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CloudMagic – Find What You Need In Gmail, Google Apps & Twitter Quick & Easy

Dave LeClair — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:31:08 +0000

Nowadays, we are all signed up for so many different services, it can be hard to keep track of them all. We all have Gmail, Google Apps, Twitter and so many more accounts. When you need to find something specific, it can be a real hassle. CloudMagic is a service that is designed to help you search Google Apps, Gmail and Twitter, all from one convenient place. With one simple search query, you will be able to find results from these services, without having to check each one individually.

CloudMagic is available as an application for Android and iPhone, as well in your web browser via their website, a handy Google Chrome extension and a Firefox add-on. Basically, if you are looking for a way to make searching for stuff easier, there is a one hundred percent chance that CloudMagic offers a way for you to use their service. We all want to make our lives a little easier, and CloudMagic could be just the solution you need.

What Does CloudMagic Do?

CloudMagic allows you to import your Gmail, Google Apps and Twitter account so they can all be searched from one place quickly and easily. With CloudMagic, you can type in a search query, and it will scan all three of the accounts for that term.

Therefore, if you typed in the name “John”, for example, it would find any instances of John appearing in your Google Apps, any emails with the name John and tweets. This makes it much easier to find something that could be on any of the accounts.

Setting Up Cloud Magic

Of course, if you are going to be using the Chrome, Firefox, iOS or Android version of the app, you will need to download and install them. If you are using the browser-based version, you can simply point your browser to cloudmagic.com.

Setting up Cloud Magic is a breeze. Whether using one of their mobile apps or doing it from your browser, the first step is creating a new account. Creating an account only requires an email address and a password. It literally takes about two seconds.

Once you have created an account the next step is to link your account with your Google and Twitter accounts. To do this, you will need to click on “Settings” on the mobile app and “Services” on the browser-based app. From there you will need to click “Add New Service” and log in with whichever service you would like to add.

If you log in with your Google and Twitter accounts on your phone, these accounts will be there when you log in on the computer, and vice versa. This makes it easy to use your mobile app while on the phone and your computer when you are at home.

Using Cloud Magic

Using CloudMagic is a snap. Once you have your accounts synced, simply click the search bar and enter what you are looking for. It will quickly scan all of your accounts to find items matching the term you entered. The search is blazing fast; it is quite impressive.

You can narrow your search to only specific things. If you only wanted to find calendar events that match your query, you can simply click the “Events” button. This way, if you wanted to find a doctor’s appointment without seeing tweets and emails about it, you could do so.

Of course, simply showing you the results would be useless. That is why you can click any result to be quickly directed to the proper application, either from your phone or from your computer.

Conclusion

This is a great application for quickly finding what you need from select services. I hope that they incorporate other services such as Facebook and other email clients (but let us be honest, almost everyone uses Gmail). As it stands, it is a great solution for organizing your Google and Twitter account, and I definitely recommend checking it out on your platform of choice.

Web Link
iTunes Link
Android Link
Chrome Link
Firefox Link

Google App Accounts Now Work With Google+ [News]

Matt Smith — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 16:31:41 +0000

The full public release of Google+ brought it to many people, but not all. In fact, one group that was left in the cold were the users of Google Apps, the company’s range of enterprise products. These accounts could not be connected to the new social network.

Now, that has changed, although you’ll need to have administrative access to a Google App account to enable access. As is often the case with new services from Google, the rollout for this functionality is a bit vague. Accounts that have access turned on manually should see Google+ available within a few days.

If you’re confused about how to start, you can check out the official Google+ rollout tips page that will help organizations enable Google+. The steps are simple, and should only take a few minutes to complete.

Once enabled, users will find that they’ve received a couple new features in exchange for the wait. It will be possible for users to share content with people who aren’t in their circles as long as they’re in the same organization as the user. There is also going to be a migration tool that will transfer existing Google+ accounts to Google Apps, but the beta is “a few weeks”.

Otherwise, the interface and functions will be much as they are for other Google+ users, so anyone who’s already at home with the service should have no trouble adapting.

