More BYOD management features for Android devices

Posted by Heman Khanna, Software Engineer, Google Apps for Business

More than ever, people are bringing their own mobile phones and tablets to work. This "bring your own device" (BYOD) trend appeals to companies that want their employees to be productive on the go, with devices they enjoy using. As an admin, your role in a BYOD environment is to make sure users keep their mobile devices secure.

Comprehensive mobile device management is included with Google Apps for Business, Government and Education. Organizations large and small can manage smartphones and tablets - including Android and iOS - right from the Google Apps Admin console, with no need for special hardware or software.

Today we’re adding new Android device management features based on top requests from our customers.

1. Selective wipe - Remove Google Apps account data without wiping a user’s entire device. 
2. SD card wipe - During a full device wipe, wipe SD cards in addition to the internal memory.
3. Device Policy app - Ensure that security policies are enforced across all devices by requiring the latest version of the Device Policy app. 
4. Wi-Fi configuration - Enter wi-fi settings in the Admin console once -- and they'll be automatically pushed out to all managed Android devices.

Android users can stay connected on the go with mobile apps like Gmail, Drive and Hangouts. Admins can manage their domain with the new mobile Admin app. And admins can let employees bring their own devices to work while keeping those devices secure and saving their employees time with Google Apps device management.

To learn more about these mobile device management features, visit our Help Center or start managing devices right away by visiting your Admin console at admin.google.com.

READ MORE - More BYOD management features for Android devices

New mobile Admin app

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google Apps

To make it easier for Google Apps administrators to manage their users, services and devices, we recently announced a redesigned Admin console. Two weeks ago, we made the new Admin SDK available to developers who want to build customized tools for organizations that use Google Apps.

Today we're launching the Google Admin app for Android devices. The Admin app makes it easy for admins to use their Android phone or tablet to accomplish the most common tasks—such as quickly adding or suspending users, resetting passwords, managing group memberships, and directly calling or emailing specific users.

This app is designed for admins and requires API access to be enabled. Install the Google Admin app from Google Play. To learn more or contact support, visit the Help Center.

READ MORE - New mobile Admin app

Round-up: Google I/O news for business, government and education customers

Posted by Amit Singh, President, Google Enterprise

Yesterday, we kicked off the 6th annual Google I/O developer conference, with over 6,000 people attending live in San Francisco and millions more around the world tuning in to the livestream. The conference this year focused on a growing trend that affects our lives at home, at work and at school: the move towards a multi-screen world. In this world, tablets and mobile phones are quickly becoming as commonplace—and as useful—as desktop and laptop computers.

As you shift between devices, your experience should be seamless. And the same tools you use in your personal life should be available in the workplace, so you can work the way you live. To that end, here are some highlights from this week that are particularly relevant to our business, government and education customers—including tools for developers, features to simplify your life, and new ways to connect and collaborate with others.

Tools for developers:

• Google Cloud Platform: We announced that Google Compute Engine—which provides a fast, consistently high-performance environment for running virtual machines—is now available to anyone by visiting cloud.google.com. We also introduced Google Cloud Datastore, added the PHP runtime to Google App Engine, and added sub-hour billing charges so you don’t pay for compute minutes that you don’t use. 
• Admin SDK: The new Admin SDK lets developers build customized administrative tools for organizations that use Google Apps. The SDK consolidates many of the existing domain APIs into a new uniform structure and introduces new functionality with the Directory API and Reports API. 
• Google+ API for businesses: The new Google+ API for businesses is now available as a pilot for developers who want to build apps that handle tasks like auto-provisioning Circles and reading or writing posts.

Simplify your life:

• Gmail: New quick action buttons in Gmail are designed to help you get things done faster and take action on an email without ever having to open it -- like opening a Google document that’s been shared with you or responding to a calendar invitation. And we’re beginning to roll out a new integration between Google Wallet and Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and colleagues directly within Gmail—even if they don’t have a Gmail address. 
• Unified storage: Google Apps customers will now have 30 GB of unified storage to use between Drive, Gmail, and Google+ photos. Just as before, files created in Docs, Sheets and Slides don't count against your storage quota. As a result of this change, Gmail inboxes for Google Apps customers are no longer limited to 25 GB -- any additional storage you purchase can be shared and used by Gmail. 
• Nexus tablets and Google Play for Education: There are now 25 million students, faculty and staff around the world using Google Apps for Education. Later this year, Google will expand its education offering beyond Chromebooks and Apps to include Nexus tablets and Google Play for Education. Schools will be able to efficiently manage tablets and discover, purchase and distribute content and applications with ease. Schools who want to receive information about the program when it launches later this year should complete the interest form available at google.com/edu/android.

