Google Apps Updates [December] - New sign-in page & Admin Hangout Controls

Notable new features include:

• New Sign in Page - Consistent sign-in pages across all apps products
• Admin Hangout Controls - Filter Hangouts features by employee
• Save Attachments Directly to Gmail - Save docs directly to Google Drive
• Domain-restricted G+ communities - Create a domain specific G+ community

Full release notes below...

How do you use Google Apps?

Google Apps is a productivity suite and we love hearing stories about teams being productive. Share your story with us and you just might be highlighted on our blog!

• Did you just finish a big project?
• Are you now able to offer better customer service?
• Have you saved time or money by switching?
• let us know!

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New Sign-in Page

Early 2014 the Google Apps sign-in page will be consistent across all apps services. Some key changes include: 

• Google Apps sign-in page can no longer be personalized with colors or logos.
• Users will have to log in with their full email address
• For SSO domains with a network mask, users will be presented with the new Google sign-in page when they log in from outside the SSO network mask. This change does not affect SSO domains without a network mask.

Source

Admin Controls for Hangouts

Customize what features are available to which employees. A few abilities include:

• restrict hangouts to internal-only
• set chat history to off by default
• can users within domain contact each other without an official invite
• video and audio chat can be turned off across the org

Source

Deploy 3rd party apps from admin console

Administrators are now able to find, manage and deploy 3rd-party applications directly from the Google Apps Admin Console. All 3rd party apps offer OAuth 2.0 security, single sign-on, and integration with Google services.

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Save attachments directly to Drive

Users are now able to save Gmail attachments directly to Google Drive without ever leaving Gmail. Simply click the Drive button when hovering over an attachment preview.

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Calendar events update with Google Group Changes

Google event invites sent to Google Groups will update their attendee lists automatically as people join and/or leave the group. As you join events will be added to your calendar and when you leave they will be removed.

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Domain restricted G+ communities

Now communities in Google+ can be restricted to your domain via the Admin console. Posts in these communities are only viewable by those within your domain. Public communities are still possible.

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Google Apps Updates [November] - New Google Bar, Hangouts w/ vault, more

Notable new features include:

• New Google bar - Easily accessible launcher menu near user icon
• Hangout For All - Hangouts are now accessible for those with Google Vault
• Google Docs for those without Google

Full release notes below...

Protect your Google Apps with e-archiving

Archive and retain emails and chats according to your policies, preventing inadvertent deletions.

• Ensure compliance
• Be prepared for audits
• Prevent deletion
• and more...

Learn More

New version of the Google bar

To access all of the Google Apps there is now a Google launcher button in the top right near your user icon.

Source

Hangouts for all

Customers using Google Apps Vault can now activate the new Hangouts in the Admin console. You will still have eDiscovery and legal-hold capabilities for your on-the-record/history-on chats, but the retention-purge function will not be available. To agree to the amendment, please log into the Admin console, go to Apps, click on Talk/Hangouts, go to Advanced Settings, and click “Enable Hangouts”.
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Google Docs for those without Google

files shared outside your domain to an email address not linked to an existing Google Account can be viewed without having to sign in or create a new Google Account. If a file is shared with edit or comment permissions, the recieving user must still sign in with a Google Account in order to edit or comment on that file.

This change is rolling out slowly to Rapid Release users starting today, once this rollout is complete, we will begin a slow rollout to Scheduled Release domains

Source

Google Apps Updates [October 2013]

Announcement - Gmail Outage Explanation

On September 23rd, many Gmail users were receiving messages slowly, and some of their attachments were unavailable. The message delivery delays were triggered by a dual network failure, where 2 redundant networks failed. Google has assured us they are taking steps to ensure sufficient network capacity, including backup capacity for Gmail, even in the event of a rare dual network failure. Even including this event, Gmail remains well above 99.9% available, and we intend to keep it that way!

Notable new features include:

• Monitor user logins, storage consumption and apps usage with the Admin SDK
• Quickoffice Acquired - Share & edit files with people that heaven't made the switch to Google Docs.
• Real-time data in BigQuery -using new API calls, you can stream & query real-time data. 
• 4 New Google Form Customizations

Full release notes below...

Protect your Google Apps with e-archiving

Archive and retain emails and chats according to your policies, preventing inadvertent deletions.

• Ensure compliance
• Be prepared for audits
• Prevent deletion
• and more...