Source: Official Google Enterprise Blog

Use AppJump To Manage Your Google Chrome Apps

Dave LeClair — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:31:09 +0000

If you are a Chrome user and have lots of apps installed, you will know how much of a pain it can be to manage all those apps. I also find it to be kind of a cumbersome task to launch a new tab to get to the screen where the apps live. I wish there was a way an app could be launched like an extension. I wish there was some way to keep my apps more organized and maybe even group them together somehow.

Oh wait, look at that, there is a way, with the app I just found called AppJump. The first function of AppJump is to place all your apps in the section next to the address bar, but it also allows you to organize your apps by groups. As an added bonus, this app even gives you a quick way to manage all your apps and extensions on one screen, so if you need to uninstall or disable some apps you will find it easier to do so. The default extension remover in Chrome is not the most friendly thing to use, so having a quick and easy way to remove them is great.

Installation

As with any Chrome app, you need to go over to the Chrome App Store and click the “Add to Chrome” button. Chrome will handle the rest for you, just wait a few seconds and the application will be up and running and ready to start organizing your apps.

App Launcher

Using the app launcher is very simple. One you install the extension the launcher will be in the top right corner of the screen next to the address bar.

Click on the button to be shown a complete list of all your installed apps, click on the app you want to run and the extension will launch it in a new tab. You can move apps around right from the launcher, simply click and hold your mouse cursor on the app and drag it to where you want it.

Another great feature of the launcher is the search function. If you have an insane amount of apps, being able to search for the one you want makes life a lot easier.

Grouping Apps

The next great function of this extension is the ability to group your apps together. If you have a lot of apps installed this can be a great way to help you quickly get to the apps you want.

To set up a group, click on the extensions’ icon and click the link labeled “Manage Apps and Extensions” in the top right corner.

From there, a new tab will open and take you to the screen that allows you to create groups and change your installed apps. To create a new group simply click the “Add to Group” button. If you have no existing groups already, a link to create a new group will appear right above the button. Click that link and enter a name for your new group. If you already have some groups, but still want to make a new one, click the “Create New Group” option from the drop box menu.

Once you have your group they will appear at the top of the launcher, simply click the group you want to see all apps in that group.

From this screen you can also uninstall or disable any apps or extensions you do not want. It is a quicker and easier way to do so than using the default method in Chrome, especially for extensions. There are buttons to uninstall right next to the button for managing groups.

Conclusion

This is a really cool little extension that helps make managing all your other Chrome apps and extensions a little easier. If you are an avid Chrome user with lots of apps, this is worth checking out.

Check some other great articles about Google Chrome:

6 Chrome Extensions For Catching The Latest News Headlines
Use Xbox Live Dashboard To Keep Track Of Your Friends From Google Chrome
Use Podcast Player Pro To Play Your Favorite Podcasts While Browsing [Chrome]

Do you feel a huge weight lifted off your chest now that your Chrome apps are more organized? Let us know in the comments!

Google Apps Adds Ability To Check Gmail, Docs & Calendar Offline [News]

Dave LeClair — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 19:55:29 +0000

I think at this point we can all agree that the infamous cloud is not going away. That being said, the cloud does have some disadvantages, and the most glaring of these is when you do not have an Internet connection available. Fear not, because Google has you covered as they are now offering offline access to Gmail, Docs and Calendar. The launches of these offline services are missing some features, but it s a step in the right direction for people who spend a lot of time computing away from an Internet connection.

First, Google launched their offline Gmail app, which allows users to archive, read and compose emails while offline. It stores your changes locally, and the next time you connect to the Internet, all of your changes will be uploaded and available online. Simply head over to the Chrome App Store and install the app.

For Google Docs you need to click the “settings” gear on the top right of the screen in the Docs app and click “Set Up Docs Offline“. The offline feature for Docs is still in beta and not available for everyone yet, but it will be over the next few days.

Calendar works similar to Docs. Click the gear and enable offline viewing.

The only problem is that you cannot edit Docs or Calendar offline, but it is still a step forward for Google apps, and Google is promising new features are being constantly added to their offline apps, so expect these features to be available soon.

