Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with googleapps

Google forms auto-notification when updated

jmd82 — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 07:36:51 -0800

Looking for a way to have Google forms/spreadsheet send an e-mail notification when a form has been filled out. We're thinking about using Google Forms to collect data from stakeholders. These forms would be updated at random intervals, completely unknown to those who needs the data. However, far as I can tell, there's no easy way to notify the form's owner that an update has been made. Anyone know of a way to make this happen? Bonus points for highlighting new responses.
--Yes, I know people can just manually check the spreadsheet for updates, but that doesn't always work out very well.

Setting policies for email

BrokenEnglish — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:23:13 -0800

net.cop filter: What software is available to filter and (optionally) block email between users on the same domain? I'm using Postfix with Google Apps but could be persuaded to use another solution. This is for a school situation, with some very young children who we want to be able to use email but without fully exposing them to the threats of stranger contact (from the wider Internet) or to potential "cyber-bullying" from their peers. So the restrictions might include:

- Kids cannot email each other except when collaborating on a project.
- All email from the Internet to the children will be forwarded to a catch-all account.
- Kids can freely email staff and vice versa.
- Parents on the same domain (we give them an email address for school use) can email staff but not children or other parents.
- Staff can send and receive emails from/to whoever they like including on the Internet.

I will be using Google Apps Education for the front-end, with an internal and outgoing relay using Postfix (but could be persuaded to go to Qmail or another MTA). This means Postfix gets to handle all email sent to/from this domain and that's the point at which I want to be able to apply these policies.

I don't have any sub-domains (e.g. parents.example.com, staff.example.com) so would need something which can work with usernames on one domain and differentiate between the different kind of addresses based on a suffix like "username_parent@example.com" or "username_staff@example.com" unless you can think of a more elegant solution.

Also, have looked at Postini (Google's preferred solution) but it's UKP10,000 per annum and that seems a bit steep to me.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

And pleasepleaseplease, no editorials about how this is wrong or too authoritarian, etc. I really don't want to go there...

Is gmail just too good for Publisher?

lunasol — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:42:37 -0800

I made a not-awful email newsletter in Microsoft Publisher. Now I want to send it via Gmail. Help! The only publishing/image software I have on my work computer is Microsoft Publisher (2003). My work email is through Google Apps, so my work email is essentially gmail. Usually I love this, but I'm having trouble getting gmail to cooperate with Publisher.

I made a newsletter that I want to send in the body of an email. Simply copying and pasting the whole document doesn't work, as I lose all the formatting. I tried setting my computer's default email client as gmail so that I could choose to send the document as an email, but this doesn't seem to work.

Google Apps calendar and gmail.com calendar: can they get along?

zippy — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 14:44:45 -0800

How do I work with both my Google Apps Calendar and my Gmail calendar? Bonus points: on a G1/Android phone. I have a G1/Android phone linked to my @gmail.com account. I consider this identity my primary one for everything but work, and all of my important calendar events are linked to it.

I now have a Google Apps account for my company, foo@example.com. I am the admin for this domain, so can edit permissions company-wide.

I do not want to use the web interface to visit the two calendars separately. I want one destination where I can see and edit every event I care about (i.e., for both my example.com and gmail.com accounts).

Also, I have a co-worker on @example.com who sends me and customers invites. I do not want my @gmail.com address to show to customers.

Bonus points if:

1) there's a way to make this work with my G1/Android phone's built-in calendar.

2) the solution isn't too disruptive, and I can continue to use my gmail.com calendar as my main interface. I have family members who share their calendars with my @gmail.com address.

What hasn't yet worked:

I have tried sharing my @example.com calendar with my gmail.com address, but this only shares free/busy status and doesn't let me edit from gmail.com. I believe I have set sharing correctly from the Google Apps @example.com admin panel, but it doesn't seem to work.

Email Switcheroo

drjimmy11 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:57:25 -0800

What do I need to be aware of when switching a client from ISp-provided email to Google-provided email? I am in the process of re-doing a website for a client. They also want to change hosts, so I'm building the site on the new host, and when the time comes I'll just switch the domain over.