Connect and collaborate with others:

• Google+: The new look and feel for Google+ brings a modern design to the stream and makes it easier than ever for you to connect with colleagues and quickly learn more about topics or posts that interest you. The new Google+ also looks and feels the same across all your devices.
• Hangouts: Apps customers now have the option to replace chat in Gmail and Talk on Android with a new version of Hangouts that combines text, photos and live video calls across desktops, laptops, as well as Android and iOS phones and tablets. The new Hangouts is designed to help bring all of your real-life conversations online, across any device or platform. Just as before, Apps customers can invite up to 15 colleagues to a video call.

Hangouts brings video calls and messaging across all you devices

Work doesn’t always need to feel like work. Technology should make your life easier, so you can get work done more efficiently and focus on what really matters: building your business, teaching your students, or serving your constituents.

Google I/O continues through the end of tomorrow. Tune in to live sessions at google.com/io.

READ MORE - Round-up: Google I/O news for business, government and education customers

New Google Admin console

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google Apps

Every day, millions of businesses, schools and government agencies rely on Google Apps to get their work done. And each of these organizations has an administrator (or a team of admins) responsible for tasks like creating new accounts, managing mobile devices, and specifying exactly which products and features their employees can use.

Starting today, we’re introducing a few changes to the Google Admin console to make it easier for admins to do their jobs:

• Accomplish tasks faster: Navigating to the right setting should be fast, and with new logical groupings admins can find settings like delegated administration right under the Admin Roles control.
• Customize the Admin console: Drag and drop the controls you need into the place that makes sense -- and remove the ones you don't need.
• Get to the Admin console more easily: There is no need to remember a long URL like google.com/a/domain.com or search for the “manage domain” link in Gmail. Just type the new URL (admin.google.com) and log in directly to the Admin console.

These changes to the Admin console will be rolling out to existing customers over the next few weeks. To learn more about the new Admin console, visit the what's new site or contact our support team that is available by phone or email 24/7.

READ MORE - New Google Admin console

A new way to distribute your internal Android apps

Posted by Ellie Powers, Product Manager, Google Play

The Google Play Store is the place to find Android apps like the Google+ app, the Google Drive app and hundreds of thousands more. Today we’re expanding the Google Play Store for our Google Apps customers to help you distribute internal apps to your employees through the Google Play Private Channel.

Whether you’ve built a custom expense reporting app for employees or a conference room finder, the Google Play Private Channel is designed to make your organization’s internal apps quick and easy for employees to find. Once your company has loaded these internal apps using the Google Play Developer Console, users just need to log in with their company email address to browse the Private Channel and download apps.

These changes make it easier than ever to get the internal Android apps your company develops into employees’ hands. If you’re a Google Apps for Business, Education or Government customer you can learn more about how to create your organization’s own Google Play Private Channel in our Help Center.

READ MORE - A new way to distribute your internal Android apps

Launching admin features to all supported languages at the same time

Posted by Luis D. Maya, Google Apps Team

Today, we're improving the Google Apps administrator control panel for international and multi-lingual administrators. Now, the control panel will always be displayed in the user’s preferred language.

New administrator settings for Google+, displayed in Japanese
Previously, administrators had to choose between viewing the administrator control panel in English to receive the very latest features or wait until new features had been translated into their preferred language. Now, the administrator control panel makes new features available in all supported languages at the same time.

This change is rolling out to customers over the course of the day.

READ MORE - Launching admin features to all supported languages at the same time

Google Apps Vault now available to Google Apps for Government Customers

Posted by Jack Halprin, Head of eDiscovery, Google Enterprise

Since we launched Google Apps Vault, many businesses have adopted it to archive, retain and manage business critical information. Starting today, Vault is available for Google Apps for Government customers. Federal, state and local agencies in the United States can now purchase Vault to help meet their compliance needs.

Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from legal and compliance risks through advanced message archiving, retention and eDiscovery capabilities. It provides the ability to quickly search, identify, preserve and export information in response to litigation, investigation, compliance audits, or Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Vault helps organizations cull through their data and find messages relevant to such requests, reducing the associated time, effort, and costs.

Google Apps Vault can also be used to address knowledge management needs. It enables authorized users to search, manage, and review data. For example, if an employee leaves abruptly and the organization needs to understand the status of the employee’s projects, Vault will help find the needed information. Customers using Vault can ensure that data with critical business information are preserved and can be reviewed.

Vault built on the same infrastructure as Google Apps and recently completed an SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 Type II SOC 2 audit. Visit our Google Apps for Government page where you can find more details as well as contact our sales team.

READ MORE - Google Apps Vault now available to Google Apps for Government Customers

Make mobile more manageable

Posted by Hong Zhang, Google Apps Enterprise Mobile

People are using phones and tablets more than ever before to get work done from anywhere – in the field, at home or while traveling. Along with this increase in flexibility and productivity come new challenges for businesses managing all of these mobile devices. We launched tools to manage mobile devices across all mobile platforms for Google Apps last year, and since then we’ve been hard at work adding a number of new capabilities to help organizations better manage smartphones and tablets.