Source: The Next Web

Keep Your Google Apps Domains Registered To Protect Your Identity

Justin Pot — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 19:31:18 +0000

Do you use Google Apps on your domain for email? Don’t let that domain expire or you could be at serious risk of identity theft. It’s possible that, should your domain expire, all of your old email and any accounts tied to your old email addresses could be easily accessed. This could, in turn, give any would-be hacker simple access to your PayPal, Dropbox or just about any other online account.

London-based entrepreneur, developer and hacker Ben Reyes recently wrote a warning to not let your domain expire with Google Apps, in which he accidentally takes control of a complete stranger’s email. The exact loophole seems mostly closed now, but it’s still a good demonstration of the importance of not letting domains expire if you’ve been using them as a means to confirm your identity.

Wait, What’s Google Apps?

It’s easy to confuse Google Apps among its many offerings. Let’s clarify. Apps is all of Google’s services on your domain. You can use Gmail, Google Docs and much more, using your own website’s name. So instead of your email address being @gmail.com it will be @yourdomain.com.

We at MakeUseOf use Google Apps for our email accounts, so it’s a service we’re familiar with. Be sure to read the MakeUseOf Guide to Google Apps to find out more about how you can make use of Google Apps.

Let a domain with Google Apps expire though, and you’ve lost access to any and all accounts you have at that domain. Email, calendar, docs – all gone.

The Consequences

When a normal Gmail account (any email address @gmail.com or googlemail.com) expires, it is retired. That is to say, no one (not even you) can ever use that account name again. From a security standpoint this is ideal. That’s not the case however, with domain accounts. Due to the way the Internet works, if you let your domain expire, someone else could buy it, and if that domain is in their hands they have the right to use Google Apps on that domain.

If they decide to use that right they could end up with access to your email accounts, your Google documents and more. Or, at least, they could have before Ben wrote the above-linked piece. It seems that Google’s policies have somewhat changed regarding what happens to existing accounts and their user data. With or without such access however, it’s still possible to do what isn’t possible with a normal Gmail account: use an email address which you were using before.

If you’ve been using that email address for, say, Dropbox, the new owner of the domain needs only click the “Forgot Your Password?” button to get into your account and access your Dropbox files.

You get the idea. Someone with access to an old domain of yours could get access to more and more layers of your identity, given enough time. The same principle could be used to access almost any online account.

Keep Your Domain

The easiest solution to this problem is don’t let your domain expire. It typically only costs $10 a year to renew a domain, meaning $100 could keep you secure for ten years. Even if you don’t plan on using a particular domain for much longer the risk of letting it expire once you’ve used it for various services might outweigh the cost of renewing.

Don’t Keep Your Domain

Do you, even after reading this, have no interest at all in renewing a domain you don’t really use anymore? You can still protect yourself.

Delete all Google Apps user accounts on your domain, exporting your data first if you want to keep it. This will prevent future owners of the domain from accessing your email, documents and other Google Apps under any circumstances.
Make sure no services containing personal information, be they PayPal, Dropbox or even Facebook, remain tied to an email address on a domain ready to expire. Change your email address in a given service’s settings or delete the account altogether. Don’t leave a door open for any would-be identity thief.

Conclusion

Of course, this applies just as much to any domain on which you have email accounts as it does to Google Apps. Losing access to a domain you’ve been using for email is a problem unless you prepare for it, so don’t be caught unaware – either keep the domain in your hands or delete any user accounts tied to it.

Insight.ly – An Elegant Google-Based CRM With An Attractive Free Plan

Erez Zukerman — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:31:16 +0000

If you run a small business, you will know how challenging it can be to maintain communication with all of your customers and sales at the same time without losing track or forgetting to follow up. If you’re fortunate enough to have more than one person in your sales team, then you may also experience uncoordinated sales reps, each talking to the same customer about different things. This is a what a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system is for, and insight.ly is one such CRM, with an attractive free plan and a strong focus on Google CRM services.

Insight.ly is a part of the Google Apps Marketplace. If you wish to install it, you will need to provide it with ample permissions to access lots of information stored in your Google Apps accounts, such as your contacts, calendar information, and more. Understandably, you may not be too keen on granting an app such extensive permissions just to give it a spin, which is why I went ahead and did just that.

