New Gmail features: Quick access to contact details, improved autocomplete and Google+ circle integrations

Here's the latest updates from the Google Apps community  - http://bit.ly/JSL1kJ

The following new features are now available to Google Apps domains:
- Quick access to contact details: When searching for an email address, the results will now show you contact details in addition to that person's profile photo and the emails sent from and to them. From here, you can start a chat, call their phone and more. Plus, if your contacts have a Google+ profile, this information will stay up to date automatically.
- More circle integration and circle search: Users on Google Plus will also now see profile photos of people in their selected circle and circles are now supported in search and filters.
- Improved autocomplete predictions based on the content in your email.

The Latest Scheduled Google Apps Updates

Posted: 15 May 2012 08:00 PM PDT

The following features are now available to domains following the Scheduled Release track:

- Sites: Keyboard shortcuts in Sites editor
- Docs: Migration of documents to the newer documents editor
- Drive: The rollout of the “opt-in” phase of Google Drive to scheduled track domains. The “opt-in” phase consists of the following:

• Users can visit drive.google.com where they can opt-in to Drive. 
• As part of opting in, they will be shown an interstitial which includes this video. 
• If an opted in user visits docs.google.com, the user will be redirected to drive.google.com. 
• The “Documents” navigation item will change to “Drive.” 

The following features are intended for release to these domains on May 22nd:

- Docs: Comments and discussions available to Government domains.
- Gmail: Graduation of three labs: Message translation, Smart Mute and Title Tweaks.

More on the New Email Archiving for Google Apps.

Google Apps Vault Brings Information Governance to Google Apps

Here's insightful information about the new Email archiving for Google Apps:

@Greg, @patto @Dean & @Argon0 - Google Apps Vault is a completely new archiving solution, built from the ground up and working natively with Apps. While there is some overlap with Postini/GMD functionality as they both archive email for the purposes of retention and eDiscovery, there are key differences including:

1) Google Apps Vault is built natively in Google Apps and provides a true manage-in-place capability

2) Vault can archive on-the-record chat messages

3) Vault plans to support additional data types in the future (stay tuned for more information). GMD only supports email.

4) There is no time limit on retention. GMD has a maximum retention period of 10 years 

5) Easy set-up through the Apps CPanel. GMD has a separate, non-integrated user interface

6) Vault supports archiving email and on-the-record chat messages in all languages that Google Apps supports. GMD does not support as many languages, particularly double-byte languages. 

7) Vault can leverage existing migration tools for Gmail which gives customers more flexibility and can lower costs.

8) Vault can be deployed “on-demand” and immediately begin applying information governance policies to the data that exists in your domain’s Gmail inboxes (legacy and newly created data). GMD starts capturing messages from the time that it is deployed and requires Historic Message Journaling to load historical email into the GMD archive.

@ el Baker - We are working to enable EDUs to purchase Google Apps Vault and expect to have it soon. Stay tuned...

@T Mullenaux - Currently, Google Apps Vault can only be used together with Google Apps.

New Google Apps Control Panel Dashboard UI

New Google Apps Control Panel Dashboard UI

Released on 4/30/2012

Beginning Monday, April 30th, a new Control Panel Dashboard user interface will start to roll out over the next 2-3 weeks.

The new design simplifies the Dashboard layout and brings commonly used actions and setup tasks to the main page.

Google Apps for Education and Government customers will receive this update around late-May to early-June 2012.

Release track:
Rapid & Scheduled

Editions included:
Google Apps and Google Apps for Business

Languages included:
US English only (Next Generation release only) 

For more info - http://googleappsupdates.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-google-apps-control-panel-dashboard.html

New Gmail Features!

New Gmail features: YouTube video + image sharing, People widget, Adding people to Google Plus

Posted: 23 Apr 2012 04:30 PM PDT

Users on Google Plus will now see the following new features:
- Share YouTube videos and inline images in Gmail messages with one-click
- Add Google Plus users to circles directly from Gmail messages

Additionally, there is a new People Widget in the upper-right hand corner which will show the last three images a contact has sent. Clicking on the image will take you to that particular Gmail message.

Major Game Changer - eDiscovery for the SMB community!

 Google Apps Vault Brings Information Governance to Google Apps

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Posted by Jack Halprin, Head of eDiscovery, Google

Today we’re announcing the availability of Google Apps Vault (Vault) for Google Apps for Business customers. Vault is an easy-to-use and cost-effective solution for managing information critical to your business and preserving important data. It can reduce the costs of litigation, regulatory investigation and compliance actions. Businesses of all sizes need to be prepared for the unexpected. In today’s environment, using Vault to manage, archive and preserve your data can help protect your business. Litigation costs can really take a toll on a business when minor lawsuits can run up to many thousands of dollars, and larger lawsuits can cost even more. Significant litigation costs come from having to search and find relevant data, which is also known as electronic discovery (eDiscovery).
E-discovery can be part of virtually any litigation and requires you to search, find and preserve your electronic information such as email. Vault helps protect your business with easy-to-use search so you can quickly find and preserve data to respond to unexpected customer claims, lawsuits or investigations. With an instant-on functionality and availability of your data a few clicks away, Vault provides access to all of your Gmail and on-the-record chats and can provide significant savings to your business over the traditional costs of litigation and eDiscovery.



Additionally, Vault gives Google Apps customers the extended management and information governance capabilities to proactively archive, retain and preserve Gmail and on-the-record chats. With the ability to search and manage data based on terms, dates, senders, recipients and labels, Vault helps you find the information you need, when you need it. Vault gives management, IT, legal and compliance users a systemized, repeatable and defensible platform that will reduce the costs and risks of doing business. With just a few clicks, the business can access a service designed for security and providing auditable access to critical information.
Vault is built on the same modern, 100% web-based architecture as Google Apps. Unlike traditional solutions, it does not require a complex and costly IT environment, and can be deployed in a matter of minutes. Vault brings the security, ease-of-use and reliability of Google Apps to information governance. It can help meet the sophisticated requirements of large organizations and makes these advanced capabilities available to business of all sizes.
Google Apps Vault can be added to your Google Apps account for an additional $5 per user per month starting today, so contact our sales team or a Google Apps reseller if you are interested in signing up for Google Apps and Vault.
We hope that Vault, together with Google Apps, will make a difference to your business and provide the right solution to reducing risk and cost so you can focus on growing your business.

Merge cells vertically in Google spreadsheets

There are many times when you want to format your spreadsheets in a certain way to make your data easier to read and understand. Starting today, we’ve extended the merge functionality to let you create vertical merges across several rows of data.

In the spirit of the NFL season, let’s say you want to host a football tournament for your friends. To make it easier for them to cast their votes on the winning team, you organize the NFL teams by conference and division in a Google spreadsheet. Using vertical merges, you can assign headers to sets of rows. Simply select the set of cells you’d like to merge, then click on the down arrow next to the merge icon, and select Merge vertically.


In the NFL spreadsheet, you’ll see that some of the team names don’t fit on one line in the width of the cells of Column C.

To improve the formatting, select the cells across all the rows of teams in the AFC (rows 2-17) and 2 columns (C and D) and click Merge horizontally. You’ll have 16 merged cells that span 2 columns for better formatting.


After applying vertical merges to all of the conference and division headers and horizontal merges across the team names in each conference, you’re ready to share with your friends for the tournament!


To undo a merge action, select a merged cell and click Unmerge in the drop-down menu.