Rather than get email through the new host, we decided to go with Google Apps Standard Edition (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html).

I'm thinking it will go like this:
1) I'll ask everyone who has an account to make sure they have downloaded all messages onto their hard drives.
2) I'll set up the account on Google and give it access to the domain. I'll re-create all the user accounts, and tell them how to set up their clients to access their new email.

My questions are:
1) Will there be any "outage" or possibility of missed messages, during the time I will be making the switch? The old ISP account will still be active, but I assume once I give Google access to the domain, no mail will arrive to clients set up to download messages from the ISP? Is there any way to forward or anything?

2) Are any of my assumptions bad, or are there any other pitfalls I should watch out for in this process?

thanks!

Why is my mom's Gmail account constantly CAPTCHA'ing her?

woot — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:18:19 -0800

My mom's Gmail account keeps throwing up the CAPTCHA at login, blocking her mail clients. Why? We use Google Apps for IMAP access to a family domain and it's worked great for over a year. But within the last month, my mom's Mac Mail (10.5.6, updates current) and iPhone (1st gen) have been unable to access her account with IMAP. When we troubleshoot (over the phone), it appears that Google keeps putting up a CAPTCHA for her web login, and so her IMAP clients can't connect.

This keeps happening, but only to my mom's account. We will "fix" it for a day or two but then the CAPTCHA goes back up. We can get her mail clients working so I know we have the right settings, but the fix seems to "expire."

What could be causing this? Is someone banging away at her email account, and Google's throwing up the CAPTCHA in self-defense? Is there a benign explanation for this, or should I worry that someone's trying to get into her mail?

She's pretty good about avoiding viruses and suspicious stuff -- she came close to logging into a bank phishing site a few years ago and learned her lesson -- but I can't guarantee she hasn't done something dumb. She is on a Mac (and always has been) and I don't think she's used a PC to access email in years. I know Macs aren't virus-free but I'm having a hard time connecting this Gmail behavior to her computer.

What's going on? Anyone heard of this happening? What should I do?

Thanks. I apologize in advance if I only have partial info here -- I'm working on this with her over the phone and you know how it is with parents and remote tech support.

Limesurvey with google apps

Eapoe — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:32:37 -0800

I would like to use my existing google apps domain with the open source limesurvey? Is this possible? If not are there any other alternitives besides using google docs (this does not provide enough control) which I can use on my own domain?

Merging a Google Apps account with an older, "normal" Google account

LairBob — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 09:15:07 -0800

Anyone know of a way to merge two Google and Google Apps accounts? (Not talking about merging mail accounts--I'm talking about things like web history, iGoogle pages, Google Reader subscriptions, etc.) I've had a Google account for years now, and the same personal e-mail address the whole time. I never used "regular" GMail, but the information most of my Google services like Reader, my search history, and Maps/Latitude are related to that first account I created.

When "Google Apps For Your Domain" came out, I moved my personal domain to Google Apps, which has been great overall, but it means that as far as Google's concerned, I now have two similar but separate accounts. The two accounts actually the same e-mail address as a login ID, but happen to have different passwords.

There was no way, when I created my Google Apps account, to identify a pre-existing Google account and link the two--I looked into it pretty thoroughly, because I wanted to avoid the situation I'm in. The Google reps in different forums acknowledged that it was an issue, but said that it wasn't possible at the time.

I periodically check to see whether they've created a new way of pulling them together, but haven't found anything yet. I happened to doing another one of those periodic checks this morning, and figured I may as well check with the collective intelligence--from what I've been able to find, it looks like a lot of other folks are aware of the issue, but I couldn't find any answers?

Anyone ever run across a way of doing what I'm talking about? (Or should I just hit "Snooze" again on the issue for few months.)

Thanks in advance for any help.