This is the dashboard, which is the first thing you see once you register. Now let’s look at the settings:

The list of settings actually goes on, but this should give you an idea of what you can configure. If you’ve ever used a CRM before, terms such as “Pipelines” and “Relationships” would probably seem familiar. But if this is your first crack at a CRM, insight.ly offers a so-called Concept Guide (PDF), which is a 17-page text-heavy overview of all of these terms. If manuals aren’t really your thing, you might be pleased to know that some of the more cryptic screens contain built-in explanation text:

The heart of a Customer Relationship Management solution is obviously….customers. And relationships. Which is where insight.ly’s contact import option comes in handy:

When you click the Gmail import option, insight.ly quickly shows a list of all of your Gmail contacts, letting you select which ones you want to import. Once you make your selection, the actual import isn’t instant – it takes a few moments, and insight.ly notifies you it’s done using an email.

Contacts are individuals; but sometimes you may want to keep track of a company or an agency – in other words, an Organization. Adding an organization looks like this:

Once you add an organization, you can see your organization’s history with them at a glance:

This is a supremely useful feature, and is much better than a Gmail search, because it shows what everyone in your organization (not just you) did for or with everyone in that organization (even with people you don’t know).

The next tab is Opportunities. An Opportunity is basically a sales lead – a chance to make some dough, or to otherwise forward the purpose for which your organization was established:

You can also specify how much money an opportunity is worth, the probability of winning it (not an accurate science, obviously), and an estimated close date. Most importantly, you can assign a single individual as responsible for that opportunity, so it’s very clear who’s working on it.

Insight.ly also supports projects, which are collections of tasks. No need to go through the interface here – it’s pretty much what you’d expect. It also supports email, but in an interesting way. Rather than plug directly into your Gmail stream (as a Google-based service), it provides you with a forwarding address. When you want to record an email in Insight.ly, you forward it to this address, and insight.ly files it under the correct contact.

Bottom Line

Insight.ly is simple, almost utilitarian. But it’s a very handy Google CRM solution, especially if you’re just coming to grips with the concept. Its free plan allows for up to three users and a maximum of 2,500 contacts, and does not have a time limitation. If you have a small business, you might make use of this plan for quite some time, until you grow out of it. If you’ve been struggling to find a way to keep track of your customers, give Insight.ly a spin.

Google Apps Customers Get Access To More Google Products [News]

Nancy Messieh — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 11:20:20 +0000

For as long as we can remember, Google Apps customers have been limited to a small list of Google products. Most Google Apps customers will find that they only have access to the basic services – email, documents, calendar, sites, chat and groups.

Google is finally taking a much welcomed step forward in offering more of its services to Google Apps users. If your company uses Google Apps, don’t expect the features to appear overnight. Your administrator will have to transition into the new infrastructure, choosing which applications they want included in their Google Apps package. Google Apps for Business and Education customers can even go so far as to control which services are available to each individual user.

Some of Google’s favourite services like Google Reader, Google Voice and AdWords will finally be accessible from your Google Apps account, amongst many others.

This is in addition to recently adding support for third party apps available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

If you haven’t already signed up for Google Apps on your own domain, you can do so for free for up to 50 users, and will get instant access to all the latest services.

Check out Google’s video with all the latest information on what Google Apps customers can get with the latest changes.

Which Google service are you looking forward to using most with your Google Apps account? Let us know in the comments.

How To Secure Your Google Apps Account with Two Factor Authentication

Dave Drager — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:31:19 +0000

I recently covered some free two-factor authentication programs for mobile phones. These greatly increase the security of your login but it helps to know what exactly you can use them with in the real world.

There is a hack that adds in “two factor authentication” but it appears to rely on a Google Gadget which loads after you have already logged into Gmail, which defeats the purpose of the app and is easy to break when logged into the basic version of Google Apps.

As of today, Google Apps Standard, and Gmail in general, does not natively support two factor authentication. However if you are using Google Apps Premier or Education, you are in luck because there is a free plugin in the Google Apps Marketplace which allows true two factor authentication for Google Apps. The name of the plugin is MyOneLogin for Google Apps.

These instructions assume you already have a Google Apps Premier account. First sign up for the Google Apps MyOneLogin account here as the administrator on the account. You will need to enter several pieces of information including your domain, your username and your password for the Google Apps account.