Learn More

Monitor user logins, storage consumption and apps usage with the Admin SDK

New features have been added to the Admin SDK Reports API to more easily visualize Google Apps' usage within your domain. New API calls include:

• Login Audit - view all web browser based logins with IP information
• Authorized Applications - list of all 3rd party applications that users have shared data with
• Storage Quota - total usage and split by gmail, drive, G+ photos
• Google+ Usage - 1-day, 7-day, 30-day active G+ usage in your domain

Source

Get Your IT Project Approved

At a tech event I attended recently I asked a room full of IT Directors if they would say that internally marketing and selling a technology project to their leadership was one of the main hurdles in keeping their company’s technology infrastructure healthy. The feedback was a unanimous yes.

This topic comes up over and over with IT Directors I come into contact with.

How does an IT Director go about getting a technology project approved by Operations and a budget allocated from Finance? And all within increasingly shorter time frames so that productivity gains can be made without falling significantly behind competitors who were quicker in snapping up [insert your favorite technology game-changer here]?

Current Environment

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that, according to a Gartner CIO survey, since the 2002 dot-com bust IT budgets have been flat to negative and for 2013 are expected to shrink. IT departments must also wrestle with lean human resource allocations and nothing to speak of as far as the luxury of an IT team member who is well-versed in sales and marketing and can create the business case for a technology project.

The scenario I see over and over is that the IT team knows how to select a solution and plan a project that will have favorable ROI results for the company, but not the time/expertise to articulate it to leadership.

Needing a Paradigm Shift

What it really boils down to are the non-IT people (aka the Operations and Finance folks). More often than not they still view their company’s entire IT budget as pure cost, which is why they want to cut it every year because in their mind technology dollars, like keeping the lights on, the roof repaired and the trash taken out is all about minimizing cost. Just find the cheapest option and we’re good.

The truth is that while a portion of an IT budget is to keep the phones ringing and the computers booting, increasing percentages of IT budgets are really strategic spends, not cost at all. By recognizing and allocating strategic IT dollars they enable the IT team to find, select, and implement technology that will increase the overall productivity and efficiency of the entire organization. If spent correctly a strategic IT budget can mean that for every dollar spent, two or even three dollars can be realized in efficiency benefits.

Wearing Someone Else’s Shoes

As IT actions become more important to the strategic success of companies, the IT team needs to be better at communicating to other departments.

One example that comes to mind is a client, that I’ve been helping over the last couple of months, who was looking for a new messaging and collaboration system to replace their aging Exchange environment.

After working with the IT Director to choose the right solution we both sat down and planned out the “sales plan” to make the case to the CFO. We worked together to create and provide the CFO with end-user demos and feature overviews of the solution, ROI calculations of the new solution (Google Apps for Business in this case) vs alternatives (a new Exchange server or Office365), a change management training plan, and a budget.

Because the right solution was chosen by the IT Director, the evidence that the analysis and collateral pointed to was a pretty straightforward “yes,” that the CFO was able to deliver with confidence, and the project was able to move forward.

Best Practice

When getting approvals from Operations and Finance for a technology project take the time to give them what they need to be able to confidently say “yes”. Concentrate on metrics that matter to them, ROI calculations, compelling feature-sets, comparisons of alternatives, provide them with the change management plan and scaling expectations of the new solution to meet the needs of the organization over time.

Michael Jefferies' passions include volunteering at orphanages in Asia to brainstorming with other Newminders on how to make workflows better. He is happiest when problems are being solved and work is becoming more fun and efficient.

Since joining Newmind in April 2012, Michael has been consulting with clients to discover their organizational objectives and working alongside them to identify, analyze, and implement technologies that can help take them there. He believes that IT budgets are not merely a cost of doing business, but instead an opportunity to increase fun, efficiency and profitability.

Building fire knocks out network, Chromebooks help county clerk restore service

The phone call came on a Thursday afternoon and Friday morning I was in my car on my way to downtown Mount Clemens to deliver several Chromebooks to Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds Carmella Sabaugh, and her employees to help get them through this crisis...

The Fire

On Wednesday, April 17th, 2013, the Macomb County Building in downtown Mount Clemens, Michigan, had an electrical fire that destroyed the fiber, network and phone connections to the county’s data center, displacing 200 employees and several departments. See, “State of Emergency: Hackel says County Building shut down for months following fire,” Macomb Daily, April 19, 2013.


Thankfully no one was hurt.


