Full screen option in the new Gmail compose experience

A full screen option has now been enabled in the new Gmail compose experience for Rapid release domains. Scheduled release domains will have this feature on August 6th, 2013. To try it out:

1. Click Compose.
2. Click the double-arrow icon at the top right of the compose window.
3. Enjoy a larger composition mode that displays all of the formatting options by default.

If you want to make this option your default view, click into the options menu at the bottom right corner of compose and choose “Default to full-screen.” The next time you click Compose, you’ll be sent to this mode. Both types of compose can be minimized by clicking the black bar at the top.

Editions included: 
Google Apps for Business, Education, and Government

For more information:
https://plus.google.com/+Gmail/posts/8mDFJMRrSTy

Happy SysAdmin Day

Posted by Posted by Ben Fried, CIO, Google 

System Administrators’ responsibilities can’t be captured in a simple job description. They vary from company to company and even within organizations, but one thing is constant: systems administrators are the people who do what it takes to keep companies running. After more than 25 years in IT, I’ve worked with an incredibly talented and dedicated group of systems administrators and on this SysAdmin Day, I want to thank you for all that you do.

Thank you for being the ones behind the scenes who make sure things “just work.” For coming in on holidays and in the middle of the night to do an upgrade or fix a server issue. For answering all of our questions, no matter how challenging or strange. For hours spent fixing the simplest email support issue to monitoring servers during a hurricane. I actually think that it’s what we don’t know about that deserves the most thanks. All too often, users don’t understand the amazing efforts that go into making things “just work”: physical plant, hardware, storage, networking, security, backup, disaster recovery, configuration, upgrades, patches... and it’s all only really successful if users only have to think about their own work.

What we do in IT has evolved over the years, (hey, that’s a big part of why we’re here, right?), but your role has only gotten more demanding. I’ve worked in technology since I was in high school; in my earliest days, the hardest problems might have been helping researchers convert their data from one tape format to another, which seemed equal parts engineering and magic. I remember another time, someone had a program that made a washing machine-sized disk drive vibrate across the machine room. It took us a while to figure that one out. And back then, before the Internet, a break-in meant the intruder was in one of our computing centers, and we’d have to send the most intimidating-looking system administrators to guard the door until the police came.

I know the role has changed, and the challenges many of you face are much more complicated than they used to be. We thought the best way to say thanks would be to hear directly from you. Earlier this week we asked you to share some of the most far-fetched requests you’ve received from colleagues. The stories shared made us laugh, and reminded us how much hard work you do. If we don’t say it enough, thank you again for everything you do. 

Pridgeon and Clay make heavy business feel light with Google Earth Pro

Posted by Steve Koets, Global Director of Business Development for Pridgeon and Clay 

Editor's note: Whether it's in the factory, warehouse or office, manufacturers need to work efficiently to bring their customers what's needed. This week we're focusing on how companies in the manufacturing industry are using Google solutions to work better and stay connected. Today's guest blogger is Steve Koets, Global Director of Business Development for Pridgeon and Clay. Watch our manufacturing webinar and see what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At first glance, our business seems pretty simple: we make metal parts for the automotive sector. However, the processes involved in making those parts is anything but simple. The coordination and logistics to supply parts to a supply chain that make the parts to almost every car manufacturer in the U.S., Mexico, and Europe requires more than 120 metal stamping presses around the world. In addition, we buy, ship, and process raw materials, coordinate delivery of our products, and manage our global sales teams. With all of these moving parts, we needed a business analytic solution that could help us understand all of these processes as it relates to our need to make good business decisions.

Google Earth Pro gives us the visibility into our product, production and sales processes that we need to make sure we’re operating efficiently. With Google Earth Pro, we use layered views to show us where our component parts are selling, what cars our parts end up in (by tracking the part through production and into the actual cars on the roads), and the distribution of those parts in the various markets. Earth Pro helps us distill and understand our millions of data points, making it easier for our teams to analyze and make smart choices on a variety of topics.