This information is stored at MyOneLogin so that it can modify your Google Apps settings for you. The major change it makes to your account is setting up Single Sign On (or SSO) so that your logins are handled by an outside provider. Don’t forget to enable VIP Access from VeriSign – this is the free One Time Password generator you will use.

You must then assign the SSO settings, MyOneLogin will do this for you. Look for the warning on the right that says Test mode is OFF. You will then see a screen which enables you to enter into “Production” mode. This sets all users to be sent to the MyOneLogin two factor authentication screen when they try to log into your Apps account.

Once that is set up, all users who attempt to log into the Google Apps account are forwarded to MyOneLogin. On their first login they will enter their Google Apps username and password and then they will be prompted to register their One Time Password Credential ID with their service. This will be used going forward for secure two-factor authentication. You simply click on the “Google Apps” application and it will put you right into your Inbox, securely.

One problem I did come across was that the final login process to your Inbox was broken in my version of Chrome. I think it had something to do with the popup blocker. Make sure to add your MyOneLogin domain to the popup whitelist to fix this problem.

I’ve been testing it for the last few days and it seems to work great besides the Chrome problem. One security issue that you might think of is that you are trusting MyOneLogin with your administrator password for your Apps account. This is a valid concern considering they are not a well known player in this space, but I think the extra security you receive from adding two-factor authentication is well worth the risk and also everything that I have seen seems to point that they are a very security minded company.

All of this brings up the question: why doesn’t Google enable a direct way to use two factor authentication with their Gmail, Calendar and other services? Many folks such as myself use Google services for all too many things in their lives, and that login is potentially the most important one of their online life. I would suggest that Google gets onto the security boat and enables this as an option for everyday folks.

Let us know how this works out for you if you use VeriSign VIP or any other two-factor authentication for Google Apps. This was the only solution I came across and I am very curious how others are using this in the real world to secure their data online or if there are other free alternatives.

Photo courtesy darwinbell.

Unleash Your Über-Nerdiness by Using Google Apps via Command Line

Evan Wondrasek — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 21:30:54 +0000

If you use YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, Google Docs, Google Contacts, or Google Calendar, some recent news from the Open Source at Google blog might pique your interest: you can now use all of these Google services from the command line.

Yes, the command line – that sexy, monochrome, text-based terminal where hackers do their dirty work in movies ““ and now you can show your friends just how hardcore you are by uploading your photos to Picasa with it.

GoogleCL is an Google command line application written in Python that allows you to make Google Data API calls from the command line, and all jokes aside, can actually be very useful if you’re writing scripts to interact with the aforementioned Google services. In this guide, I’ll give you a tour of GoogleCL with some examples to get you started.

Getting Started

Note: This guide is going to be very technical. If you are not familiar with working in a command line environment, editing system path variables, or creating batch scripts, you should not proceed.

First, the tough part. GoogleCL can be used in Windows, Linux, and Mac operating systems, but there are a few prerequisites before you can get started. If you have any problems with this guide, make sure to check out GoogleCL’s system requirements page for more information.

Google Command Line for Windows Users

Windows users have to follow a few extra steps to make this work. The following information is based off instructions from public int’s instructions (but hopefully a little easier to follow).

Download and install Python ““ I’m using version 2.6.5 in this guide and selected the default settings when I installed it. You’ll need at least Python 2.5 installed, and if you already have Python you can use the python ““V command to see what version you’re using.
Add the directory where you installed Python to your Windows PATH.
- Windows 7/Vista: Right click My Computer, select Properties, and click Advanced system settings. Click Environment Variables, select Path under System Variables and click the Edit button. Separate the new entry by adding a semicolon (;) then type the location to your Python location. In my case, I added ;C:/Python26 to my Path variable.
- Windows XP: Right click My Computer, select Properties, and click the Advanced tab. Click the Environment Variables button, select Path under System Variables and click the Edit button. Separate the new entry by adding a semicolon (;) then type the location of your Python directory.
Download the gdata-python-client library and the GoogleCL application. Extract the contents of both of these files and note their location. (Note: gdata-python-client is available as a .zip but GoogleCL is only in .tar.gz format ““ 7-zip is a great free application to extract these). I extracted these files right in my Downloads folder.
Open the Windows Command Line tool by clicking Start ““> Run and typing cmd. You can also access this by pressing the WIN key + R and then typing cmd.
Navigate (using the cd command) to the folder where you extracted the gdata-python-client and GoogleCL files from Step 3 and issue the following commands (make sure to change the folder names as necessary):

cd gdtata-2.0.10

setup.py install

cd ..

