view files on Drive.

• Search by person: Can't remember the name of a file but know who shared it with you? Now Drive search auto-completes people’s names, making it easier to find the stuff you’re looking for.

• View Google Earth map files: You can now open, preview, and interact with Google Earth files (.kml and .kmz) right inside Google Drive on the web.
• Drag and drop folders in Chrome: If you’re using Chrome, you can drag and drop entire folders from your desktop to Drive on the web (at drive.google.com).
• Search includes items in your trash: Sometimes files you are looking for accidentally end up in your trash, so now search results include files there too.
• Create new folders while organizing files: Now when you select files in your Drive list, in addition to adding them to an existing folder, you can add directly to a new folder.

We’ve also added some tools to make it easier for Google Apps administrators to manage Drive for their domain.

• Remotely install Drive on Windows computers: Remotely install Drive on many Windows machines at once using the Drive .MSI Installer for Windows.
• License Manager API: If you have hundreds or thousands of people using Google Drive at your domain, use this API to streamline and automate your storage management tasks.
• Bulk upload and assign storage: Add all users at once by uploading one CSV file for easily scalable license assignment.

• Search for users: Assign or change storage for a particular user by searching for their name.

Hudbay Minerals moves its global team to Google Apps

Posted by Joe AbiDaoud, CIO of Hudbay Minerals 

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Joe AbiDaoud, CIO of Hudbay Minerals, a publicly traded Canadian mining company headquartered in Toronto. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Since 1927, Hudbay Minerals has focused on discovering and producing base and precious metals. From exploration projects in North and South America and our current operations in Canada, our 2,000 employees depend on technology to work together and make sure our efforts are coordinated across regions. To do this, we really needed a platform that allowed us to easily collaborate, work remotely using our mobile devices, and communicate across teams in different regions and different languages.We had been using Microsoft® Office for years, with several Microsoft® Exchange servers across the company, but it became increasingly difficult for our IT team to stay up and running with the uptick in support calls due to a dated system. After exploring various options at different price points, we knew we wanted to move to a cloud-based solution to work more efficiently and provide a scalable and reliable solution.
We invited Google reseller, Sheepdog, to conduct a two-day Google Apps for Business workshop for a small group of employees from various levels and departments within the company. During the workshop, employees evaluated Google Apps against our “success criteria,” which included ease of use, efficiency, functionality, speed and cost. We quickly realized that Google Apps was a good fit for our geographically dispersed company and in July we started moving more than 1,000 employees to Google Apps.
Our IT support calls for email plummeted overnight, demonstrating just how easy it is to use Google Apps. For a global company, being able to instantly translate messages in Gmail and use Google+ Hangouts to meet “in person” made the language and geographical barriers easier to overcome. We’ve also estimated that by going Google we will reduce our costs over the long term when compared to the cost of upgrading and maintaining our old infrastructure. As a public company, we’re thrilled with the savings and new ways of working that we discovered by moving to the cloud.

Quality Distribution Inc. saves money and increases productivity by going Google

Posted by Cliff Dixon, Vice President of Information Technology, Quality Distribution Inc. 

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Cliff Dixon, Vice President of Information Technology, Quality Distribution Inc. (NASDAQ: QLTY), North America’s largest bulk transportation company headquartered in Tampa, Florida. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Quality Distribution, Inc. (QDI) provides safe, efficient and responsible bulk transportation services across the country. What started as a small trucking operation hauling lime and milk in 1913 has grown to more than 125 small offices, many franchises, and 3,000 truck drivers across North America. With multiple offices and employees scattered throughout the United States, having a reliable technology solution is imperative to ensure that we’re providing the best service to our clients.

For years we used traditional PCs company-wide in a Microsoft Exchange environment, which did not foster easy collaboration, communication or access to applications – and employees felt the pain. In 2011, after a pilot session with the IT department, QDI rolled out Google Apps company-wide with the help of Cloud Sherpas. In just a few months, I knew going Google was the right move for QDI. It allowed employees to connect to all of our locations and all of our drivers from anywhere without intensive IT support, and Google Apps was less than half the cost of Microsoft Exchange.

Around the time we deployed Google Apps, our computers started to slow down and break due to age. We refurbished older computers, but their value was minimal since they couldn’t run newer versions of the Windows operating system. In 2010, we started looking into purchasing new devices, including Linux and Chrome OS devices. Ultimately, we decided to move forward with Google Chromebooks and Chromeboxes, deploying 500 devices across 125 locations in the last year.

With Chrome devices, we can spend less time worrying about hardware, and software security patches, and more time focused on optimizing the user experience of our systems. Not only are the devices easy to manage from an IT perspective, but we also expect to save $500,000 on hardware alone over the next five years. As part of our move to Chromebooks, we also web-enabled some of our existing Windows-based apps using HTML5-based virtualization software from Ericom, making them easier to maintain.