As any IT professional can imagine, this was a major event, critically disrupting technology service across departments. The wiring, which connected the county network to the data was burned. Since the fire, users had to do their best to carry on with paper documents, a frantic return to carbon copies and limited phone service.

What about the data?! How much did Macomb County lose? How much work will it require to reconstitute the data?

The Silver Lining

Macomb County recently switched to Google Apps for Government, including secure Gmail services for most employees, which means their email is hosted in Google’s secure data centers and is accessible from any device with an Internet connection, anywhere.

This is disaster business continuity redefined and is a huge life-saver for Google Apps users, including Macomb County employees. None of their email data was lost. Although the network was disrupted, email remained accessible from cell phones and other Internet devices. Fortunately, thanks to heroic efforts by the county’s IT Department, no other data was lost, either.

Prior to the switch to Google Apps this may not have been the case, to put it simply.

“I am even more pleased with our County Executive’s decision to ‘go Google.’ Our staff maintained Gmail communication throughout the emergency. We only needed an Internet connection after the fire to start quickly restoring some services,” said Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds Carmella Sabaugh.

Chromebooks being delivered to Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds Carmella Sabaugh and Administrative Assistant Crystal Brenner by Michael Jefferies.

How does Newmind fit into this story?

Signaled by the Bat Light. Newmind Brought out the Bat Mobile

Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds Carmella Sabaugh and her department integrated their workflow with Google Apps for Government and developed a solid relationship with Google in order to share their experiences with other organizations considering moving their email services to Google. When the fire struck, Carmella’s staff contacted Google to see if there was anyway to get a few Chromebooks to use for displaced workers due to the fire.

Who did Google call? Their trusty, go-to partner Newmind Group.

Here’s where that phone call comes into play, and I got in my car and drove to Mount Clemens to drop off several Chromebooks.

“We were thrilled when Newmind stepped forward to provide Chromebooks for use on the Macomb County Circuit Court Building’s wireless Internet network. Even though the county’s servers were down, our email, calendars and documents were accessible with the Chromebooks,” said Macomb County Clerk / Register of Deeds Carmella Sabaugh.

“We are using the Chromebooks to provide public service at our temporary public real estate records search area for our Register of Deeds counter. We are also using Chromebooks to access our email, calendars, and documents and to track security paper.”

Having never used a Chromebook before, and having no IT background, Macomb County Register of Deeds employee Traci Thompson became the department’s Chromebook administrator after a 15-minute crash-course on connecting to the wireless network. This photo shows Chromebooks provided by Newmind at the temporary Register of Deeds public search counter in the Court Building.

Backup & Disaster Recovery

It was very motivating to see in practice how cloud-based technologies, like Google Apps, can ensure that data isn’t lost, service isn’t interrupted, and even when bad stuff happens, the right technology can reduce and even eliminate damages. All I could think about was the other organizations across the country who have not yet made the transition to the next generation of backup, redundancy and disaster recovery tools?

If we can help them make the transition to these tools then we can help them avoid scenarios like the one Macomb is facing now. Our disaster recovery solutions allow servers to be spun up virtually in the cloud within 5 minutes of failure. In Macomb’s case, that would have meant that only minutes after the fire, all data, not just Google Apps, would have been accessible via the cloud.

Learn More About Data Backup

Schedule a 1:1 consultation with Newmind Group and learn how we can help with:

• Reduced Downtime & Data Loss During a Disaster
• Data protection for multiple platforms and devices
• Application Aware backups

Schedule

Michael Jefferies' is happiest when problems are being solved and life is becoming more awesome.

At Newmind, Michael consults with clients to discover their organizational objectives and works alongside them to identify, analyze, and implement technologies that can help take them there. He believes that technology is not merely a part of business, but in fact provides endless opportunities to increase fun, efficiency and profitability.

Password Security and Protecting Yourself Online

There is a 14 year old right now in their parents' basement on a computer. They don’t know your password, but with a little time and ingenuity they could get into your email account. Once they’re in your email account, it’s just a matter of time before they’re in your Amazon, Netflix, bank, and even Paypal. Heck, even public figures have learned the hard way that password reminder tools can hurt just as much as they can help.

That password that stands between you and chaos, can be a string of six alphanumerics or if you’re a real overachiever it might be 16 characters and substitute a $ for an S. Ohhhh, tricky.

The thing is, that pa5$w0rd helps spread a false perception that your online data is secure. These days, accounts are daisy chained together for your convenience, but it’s pretty convenient for a hacker too. How many sites are setup with your email address as your username? How many other sites are setup to login with your Facebook or Twitter account? Get one and you’ve got them all, and that’s not hard to do with some of your personal information that’s publicly available and easily found online.