Google Earth Pro allows us to manage our financial forecasting by area and helps in our business plan and goal setting. When the automotive market was struggling in 2008, or when the Tsunami hit in 2011, several of our suppliers and customers started to halt production at their factories. Since we had an accurate understanding of our integration of the supply chain and sales via Earth Pro, we were able to adjust our production patterns and weather the loss and change in our business. Earth Pro gave us insight as to the scale of events unfolding in the world and helped us make better decisions.

When selecting new potential plant locations, Google Earth Pro helps us to find the best place to optimize and make the right decisions. For example, we are currently looking to place an additional plant in the future in Mexico. By combining layers with the location of metal suppliers, customers, potential customers, and other market data (such as population density for possible employees), we figured out where we should place our factory to make our procurements, shipping, and business costs more effective. By scaling this practice to all our plants around the world, Google Earth Pro has helped us to be competitive and in the right place at the right time.

Google Earth Pro allows us to touch our data every day, tweak it to fit our needs, and visualize relevant information to help us make informed decisions. And it’s simple – anyone with a browser can use it. On a quick virtual meeting with our business units in Europe, we installed Earth Pro and they were placing their first pushpins in minutes to show the locations of their local facilities and relationships. Now, we have hundreds of thousands of pushpins used globally on all types of data, and hundreds of layers for every aspect of our business. Google Earth helps turn our heavy business lighter – with all of our data at our fingertips.

For more information about Google Maps, visit SADA Systems Asia Website

Shaw Industries goes lean for the long run with Google Apps

Posted by Jim Nielsen, Manager, Enterprise Technology Architecture and Planning at Shaw Industries 

Editor's note: Whether it's in the factory, warehouse or office, manufacturers need to work efficiently to bring their customers what's needed. This week we're focusing on how companies in the manufacturing industry are using Google solutions to work better and stay connected. Today's guest blogger is Jim Nielsen, Manager of Enterprise Technology Architecture and Planning from Shaw Industries. Watch our manufacturing webinar and See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Shaw Industries, we’re proud to have been a part of Northwest Georgia’s manufacturing heritage for over one hundred and sixty years. Many of our employees have worked with us for thirty or forty years, bringing with them a deep knowledge of the flooring industry, and a dedication to continuing our tradition of excellence.

Though we started in Georgia (and are still based there), our real estate portfolio includes 80 manufacturing sites in seven U.S. states, Mexico and China. We also have 50 distribution centers, as well as 19 showrooms located around the world. We are, in every sense of the word, a global flooring manufacturer and staying connected through communication and collaboration is central to our business.

In 2012, we rolled out Google Apps to over 10,000 employees. In addition to the immediate benefits of email, calendar and contacts, tools like Google+ Hangouts and Google Drive helped us transform complex, manual, and slow processes into a fast-moving and efficient stream of information.

Because these tools make it much easier for our employees to communicate and collaborate wherever they are, Google Apps has helped us “go lean” by eliminating wasteful processes and improving information flow. For example, our plant engineers can keep machines running more efficiently and safely by using Google Drive on any device to access and share our equipment manuals and safety procedures.

The flow of information globally and locally has really improved, as well. The combination of Hangouts, Docs and Google Translate has helped our global teams communicate with plants and suppliers more easily while reducing meeting times by up to 50 percent. Even employees located only 20 minutes apart are choosing to meet over Hangouts, saving travel time and gas. Similarly, our marketing and sales teams also use Google Docs to work more efficiently with third-party agencies on print and broadcast ads, and our departmental finance teams have streamlined their budgeting processes with Google Sheets.

Our associates at Shaw are passionate about their work, their products and our company. Their passion extends to tools like Google. It’s not often that a product is implemented and a year later co-workers are still mentioning what a good idea it was, and how they are still excited to be using it. Google has helped us strengthen this community by allowing us to work together, wherever we are, with whatever devices we’re using. We’re operating on a leaner, stronger foundation thanks in large part to Google.