How to sanely migrate email messages from Apple's Mail.app to Google Apps' GMail

Wild_Eep — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 17:34:07 -0800

How do I move around 2000 messages from Apple's Mail.app (10.4) to a Google Apps (Premier) GMail account quickly and efficiently? Maintaining the received dates and any miscellaneous attachments is a must.

I'm helping a company move their 35 employees with traditional POP download-it-to-your-hard-drive-then-delete-it-from-the-server accounts to Google Apps-based GMail accounts. They opted for the Premier ($) version of Google Apps.

I know about enabling the GMail account's IMAP service, then adding the IMAP account to Mail.app, and then dragging in your messages. When I tried that, it took hours upon hours to move very few messages, often timed-out for no good reason, and even with the activity window open, didn't give very detailed feedback about the progress of the operation. The company has a "business-class" DSL line. Speedtest.net reports that they're getting 300 kbps upstream from their office to San Francisco. (I assume Google's servers are somewhere in San Francisco.)

I'm willing to convert the mailboxes to some other format (mbox, etc.) and use a PC tool. Google themselves provide a tool to suck in messages from an existing IMAP server (which doesn't help directly), or Google Email Uploader, which only seems to work with Outlook, Outlook Express, or Thunderbird. I've also heard about IMAPSync, but I'm not certain it will do what I want.

I do have a PC available, if needed. For the Mac, I do have Emailchemy available.

What happens if you change your webserver's IP address and have Google Apps?

thumpasor — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:33:06 -0800

I am generally responsible for the technology operations of a startup nonprofit. We currently have our web server hosted on a Windows box. However, we will need to move over to a Linux server for various reasons, including running a new install of Drupal properly. As a result, we'll have a new IP address, though we'll be retaining our domain name and using the same hosting company. But what problems might I run into, especially with Google Apps? My understanding is that there will likely be some downtime or general glitches with the webserver as the new IP address information propagates through DNS(?). This is probably fine for a day or so.

But my major concern is with our email. Right now, we use Google's Apps For Your Domain for email. If we get a new IP address, will we have to set our account up with them again? If so, is there any chance that we will - gulp - lose all of our email? Or what kind of disruptions, if any, can we expect? And finally, if there are any disruptions, will our email disappear, or be bounced back to the sender?

I am normally a strong advocate for Google Apps, but not having any control over our email during this transition is making me very nervous. I'm not an IT expert by any means but definitely would consider myself a skilled amateur, so I should be able to understand most of your advice :)

Many thanks for your help!

What cool things can we do with Google Apps?

trunk muffins — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:16:31 -0800

Help-me-stay-employed-filter: In what nifty ways has your organization put Google Apps to use? My supervisor will be in a position tomorrow to make the case for extending the length of my contract, but we need to brainstorm some possible projects involving Google Apps* to occupy me. I work for an educational institution that's using Google Apps to provide email for students, and we want to find ways to use the suite to provide other useful services to them as well.

Using Google Calendar to share and coordinate events seems like a no-brainer, and I'm thinking Sites may help student orgs with collaboration and planning...but other than that, I feel like I'm grasping at straws. Has your organization done anything cool and useful with Google Apps that might inspire me?

* He made an offhand comment about SharePoint as well, but Google Apps is what we have up and running right now.

Google domain owns YOU!

Chris4d — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:24:32 -0800

I recently bought a domain through Google's Apps for Your Domain/GoDaddy partnership. How do I add my own content? It was an impulse buy because I wanted to see what GAFYD was and it was only $10. Apparently GAFYD doesn't have hosted server space though, so I'll need to redirect it to a new host. Has anyone done this? How do I go about setting up the domain and mail forwarding, etc. with my new host so that admin.domain.com goes to GAFYD while domain.com goes to my web content? I'm not a total dummy w/r/t the internet, but I appreciate clear instructions. For example, it wasn't entirely clear until after I made the purchase that GoDaddy = registrar, Google = GAFYD, and hosted server space = nobody. Oops.

And if anyone wants to recommend a sweet+cheap host, I'm all ears. Thanks!