Going Google has helped QDI improve collaboration, save money and eliminate IT headaches. Most importantly, our employees are more productive with easy-to-use technology. We’re looking forward to continued growth and providing the best service to our clients with help from Google.

Insphere Insurance Solutions comes together with Google Apps

Posted by Steve Jensen, VP of Information Technology at Insphere Insurance Solutions, Inc. 

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Steve Jensen, Vice President of Information Technology at Insphere Insurance Solutions, Inc., one of the fastest growing insurance distribution companies in the U.S. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say. 

Insphere Insurance Solutions, Inc. is a distribution company that specializes in meeting the insurance needs of small businesses and middle-income individuals and families. Our field sales force consists of approximately 3,000 independent agents nationwide who offer life, health, long-term care and retirement insurance.

In 2009, we decided we needed to move all of our agents, in more than 80 locations, off of various email systems, including Microsoft® Exchange, onto one platform. This would keep operational costs down and allow our agents and support teams to communicate more effectively. Since our agents rarely come into an office, access from any device was critical.

Today, nearly four years after our initial implementation, Google Apps has dramatically increased productivity and transformed our business. Now, our agents are using Google Docs to collaborate with each other on projects and can meet virtually anywhere using Google+ Hangouts to share ideas and best practices from their experience. With no more servers or software licenses, we reduced our projected costs from other solutions by almost 70 percent. That kind of savings delivers true value to our bottom line.

As a company, we have been able to leverage Google APIs to help us be efficient. When an agent joins or leaves the team, our provisioning system manages all account items with our Google integration.

In addition to the add/change user administration, we utilize Google Groups to constantly maintain distribution lists for email and control file security related to GoogleDrive/Docs. This automated maintenance promotes increased use of Docs collaborative capabilities. An office manager never has to worry about sharing docs or managing a distribution list again.

After this successful integration, we integrated our CRM platform with the Google calendar. All of our agent appointments are pushed to Google Calendar and then to their mobile phone automatically. Any update on the phone is then reversed and posted back to Google and CRM. We were able to leverage the Google platform and its APIs to deliver for the business without incremental licensing costs.

When it comes to recruiting and sustaining our growth, Google Apps has been instrumental in helping us hire new agents quickly while ensuring that they are equipped with the information they need to be successful. With all their documents, calendars and email accessible on the go, our agents are always connected to each other and clients, no matter where they are. This platform has really helped our teams stay connected and collaborate in ways they hadn’t imagined.

IT is no longer a barrier and no one has to wait to meet with someone from the IT department to get going with Google Apps. In fact, I personally haven’t had to pick up the phone once to call an email administrator. It has been truly amazing to see the natural adoption of the product by our field agents.

Universitas Surabaya Gone Google

One of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide, SADA Systems Asia has developed a proven track record in successful implementations of Google Apps solutions for the higher education market. SADA works closely its clients to create custom, leading edge solutions that strategically meet their business and institutional objectives.

Universitas Surabaya is often abbreviated as UBAYA, founded on March 11, 1968. Currently, UBAYA already has 7 faculties with 20 study programs. The process of education itself implemented in three campuses: teaching and learning activities conducted mainly at Tenggilis Campus and Ngagel Campus, and Trawas Campus - which is an Outdoor Campus located in Trawas, approximately 60 kms from Surabaya.

Challenges

Ubaya provided mailbox with a very limited quota to every staff and student but year after year it had been challenging because of the high cost of maintaining and upgrading infrastructure every year. It also required resources to maintain, update and keep the mail server from outside attack.

Solution

SADA works with Ubaya to ensure the migration process went well and smooth. SADA provides assistance creating Single Sign-On (SSO) so that the system can be integrated with previous Ubaya systems, SADA also provide training to trainers/early users so that they can use Google Apps in Optimal, SADA also help provide change management so that the process of change from the old mail server to Google Apps known and used optimally by the entire academic community Ubaya.

Result

Google Apps is being used in the university to improve the communication and collaboration between students and teachers. Additionally, having Single Sign On application that is integrated with existing portal of the Universitas Surabaya it makes it easier for users to access their mails, documents, and calendars.

“The process of implementation of Google Apps for EDU at the Universitas Surabaya runs smooth and as expected. Gooaya development, branding of Google Apps for EDU at the Universitas Surabaya, in such way runs greatly with help from SADA Systems Asia. SADA also has provided various training and development collaborations ranging from the deployment, implementation, communication plan, up to Go Live. Professionalism of SADA has contributed a lot so that there is no significant obstacles during the various stages.” Said Stephanus Eko Wahyudi, Head of IT department.