cd googlecl-0.9.7

setup.py install

Finally, you can make a “google” command line script to easily launch GoogleCL. Create a blank text file, enter the following information (making sure to change the bolded part to the location where you saved the GoogelCL files in Step 2), and save the file as google.cmd in the folder where you installed Python (mine being C:/Python26).

@echo off

set googlecl_home=D:\Downloads\googlecl-0.9.7\src

python %googlecl_home%\google %*

Now you can type a command like google docs list in your command line to bring up a prompt for your username.

After you type your username, you’ll be taken to a browser page where you need to grant access for GoogleCL to access your information. You will only need to authenticate each service once.

Finally, go back to the command line and press Enter. You did it! GoogleCL should now be working, so give yourself a high five. If you have problems, refer to public int’s guide or check out PCWorld’s guide for alternate instructions using Cygwin.

Mac and Linux Users:

Download and install Python. You’ll need at least Python 2.5 installed, and if you already have Python you can use the python ““V command to see what version you’re using.
Download the gdata-python-client library and the GoogleCL application. Extract the contents of both of these files and note their location.
In a Terminal window, navigate to the folder where you extracted the files from Step 2 and issue the following commands (make sure to change the folder names as necessary):

cd gdata-2.0.10

sudo python setup.py install

cd ..

cd googlecl-0.9.7

sudo python setup.py install

Using GoogleCL

Now that we’ve gotten through the bad stuff, it’s time to have some fun with GoogleCL!

Creating a Blogger post

Your blog will gain an infinite amount of nerd-cred if you post to it via command line. Use the following command to post directly to your blogger account:

google blogger post –title “Your Title” “Your content”

Press enter when you’re finished, and you’ll have this:

Using your Google Calendar

To view events on your Google Calendar, use the following command and specify a date range, separated by commas, after –date. In the example below, I’ll list events for the month of May.

google calendar list –date 2010-05-01,2010-05-31

You can easily add events to Google Calendar with the following command:

google calendar add “Collapse after writing article about GoogleCL today at 11pm”

Create a text document in Google Docs

You can easily create and edit Google Docs from the Google command line with the following command. You’ll have to specify a text editor in this command – Linux users can use Vim (which keeps you in the command line) and Windows users can use Notepad. Save the document when you’re finished and it will be uploaded to Google Docs!

google docs edit –title “Your Title” –editor Notepad

And much more”¦

There are many more functions available in GoogleCL – check out some of Google’s example scripts to learn the basic syntax and start experimenting. GoogleCL’s functionality will only be increasing as more APIs are available, so keep an eye out for good things to come.

Now that you’ve gotten a crash course in GoogleCL, I hope to see you sharing some creative code in the comments!

Organize and Execute Your Collaborative Projects With Google Apps

Elmer Thomas — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:30:12 +0000

If your project needs to have the cooperation of two or more people, here is your free solution. For personal project/task management, I recommend you have a look at GTD and the many applications that support implementing the GTD methodology.

Google Apps Standard Edition is free and includes Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites – everything you need to collaborate with Google. With the free account you also get up to 50 user accounts and 7 GB of storage.

This post is primarily focused around using Google Sites as a central dashboard to manage and execute your projects.

Prerequisite

You will need to own a domain name to use Google Apps to its full extent. If you do not have a domain name or do not wish to purchase one, you can still use Google Sites with a free Google Account. If you choose to proceed with your Google Account instead of signing up for Google Apps, you can skip to the Create Your First Project with Google Sites section below.

Sign Up for Google Apps Standard Edition

To collaborate with Google, first you will need to sign up for a Google Apps account. Enter a domain into the text field and choose the radio button with the label Administrator: I own or control this domain. There is also the option to buy a domain name from Google for $10/year, in case you do not already own a domain name.