Hackers compromise data every day, and it doesn’t always make the headlines. For every incident of Anonymous taking down the banks and government agencies in Israel that makes national news, there are countless others that don’t. Hospitals, schools, insurance agencies, NASA. If they can get in there, your little email account is no sweat.

The move to the cloud has been a slow one, so it’s no wonder that we’ve been lulled into complacency.  In the early days of the internet, the “cloud” was barely a vapor, so your passwords could reasonably serve their purpose as their were few avenues of mayhem that a hackers could follow.

Now though, your photos, documents, money, communications... they’re all in the cloud. They’re safe from physical destruction there. A fire, flood, or hurricane can’t compromise them, but as these online accounts have blossomed, online providers have acquiesced to the user desire for convenience and have created a system riddled with vulnerability. We’ve been told that our savior here is the password, but the notion of a “strong” password is a lollypop we’re given to cover up the bitter taste of inherent weaknesses in the system.

Passwords can be guessed, stolen, cracked, lifted, and reset. Yes, people still choose terrible passwords. Yes, people recycle usernames and passwords from site to site. Yes, criminals can be tricky and make you think you’re doing one thing when you’re really doing another. And yes, the bad guys can take much more nefarious levels of tricking you. Then end result is the same though.

So what can you do? I mean, this is all pretty bleak! Short of installing a usb retina scanner or moving to the hills and going off the grid, what are your options?

There are actions you can take. There are actions you should take. And now.

1. Two factor verification. 
Some sites use multiple factors to authenticate the user at login. These can be knowledge factors (something you know like a password or PIN), inherence factors (something you are like a biometric of some sort), and possession factors (something you have like a mobile device or IT card). 

If you’re using Google Apps, you can enable 2-step verification for your domain to add that extra layer of security. Once it’s been enabled for your domain, the user selects the method for receiving their verification code on their mobile device: text message, phone call, via the Authenticator app on smartphones. 

After the initial setup, at the next login the user will enter their username and password as usual, then on a second page they will be prompted to enter their verification code from their phone. 

This two factor authentication is just the start for the Google, who is looking into other methods of verification and is vigilant at watching the patterns of your account and letting you know if anything odd happens. 

What happens if a device is lost or stolen? Google Apps supports Mobile Device Management tools, and Android devices that are registered in the Account Admin Panel can be remotely wiped if they might be compromised. 

2. Lie to your security questions.
Trick ‘em. What city were you born in? Where did you honeymoon? What is your mother’s maiden name? The Sea of Tranquility, Xanadu, and Mad Max. If it’s something I can look up on your Facebook page, it’s not something that should be guarding you online. Make up answers and stop being so predictable. 

3. Create a new email account. 
Make a whole new email account that isn’t tied to your name, and use it only for your password resets. If you use a password manager like LastPass, tie that to this new email account as well. The key is to NOT have all of your eggs in one basket, and to stop daisy chaining everything together. 

4. Have some password savvy. 
Substituting numbers for letter is sooooo 2010.  Most hacking tools have these built into their tools now, so stop it. But don’t use dictionary words either, unless you’re using a string of them. Simplicity, length, and variance are all factors to consider when you’re choosing passwords. 

5. Erase the loose ends.
Head over to spokeo.com and search for yourself.
Freaked out yet? It’s easy to hop on sites like Spokeo, Pipl, or Whitepages and find out the basics to start an attack, but it’s also simple to preemptively go on those sites and have your listing removed. Do it. 

We didn’t want to bring you a bunch of doom and gloom to darken your day, but being on the cloud in this day and age means being vigilant in keeping your data as safe as you can. Luckily, if you’re using Google Apps, there are some extra measures you can easily take that will make you that much safer online.

Security training. Auditing. Two factor authorization. It can all be a little overwhelming. If you have any questions about online security tools, or how to incorporate them into your business, contact Newmind today. As always, we’re here to help.

Tech Tip: Most Often Missed Gmail Labs

By Steve Chang, Google Apps Certified Deployment Engineer




Customization has always been in my blood from cars, sportbikes, and even PCs. It is a way to personalize something that you own to something that you enjoy. Sometimes when you are given something that is a very useful system like Google Apps for Business, you just want to personalize and squeeze out more performance. That is where you find Google Labs.



