What cool things can we do with Google Apps?

November 24, 2008 5:16 PM

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.

posted by trunk muffins to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

We make extensive use of google docs at my business. We keep track of all service jobs performed on vehicles by way of shared docs. That way it is easy for my techs and my customer service staff to track what has and has not been done, and in turn we can keep the customer up to date too. We also use it to track special orders and back orders, as well as storing info on potential customers.

More recently I found it useful to post a spreadsheet and meeting outline that was necessary for all parties to look at and modify during a conference call.
posted by modernpoverty at 5:35 PM on November 24, 2008

There's a million things you could do. You've got:

1. Google Docs - collaborative work for students and staff too. Great way for internal development of documentation, but also great for class projects. Presentations, spreadsheets, docs and forms...oh, forms, simple, sweet and does the job with analytical reporting. Good for meetings too as a live record. Versioning built in.

2. Google Sites...again, not just for students and teachers, but staff too. Awesome way to develop collaborative web sites quickly and easily for projects. Also has versioning built in, plus file cabinet, etc., etc.. I documented our Google migration project on a Google site and am doing the same for other projects and services, which is a great way to learn the capabilities.

3. Start page? Great landing page for students and staff, especially with custom gadgets and a custom design.

4. Calendar...put your calendars online and send an email to all students inviting them to subscribe to it. Delegate event management to those that are responsible. If you want to be really fancy, I bet you could subscribe your students automatically using oAuth. Do an iCal export from your student information system and automatically update the google calendar (that's what I'm doing).

5. Have you enabled the all-users mailing list? Very handy in an emergency.

6. Chat?

7. Done any integration work yet? Single sign on?

8. Have you set up Google Analytics with google apps yet? Get some data.

9. Are you using the reporting API to get data out yet? Getting data may guide you.
posted by idb at 6:26 PM on November 24, 2008

This might help.
posted by vautrin at 4:27 AM on November 25, 2008