Next, you will fill out contact and administrative information on the next two screens. Once you finish completing those forms you will need to verify the account by either uploading an HTML file to your server which hosts the domain name or by changing the CNAME record for the domain. Once verification is complete, access will be granted to your new account.

Setup Email

Start by clicking the Activate Email link. Now you will need to change the MX records with your domain hosting company. Fortunately, Google has detailed instructions for most hosting companies.

Once you have completed that step, you will be forwarded to the Email Settings page, where you can configure your account and add email addresses for other people who you hope to collaborate with using Google. For now, we will skip adding email addresses and add our team members to the account.

Setup Users

Click the Users and groups tab to get to the user administration dashboard. From this page you can add new users by click the Create a new user link. You can now add up to 50 users. After you add each user, you can opt to have Google email access instructions; go ahead and choose that option.

Create Your First Project with Google Sites

Once you have added all of your users, click the Dashboard tab and then the Sites link. From this settings page you can map the site to a particular domain and setup permissions. After you finish updating the settings, go to the URL of your Google Site. There, we will create our first project. Get started by clicking the Create Site button.

Click the Browse the gallery for more link and choose the Business collaboration category. On the right, scroll down a bit, and choose the Project Tracking Template.

Use the Name your site text box to input the name of a project you want to work on. Optionally, you can choose a theme for the project. Click the More Options link and choose Only people I specify can view this site under the Collaborate with heading. This will allow you to control who specifically can access the project web page. You can also optionally add a category to help with organization and a site description where you can summarize the purpose of the project. Click Create Site and your first project site is ready to go.

This template has all the features and examples you need to manage your team. I suggest that you explore each link and use the Edit page button at the upper right to modify the template to meet your specific needs. Here is a run-down of the some of the key features:

Create Page

When creating a new page, Google Sites provides a few basic templates to get you started (Web Page, Announcements, File Cabinet, List and Start Page). In addition, you can also create and save templates (click More actions -> Save page as template ). In the example screenshot above, you can see that there are several pre-populated templates useful for managing projects.

Risks & Issues and Tasks & Actions

Both of these pages are customizable lists (see the List template or the customized Risks, Issues or Tasks templates). You can easily further customize these lists to suite your specific needs by clicking the customize this list link.

In this example, I am selecting the Assigned to field because instead of using a text box (and needing to remember all the team member names) I want a drop down list of all the current team members. So in that case I change the Type to Drop down and then enter each team member name as an option.

Unfortunately, you can not set up the system such that each time a Risk/Issue/Ticket is created the assignee gets an email. The best you can do is have each member of the team click the button at the upper right that says More actions and choose Subscribe to page changes. That will cause any edits to this page to be reported via email to all those who have subscribed.

Time Line

Here you will find an embedded Google Calendar, which you can use to keep track of large goals and/or milestones (See the Calendar template). If you want to learn more about Google Calendar check this post.

Project Documents

Here is where you can share documents among your team. The system will track changes for you, allowing you to access previous versions by clicking on the v. X link next to the file size. You can also create folders to help organize the files; however, it is not immediately obvious how to do so. You need to click Move to, then New folder.

Once you have finshed all of your customizations and edits, you can find a listing of all the Google Sites you have created and create new Google Sites by clicking My sites at the upper right corner. That page will be your Project Dashboard.

Alternative Solutions

There are many good free solutions for project management, so what makes this solution useful?

If you are familiar with Google’s tools, you will feel right at home
You do not need to worry about hosting and the related issues such as server maintenance and security updates
There is a large community of users from which to find support and help
Many useful templates have been created, saving you the time of creating a solution from scratch

However, there are some shortfalls to be aware of also:

You will not be able to talk over the phone with the support staff
There is no way to set permissions on a particular page, so it’s all or nothing access (a work around is to create a separate Google Site for sections where you want to limit access)
Make sure to take the time to backup your site periodically (this is a manual process)
You do not have any access to the source code

Do you have a better solution to collaborate with Google apps? Something to add? Would you like me to go further in depth on this subject in a future article? I would love to hear your solutions and experiences. Please take a moment to share in the comments section below.