As you may know, Google engineers are encouraged to take 20 percent of their time to work on something company-related that interests them personally and that they are passionate about. Although Google Labs has stopped producing new products, many are still available for your Google Mail enjoyment. Here are my top 3 picks of Google Mail Labs currently available to customize your Google Mail accounts, so here we go.

#3: Canned Responses
Within communication in any industry, there has always been a time where you typed the same email over and over again making both the process and the material monotonous. At least with the Canned Responses lab, you reduce some of your time in tedium by building templates you can efficiently revise. This will allow you to build your emails quickly without the need of re-typing or copy/pasting repeatedly. Another great feature of this Lab is that you can create a filter that will use a Canned Response to auto-reply to emails with specific search criteria. Who wouldn’t want that?

#2: Insert Images
For a long time you could not add images in-line with text within an outgoing email and could only attach the file or photo to the email to download first before viewing. Enabling the insert images lab will add a little picture icon across the top of the Compose section that will allow you to embed images into your email. You can insert and attach from your PC or from an URL on a website. Now you can paste those funny Memes to your fellow co-workers quickly and make them readily viewable.

#1: Signature Tweaks
When you first compose your email after creating a Signature in your Email Settings, your signature shows up at the bottom of the email. When you reply to an email, though, your quoted text shows up above the Signature that you thoughtfully made. The recipient will need to scroll down to the bottom of the email in order to find your contact information or to just marvel at your creation. Signature Tweaks under Gmail Labs places the Signature above the Quoted text so that it will always show up to your recipients just below the new email or email response.

There are quite a few more Gmail Labs available in the list presented to you under your Email Settings > Labs tab in your Google Mail account. So what are you waiting for? Go on and enable some Gmail Labs for yourself.

Greenleaf Hospitality Group chooses Google Apps

Greenleaf Hospitality Group, recently named among the 50 Most Engaged Workplaces in the U.S., is a hospitality management company that oversees two hotels, five ice arenas, seven restaurants, two retail shops, a spa, and is currently 800+ employees strong. Their locations and employees are spread out across an entire state, and employees can often be found on the road between locations. Getting them data when they need it is crucial to operations. Recently, Greenleaf was looking at opportunities that would allow them to move away from their aging and undersized IT system, including Exchange.

Michael Cross
Dir. of Technology Services

“We were looking at changing our entire infrastructure, and email was at the top of the list,” explains Michael Cross, Director of Technology Services. “We had explored staying with Exchange, as well as moving to a cloud solution like Office365 or Google Apps.”



Greenleaf was looking at finding better tools for their employees who were always on the go, to help them stay on top of projects and reports at their many locations.

“I was already familiar with the many benefits of Google Apps, and I already knew of Newmind as a Google Apps partner,” Michael continued. “In the end it really boiled down to cost being the most significant factor in our decision. Google Apps was 30% less than the cost of Office365, and only half the cost of using a self-managed Exchange server. When we calculated the ROI, we discovered Apps would pay for itself in only 18 months.”

Greenleaf Hospitality Group decided to make the switchover with a well-planned “rip and replace” strategy. “Only a dozen or so users had been given a preview of the new tools,” Michael said. “But everything went as smoothly as we could have imagined it to go. The Exchange server caused complete data migration to take longer than we would have liked,  but the entire cutover took four hours at the most.”

“Having Newmind Group manage our deployment was a critical success factor,” Michael goes on to say, “Doing it ourselves would have been possible, but there were a lot of ‘gotcha’ moments that would have delayed our efforts. Having Newmind Group involved helped us plan and get those roadblocks out of the way. Newmind’s assistance with training was also essential. They enabled a seamless, smooth process.”

The biggest benefit Greenleaf has seen since their move to Google Apps has been that now all of the employees can access their email from any device, anywhere. “As an IT guy, I really appreciate the freedom I can now give my colleagues to use what they like. The Android people are happy, the iPhone people are happy. Plus, my IT staff are happy now that we no longer have to support old devices that were losing their value and functionality.” Michael explains.

Prior to the switch, Greenleaf employees were locked into using antiquated devices as their only option for handhelds. They were difficult to work on and incapable of performing the functions employees yearned for, but the company was locked in. They had zero choices if they wanted to be able to access their email. If an off-site employee didn’t have a company-issued device they were forced to trudge through a complex vpn connection. One employee recounted a time when, in the legacy system, they were out of the office and needed to check their email. “After an hour of unsuccessfully trying to connect to the Exchange mail server with the vpn, I simply gave up,” the employee said. “When I returned to work the next day I discovered that there had been a crisis in my absence. Because of my inability to access my email, what could have taken seconds to clear up (with Google Apps) instead took days to rectify.”