Receiving Google Apps mail in Outlook 2000

i_am_a_fiesta — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 11:54:40 -0800

I'm having a great deal of trouble receiving my University email in Outlook 2000. My University uses Google Apps, which allows me to use Gmail as my webmail service, but does not assign me a Google or Gmail account. The domain of my email address is myuniversity.edu, not gmail.com. For this reason, Outlook does not recognize the username and password that I use to log into my email (through my university's website). I have tried following gmail's tutorial (complicated by the fact that they don't offer one for Outlook 2000) with no success. I've tried reporting my incoming mail server as both pop.gmail.com and pop.myuniversity.edu. Any ideas? Did I miss any important info?

Google Apps for my domain, any disadvantages?

gtr — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 19:38:18 -0800

Is there any disadvantage to switching to Google Apps for my domain over just using regular gmail? When google first opened "google apps for your domain" I tried it out. I loved using the gmail interface but still using my domain address.

Unfortunately not everything was ready for prime time. For instance, using igoogle as my start page didn't work as well as when I simply signed in with a gmail address.

I was thinking of trying google apps for your domain again, but was curious if there's anything that's not quite up to just using my gmail address for everything. In other words, right now I just use example@gmail.com for everything (email, reader, etc.).

I guess what I'm asking is, any regrets about switching over from just using regular gmail?

Gota get up to speed on GoogleApps/GoogleSites, yesterday!

willie11 — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 07:02:49 -0800

GoogleApps: I love it and think it will work for my organization, but where can I find more in-depth user guides and tutorials? I have 48 hours to get a functioning Google Apps (Google Sites, really) intranet page up and running for my friend's political campaign (primary in five weeks!). Nothing too complex. I don't even want to use half the functionality available (email/chat would be too much). I just need a central site for sharing of spreadsheets and documents, a to-do list, and a calender. And it needs to be dead-simple.

Google Sites will do that for me for free, but I'm too busy/stupid to get it looking right. I have 48 hours left before I present this to the 10 or 12 people who really need it. If it isn't clearly functional, they'll go all Ted Stevens on my ass and then they'll be back in disorganization hell where no one knows what's going on or what needs to be done.

I found the few google-sponsored web videos out there and a start-up guide, but I need something much more in-depth (sadly). The google group for google apps isn't indexed and isn't really helpful in my experience.

The organic city site on the googleapps demo looked so good, where's my organic city site?

Risks and benefits of using Google Apps Gmail?

j0hnpaul — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 17:04:48 -0800

What are the risks and benefits of using Google Apps to send and receive eMail from my domains? I've been using Gmail since 2005 to process and archive eMail from my domains, and I like its flat archiving, swift nimble search, hotkeys, and IMAP support. I don't like having my messages identified my by Gmail address in some clients. I have been considering switching to Google Apps for my Domain's version of Gmail, but I'd like some fresh, intelligent input on the pros and cons. Thanks!

How to remove Sender header ("on behalf of") when sending from Gmail?

drew3d — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:14:56 -0800

How can I remove the Sender header ("on behalf of") when sending from a different address in Gmail? Will Google Apps help me do what I want? I am the administrator for the domain example.com. One of my users wants to use their existing Gmail account johndoe@gmail.com for email. They want to be able to send mail as johndoe@example.com. They can do this with the "Send Mail As" feature of Gmail. So far so good.

But Gmail unfortunately adds "Sender: johndoe@gmail.com" in the headers (revealing their Gmail address, which is bad) and Outlook displays "johndoe@gmail.com on behalf of johndoe@example.com" on their messages (which is confusing and unprofessional). See this Google help page at the bottom.

My primary question is: how can I eliminate that Sender header/"on behalf of"?

I read the previous AskMe question that says Google Apps is the solution, but when I set up the example.com domain with Google Apps, it creates an entirely separate Gmail account for johndoe@example.com. My user does not want to have to login to a separate account. The user wants one Gmail account that can send as either johndoe@example.com or johndoe@gmail.com, without the Sender header appearing.