For more information about Google Apps, visit SADA Systems Asia Website

Making calls from Hangouts — in Gmail and across the web

Posted by Alex Wiesen, Senior Software Engineer 

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog)

For those of you who have taken the plunge and are using desktop Hangouts in Gmail, Google+, and the Chrome extension, we've heard loud and clear that you miss the ability to make calls from Gmail, so today, we're happy to announce it's back - and better than before! Even better: calls to the US and Canada are now free from all countries where Hangouts calling is available. And international rates remain super, super low.

Today's launch also improves the desktop calling experience in a number of ways. For example: you can add multiple phone numbers and video participants to the same call; and you can play sound effects (like applause or laughter) with the Google Effects app.

To make a call from Hangouts, just look for the new phone icon in Gmail, or for the new "Call a phone" menu item in Google+ and the Chrome extension. And of course: if you haven't yet tried Hangouts in Gmail, you can always click your profile photo in the chat list and select "Try the new Hangouts."

Making calls from Hangouts is rolling out over the next couple of days. As we’ve said before: Hangouts is designed to be the future of Google Voice, and making and receiving calls is just the beginning. So stay tuned for future updates.

For more information about Google Apps, visit SADA Systems Asia Website

Google Apps helps the cloud become a reality for Imagination

Posted by Tim Smith, Vice President of Digital at Imagination 

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Tim Smith, Vice President of Digital at Imagination, a Chicago-based content marketing firm. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Imagination is a content marketing agency that helps companies connect and engage with their target audiences. Businesses like Wells Fargo, General Mills and US Foods turn to us when they want to reach their customers, and we make it happen by creating interesting and engaging content and distributing it across print, digital, broadcast and social media. We place a premium on creating smart strategies and executing on them quickly, so efficient and clear communication matters to us.

Last summer, we realized our technology was getting in the way of our ability to connect and engage with our own customers. We’d recently switched to Microsoft Office 365 as part of a larger company-wide move to the cloud, but ran into a number of problems we couldn’t ignore. Server connection issues prevented us from accessing our documents and Outlook crashes kept us from reading or sending email. Fifty percent of our help desk tickets were for email alone. And whenever a problem arose, we had to hire an expensive Microsoft consultant to fix the issue. When I stopped and realized we had a managed service provider in our office two to three times each week, it struck me: this was not the right IT solution for our agile, quick-moving and collaborative company. So we turned to Google Apps.

Once we had the support of the executive team, I reached out to Cloudbakers, a Google Apps Reseller based near our office in Chicago. They had done numerous deployments for companies like ours before, so they had a well-informed, specific step-by-step plan in place when we first sat down to talk details. They came on-site and ran in-person training for our employees, so everyone felt properly prepared to tackle their work using the new technology without skipping a beat.

Moving to Apps made our IT headache disappear. Help tickets have decreased by 50 percent and we’re on track to save $24,000 per year in help desk and downtime reduction alone. Employees no longer complain about VPN logins or email client configuration; now they can sign on to their account from any device and have everything they need at their fingertips. We don’t encounter hardware issues that make work come grinding to a halt; employees can simply sign into a spare device and instantaneously access their email and files.

Our employees have really embraced Apps, and we've seen a strong trend where teams are adopting new products and features organically. Everyone stores their important documents, presentation and spreadsheets on Google Drive. There’s also been a massive drop in the use of Microsoft Excel in the past few months as people start picking up Google Sheets and Docs. As a data enthusiast, I can’t get enough of the Drive dashboard. It’s revealed a fascinating trend where use of Excel and Word is dropping while the number of Docs and Sheets is shooting up.

We’re in the midst of evaluating a new CRM system, and our COO has one requirement: it has to integrate with Google Apps. Now that’s a success story every IT manager likes to share.