By harnessing the power of the cloud, Google Apps has enabled Greenleaf Hospitality Group staff members to access their email, calendar, and documents from any device anywhere in the world.
In terms of delving deep into all of their new tools, Greenleaf’s training intentionally only covered the basics, leaving employees with the freedom to explore everything else on their own. “Now we’re starting to see widespread adoption. Chat was the big one to become adopted first, and now we’re starting to see people using forms. A lot of users are not computer savvy, but the fact that they are finding these tools on their own and are using them is amazing,” Michael says. “We’re lucky to have users that are used to and willing to accept change.”

“In hindsight, I can honestly say that every aspect of switching to Google Apps with Newmind went really well. The biggest success factor for me is that on the switchover day our CEO was on vacation and was able to get his email. He was on a boat, in Alaska, in the middle of nowhere, and he was able to get his email and reply to it,” Michael laughs. “In fact, as an organization we decided we should use this project as a tool to measure all future projects on how smooth and painless they should be.”

Newmind vs. Google: Where should I purchase my Apps?

What's the Difference?

Clients sometimes ask us why they should buy or renew their licenses with Newmind instead of directly from Google? This table below illustrates the advantages of a relationship with Newmind as your Google Partner. You can think of Newmind as that layer of Customer Service for your Google Apps, so it’s kind of like getting two great companies for the price of one.

Where should I buy my Google Apps licenses?
	Google	Newmind
Google's innovative communication and collaboration tools	✓	✓
Allow Credit Card payments	✓	✓
Allow Check payments		✓
Quick and easy resolution to billing questions	maybe	every time
Email based ticket support*	✓	✓
Immediate human support*		✓
Able to escalate support requests		✓
Complimentary User Training Live Webinars		✓
Complimentary Office Hours Q&A Sessions		✓
App Integration Advice		✓
App Integration deployment, customization, and training		✓
Email Archiving and Security	✓	✓
Total Cost Per User	$50	$50

Billing
Google offers automated credit card payments only, whereas with Newmind you can pay and renew with credit card or check. Pay your bill the way your Accounting Department finds most comfortable.

Support
Answers to your questions can be found in forums from time to time, or you can send Google an email and wait. Working with Newmind as your Google Partner allows you to use our connections at Google and "escalate" support requests on your behalf. Newmind also offers enhanced phone support and end user helpdesk support for an additional fee.

Training
Google Apps is an amazing suite of applications that ease communication and collaboration. We adore it and that's why we became a Google Partner. There are two things that Google doesn't do though: Deployments and Training. Newmind offers a variety of training options, so you can choose what's best for your environment and budget: live webinars, on-site training, or eLearning videos and courseware. Even after the deployment is over and you're on your way to becoming an Apps Wizard in your own right, Newmind offers ongoing education for our customers through our training portal. 

Integration Advice
Wondering what Marketplace add-ons would be a good fit for your businesses' need? Just ask. Newmind is happy to provide advice and guidance regarding which additional applications integrate best with Google Apps. We'll also customize, deploy, and train your staff on these applications for an additional fee. 

Google Security and Archiving
You can go to Google directly for security and archiving, but there's a hearty minimum to that order to the tune of $1500. Newmind can offer that same service for organizations with as few as 5 users. 

Office365: Baby I'm Leaving You

Consider what would happen to your business if your ability to email disappeared for a month.

One company who contacted Newmind recently was faced with that exact scenario. Their email was inoperable for an entire month, decimating their main means of communication with their clients and potential clients. We’ve seen companies come to us for different reasons, from a lot of different solutions, but this one really stood out. That solution? Office365.

Stern Estate isn’t a company that exists on computers, it exists in one-on-one relationships with the people they are helping, and their email system is simply a necessary tool they use to get the job done. 



“Stern is a pretty small company.” says Joe Shields. “My mother-in-law, the owner, as well as the four other employees, aren’t particularly tech savvy. Their strengths lie in helping their clients. In fact, they’d probably say they are more comfortable with a pen and paper than a mouse and keyboard. I can get around a computer decently enough so I’ve ended up as the de facto tech go-to guy for the business.”

