Google Apps Intro

This course was taught at Case Western Reserve University by Roger Zender.

You can visit Google Guides at CaseLearns:
http://researchguides.case.edu/content.php?pid=92130&sid=686301&search_terms=google+apps

G-mail:
I check my e-mail directly in G-mail, however G-mail can be set via i-map to Outlook or any other mail handler. I-map is a mirror image of G-mail and Outlook. So if you remove a file in Outlook it will be removed from G-mail.

All messages are set up to be in a conversation mode. Meaning that a string of content will always be included in one file. Personally, it took some getting used to this initially. However it does save space in our g-mail files.

Calendar:
Quick Add. This sets up a very fast posting.
Search options: I really haven't used this feature since it is not very prominent. However it make searching far more accurate. It uses Who, What and Where, plus more options to aid in searches.

Offline: To use this function you must download Google Gears. Google Calendar will give you read-only access to your calendars when there is no internet connection. This feature will download your events onto this computer. Please make sure you are not using a public or shared computer. You will need Gears for offline access, and the installer will restart your browser.

Sync: Is a help page to help clients get set up for Outlook and other mail handlers.

Start Page:
Is our home page for news and university information. By default, all content is Case related. However, other content such news, sports, weather and many other different content can be added.

Google Docs:
These are all open source programs that can export to Microsoft Office plus other office suites.
Options are for Documents (Word), Presentations (Power Point), Spreadsheets (Excel), Forms (this is rather a simple tool for creating quick forms and the results are e-mailed with as a spreadsheet). You can create folders to store selected documents. Finally, there is a folder to select pre-assigned templates.

Presenter: You can share, publish and embed. Also there is a small selection of templates to help clients to get started. Graphics and images can be imported.
Spreadsheet: We can right click on a cell to add gadgets such as graphs and metric dials.
Forms: This is not Survey Monkey but it does have it advantages such as template designs and being able to import graphics. As mentioned above the results are exported via e-mail as a spreadsheet.
Folders: Once there are created files can be "uploaded" into the folder.

Google Sites:
This is a feature not available on public G-mail. For the Case version we can use Google Sites to quickly create web sites. As the other offerings with Google, there are templates to get you web site up fast. You can even add logos. Of course these site would not meet the university's web template but for a temporary web page this could be very useful.

Google Apps is not and end all program but can be very useful especially since it is open source and all content can be import to other programs. This course was a very brief over review but revealed features that I was not aware of. I have been using g-mail for over a year and really see no reason to export my e-mail into outlook. It's main advantage is being able to check my e-mail from any computer. With experience I will find many more features that I will take advantage of.

Overall, two thumbs up.