Is this possible with Google Apps, and what do I need to do to enable it? I know I can set up forwarding from johndoe@example.com to johndoe@gmail.com, but when the user sends mail, will he have to login to his johndoe@example.com Gmail account to avoid the Sender header?

How do people use Gmail and get around this Sender/on behalf of nonsense? Is the only solution to have two separate Gmail accounts?

I want my email archives please!

batcrazy — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:28:45 -0800

Google Apps Filter: How can I get inbox emails from my old email server onto gmail/google apps account? Ok, I switched my company over to google apps this weekend.
(And I love it, btw).

Here's the issue. My company recently changed names/domains. I can use the mail fetcher in the individual user accounts to get archived email from mail.olddomain.com, but I can't get google apps to pick up the mail (even the old inbox mail) from mail.newdomain.com.

As a workaround, I though maybe if I give the newdomain emails an alias, I can get still get them through mail fetcher.
For example, all of our work emails are jdoe@newdomain.com (first initial last name). If I use an alias for the account: johnd@newdomain.com, gmail/google apps is able to 'see' it as a different email address for mail fetcher. The problem is that I've already switched all my MX records over, so while users can still log in to their email accounts to VIEW their archived email, they can't recieve emails on the mail.newdomain.com account (I just tested the accounts and they can send email from the mail.newdomain.com accounts). So, that would mean that google apps can't fetch them, right?

I'm using Google Apps Standard b/c we are a 15 person non-profit and don't have $750 in our tech budget for Google Apps Premiere. One workaround I've seen is the mail migration that is on premiere, but it is IMAP migration and these are all POP accounts. (If there is a way to migrate POP accounts on premiere, would it work if I signed up for the 30 day trial, migrated everything using whatever premier tool or API they have and then cancel my subscription before the month is up?)

As it is now the work week, I can't be messing with the MX records if it will lose/delay emails, but is it possible that I could do something with the MX records to allow the POP archive to migrate to gmail/google apps?

Help me Hive Mind!

(And I did search ask mefi before posting this, but nothing seems to fit this problem).

Help me test the waters with Google Apps

edjusted — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 20:31:17 -0800

I'm trying to set up Google Apps Email Premiere for just a few users for testing. I'm following the instructions on the Pilot program help page, and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. The help page says to "Add another destination". My domain is currently being hosted by Bluehost if that makes any difference. The POP server address is mail.domain.com and when I try to add that as the additional destination, it states that the setting is saved, but then it doesn't show up. I e-mailed Google Apps support, and got this back, which doesn't seem to make sense.

"I've investigated your report and found that your CNAME record isn't configured properly.

Here's the current CNAME record:

Non-authoritative answer: mail.domain.com canonical name = domain.com.

To fix this issue, please modify your CNAME record as follows: mail.domain.com points to ghs.google.com"

I'm not a DNS expert, so I may be wrong, but this is what I'm afraid of:
1. change CNAME record to ghs.google.com
2. doh...all the e-mail sent to the rest of our accounts *not* on the Pilot program don't get delivered
3. once the ghs.google.com CNAME record gets propogated, then I do the "Add another destination"
4. add the MX records for Google mail
5. doh...while the MX records propogate, the people *on* the Pilot program don't get their email

What am I missing? Can someone help me with a more detailed step-by- step of what I need to do to make this work?

How to get google apps to like me again.

filmgeek — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:46:25 -0800

Google Apps: I transfered my URL from one registrar to another. Google apps (hosting) isn't working. Based on my earlier question, I moved my URLs all to one host (godaddy) where I could modify my MX and CNAME records (without having to pay for that right.)

But, one of my domains uses Google Apps (google.com/a) for it's email, and obviously, after the transfer, it's not responding.

What I want it to do is to ask me to verify again, and tell me what the mx records should be set to. I'd go to google's help (for google's apps), but it's mostly a google group where nobody seems to respond. They want me to pay for the Pro version, which I don't need (but I'm tempted to sign up and then quit after this is solved.)

Just as a tack on - is there any way to host an 'announce only' list with google, from my hosted domain (vs. google groups?)