For a long time, Stern had been using an online Exchange solution (Microsoft Business Productivity Online Standard Suite, or BPOS)  and were pleased with their choice. In fact, the only time they would even think about the system that supported them was when they’d forget their password and need it reset. It worked for them. They were fine with their system, that is, until the service they were using became Office365, and they were forced to migrate. 


“When Microsoft moved us to Office365 the problems started immediately.” Joe explains. “We couldn’t get it to work on our Macs, in particular, and even our PC users had issues accessing their emails.” Like any rational person, Joe’s first step was to call customer service. “Dealing with the Office365 customer service department was, frankly, laughable. Every time we called we were given a different case number, so each phone call required us to explain and re-explain our issue with each case never properly tracked.” says Joe. Microsoft was nice enough to copy Stern Estate on internal emails discussing the case. Nice, right? Sure, except that the emails they were being copied on were private discussions between Microsoft employees, scolding each other on not handling the Stern case properly. They were unwittingly cc’ing Stern, detailing their own errors!




“After a month of back and forth with the Office365 customer service, we were finally able to figure out that the reason we were having trouble accessing our email was because, apparently, while they could confirm payment of the licenses with billing, they were unable to verify those same licenses in our account, ” Joe continues. “I was relieved to have finally found the issue but at the same time I was pretty frustrated because we had lost a month’s worth of email. Sterns’ revenue was heavily impacted simply because Microsoft couldn’t effectively communicate our purchase of Office365 licenses to the necessary people. We weren’t even new customers. We had a history with them of always paying our bills on time before they made us switch from a hosted Exchange to Office365.”

“Well we finally knew what the issue was, but they still couldn’t get their ducks in a row and we still couldn’t get our emails flowing. We were looking at $80,000 in lost business with no resolution in sight. That was it for me. We contacted Newmind Group and one of their engineers, Steve, got us started on the switch to Google Apps for Business.” says Joe. “The first thing Steve and I had to do was to get Stern Estate’s email backlog out of Office365 and migrated into Google Apps, but we even had problems with the Office365 people there. They basically threw up roadblocks and wouldn’t allow us access to our own data while they ‘tried’ to get it working,” Joe explains. 

In desperation, Joe emailed Bill Gates.

Joe acknowledges that his email likely never made it to Bill Gates, so it may just be a coincidence, but after that email, Microsoft seemed to get their act together a bit. “I finally started to see movement. Steve and I stayed persistent and the Office365 people finally allowed us access to our information,” Joe says.

“I’m relieved and happy to say that after all that, Steve and I were able to get all the Stern employees up and running in Google Apps and finally able to access their email again. And since our migration to Apps, the service has been seamless. Furthermore,” Joe concludes, “we are very happy with the technical skill and experience that Steve and Newmind provided us. Steve made coming out of a very difficult situation much less painful. He explained things clearly and concisely, without any talking down to our less technical staff members.”

Stern Estate contacted Microsoft again, after their exit from Office365, to try and negotiate a reimbursement for the month of lost business that they suffered during the time that 365 was inaccessible. Microsoft was kind enough to offer them a little something for their trouble. Apparently that little something would have roughly covered a round of lattes for the staff. 


Emails from Microsoft are still coming to Joe too. They’re very eager to work out the licensing issue and think they’re thiiiiiiiis close to figuring it out.

Chromebooks :: Gen 2 is Here

Like a little brother taking his driver’s exam, Chromebooks are coming of age. When they made their debut last year, there were some naysayers who questioned the usability of a device that merged the OS and thebrowser, but as more and more people have moved their lives to the cloud, the viability of the Chromebook seemed more inevitable.

Schools in particular have been enamored with the ease of fleet management, quick start up, and long battery life of the Chromebook. Corporations have taken notice too of how Chromebooks can be a remedy for a lot of what ails them and cure some of their hardware headaches.

Early adoption can be hard when the innovation is untested in the real world. If you were waiting for some of the Chromebooks kinks to get worked out before you jumped in, mark... set... go...


Google and Samsung paired up again and just released the second generation of Chromebooks. These new devices bear a striking resemblance to their predecessor, but with a nice processor upgrade and 4GB memory upgrade that for you translates into speed. Faster browsing, faster start up, and faster response times.

What else should you expect?

• better scaling and multi window support
• app launcher bar with ability to pin apps
• support to view more file formats
• Google Drive support
• Google Docs offline support coming soon!
• new media player
• built in photo editor and uploader

In addition to the new Chromebook device, Google and Samsung are also unveiling the Chromebox. The Chromebox is a small and portable pc that can connect to any keyboard, mouse, or monitor. It boasts Bluetooth, 6 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI & DVI output, and 4GB Ram among other goodies.

There are also some changes afoot regarding the pricing structure for the admin panel that will be a nice boon to organizations who manage fleets of Chromebooks.

With all of these announcements and press releases hitting the tech news and blogs, Newmind is ready for your inevitable questions. Click here and let us know what’s on your mind.

Maybe I Drive, Maybe You Walk

I admit since Google announced the Drive I haven’t been able get R.E.M.'s Drive out of my head, but I don’t mind too much because it’s a great song and I haven’t listened to it in far too long.  Feel free to hum as you read on.

Remember diskettes?

They were coaster sized and coaster shaped, and you likely had a special container to hold all of these plastic and metal nuggets of data storage.

They were standard features in office landscapes until they gave way to the Flash Drive. Now there was a slick method of moving your info from point A to point B. If you lost the little guy though, you could always go back to the tried and true method of emailing yourself a file. Oh wait. You still email yourself files?

Enter Google Drive

If you’ve used Google Docs before you’re already halfway there. Essentially, Google Drive is what Google Docs was, but now you can put anything in there. Word documents, pdf, jpg, eps, wav, psd, indd, ttf, csv, you get the idea. You can put anything you want to in your Drive then have it with you wherever you log in to your Gmail account whether you’re at home, the office, the park, or the grocery store. 


Intimidated at the thought of uploading all your info to Drive? Google thought of that too. You download and install the Drive App, and voila! All of your Drive files are located on your local computer. After that, you just move files onto your local Drive, then leave them to sync to the cloud on their own. The cloud Drive and the local Drive are always in sync so all your stuff is just there whenever you need it, wherever you need it.

The exciting part about Drive too is that Google doesn’t want you to just be able to store your files on the cloud, they want you to be able to edit your files on the cloud! How cool is it to be able to walk into a coffee shop, order up a large salted caramel mocha (yum!), then fire up your massive AutoCAD file and start editing it on the cloud. The same goes for image editing. With a single (free!) Chrome Web Store add on, you can clone, heal, blur, and adjust the levels of your psd files. I’m not even kidding.

What does this mean if you’re on Google Apps?

Drive can be the glue that ties Google Apps together. Yes, GMail is great, and what would you do without Calendar? Even Sites and Blogger are powerful tools, but Drive creates a foundation that gives those other tools a whole new level of functionality. Collaborate on and share any of your files, not just Docs files. Even search through your files using Google’s powerful search algorithms and Drive’s character recognition.

Apps users will love the way Drive integrates with their workflow. I know I do. I can attach photos and images from Drive to posts in Google+ and into Docs that I’m creating. They’re saying that soon we’ll be able to attach directly into Gmail from Drive too.

Drive has the same infrastructure as the other Google Apps services you already use, meaning it has the same management tools, security, uptime guarantee, data replication, and 24/7 support. 

How do you get more storage?

The short answer here is to contact Newmind Group. Drive is still very new, and depending on your organization’s new feature roll out preferences it might be hard to find all of the settings on your own. Directions for doing this yourself are out there, but with redesigns of the control panel underway right now, you might be setting yourself up for a little frustration.

Google starts each Apps user off with 5GB of storage for free and administrators can purchase and manage more storage for the team (Google Docs don’t count against the storage quota). That would be enough for 1000 songs, some hi-res scans of your baby pictures, your resume and work samples, and your archive of college term papers. If you want to upgrade for some more room to breathe, you can add 20GB for $4/per month up to the monster storage solution 16TB.

If your Apps account uses online monthly billing, you can activate Google Drive storage licenses on a flexible plan, meaning that you only get charged for the licenses that are actively assigned to users. 

If your account uses the annual billing, you buy a set number of Drive storage licences for the year and assign or reassign that storage as you like throughout the year. The rub with the annual plan is that all of the storage licenses you purchase, even one purchased months after the initial purchase, will expire on the same date as the original subscription, and all purchases are non-refundable, so it's important to know your users and their habits before you buy storage for them. 

There will undoubtedly be things coming down the pipe fast and furious from the Drive Team (and I suggest download links a la Dropbox), but fresh out of the gate it's a pretty big game changer when used in conjunction with Apps for Business. 

What about the diskettes? I think I saw on Instructables on how to make a tote out of them. Emailing yourself files? Get the Drive.