Some of our newest features are focused on helping administrators enforce tighter security using mobile settings in the Apps control panel to keep company data safe. We now offer administrators more ways to promote strong passwords on users’ phones and tablets and allow policies that enforce data encryption. New features also let administrators set policies to allow or block the use of the phone’s camera on Android 4.0+ devices and comply with organizational email retention policies. And now administrators can enforce these policies where available without disabling phones running older versions of Android that don’t support all the latest policies.

Through the Google Apps Device Policy app, administrators have the ability to remotely erase data from lost or stolen devices. Now we’re extending this capability so that IT admins can grant end users the ability to remotely delete data from their phone as soon as they notice it’s missing using the My Devices page.

As employees increasingly depend on their phones and tablets we’ll continue to work on making it easier and more secure for organizations to manage their fleet of devices. You can watch this video or visit our Help Center for a detailed look at how our enterprise mobile offerings can benefit your business.

READ MORE - Make mobile more manageable

Gmail log search feature enhances visibility for domain admins

Posted by Priya Mathew, Google Apps Senior Strategist

Google Apps domain admins have access to a new tool – Gmail log search – that increases visibility into their email traffic. This feature in the Apps control panel allows domain admins to search through the Gmail delivery logs to investigate email delivery and traffic questions. Many domain admins have requested a self-service tool like this, and Gmail log search will make it easier to answer questions like: What happened to an inbound or outbound message? Was a message sent to my domain and marked as spam? Which users sent or received a specific message?

The information that is available in the log search feature includes:

• Basic message information like Sender, Recipient, Subject, Date and Message-ID
• Attachment size
• Total transit time
• Delivery status

This Gmail log search feature was built using Google BigQuery, a Google Cloud Platform product that allows developers to store and query large amounts of data. We chose BigQuery because it can analyze multi-terabyte data sets with billions of headers to deliver precise results in just a few seconds. Gmail log search will help domain admins have the same type of visibility into the operations of Google Apps that they are used to from the legacy, on-premise email systems.

Gmail log search will be available starting today to Google Apps for Business, Education and Government customers, and will roll out to all domains over the next few weeks. Learn more about the feature in the Google Apps Help Center.

READ MORE - Gmail log search feature enhances visibility for domain admins

Google Apps Vault goes global

Posted by Jack Halprin, Head of eDiscovery, Google

In March 2012, we launched Google Apps Vault, bringing enterprise-class information governance to Google Apps. Vault delivers retention, archiving and eDiscovery capabilities for email and chat messages, enabling businesses of all sizes to access and manage business-critical information. Vault offers true manage-in-place capabilities by applying retention policies directly to the Google Apps data, without the need to move, export, or create a copy of data in a separate location.

Google Apps Vault already archives, searches and manages messages in all languages that Google Apps supports (50+). Now the Google Apps Vault user interface is available in 28 languages, including double-byte languages like Japanese, Chinese and Arabic. This new, global Vault interface enables customers worldwide to more easily access and manage their data, further reducing the costs and risks that businesses today face.

"Google Apps Vault offers compelling capabilities and value for businesses around the world in preparing for litigation, investigation, and managing day-to-day business. Vault integrates seamlessly across the evolving Google platform while integrating with business and industries of all sizes. This is a key component in our forward thinking strategy to drive down costs and provide enhanced client service."

- Eric Hunter - Director of Knowledge, Innovation & Technology Strategies at Bradford & Barthel, LLP

Google Apps Vault is available for new and recent Google Apps for Business and Education customers. Existing customers will be able to deploy Google Apps Vault later this year.

READ MORE - Google Apps Vault goes global

Two new security features for Google Apps

Posted by Rishi Dhand, Product Manager, Google Apps

Keeping Google Apps accounts secure is important to us, and we've recently added two security features that can better protect user accounts. The first helps businesses deploy 2-step verification and the second enhances integration with Microsoft Active Directory®.

Since we launched 2-step verification, we’ve seen millions of users enable it and thousands more do so every day. 2-step verification requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account: something you know (a password) and something you have (a verification code from your mobile phone). Even if someone has stolen your password, they'll need more than that to access your account. This additional layer of security greatly reduces the chance of unauthorized access via account hijacking or other means.

Starting today, domain administrators can require the users in their domain to use 2-step verification. This new feature will help Google Apps customers accelerate their deployment of 2-step verification.

For businesses that use Microsoft Active Directory® (AD), we’ve added new capabilities to synchronize and manage passwords. Businesses can manage password policies (e.g. password strength, reset intervals, etc.) using AD and then synchronize from AD to Google Apps when passwords are changed. Passwords are transmitted hashed and encrypted during synchronization.

Learn how to configure this new 2-step verification policy in the Google Apps help center. Download the Google Apps Password Sync for Active Directory (GAPS), and learn how to configure it in the help center.

READ MORE - Two new security features for Google Apps

Adding business class management features to Gmail

Posted by Adam Dawes, Gmail Product Manager

Last year, we started integrating Postini’s business-class email security and management capabilities into Gmail and today we’re excited to be rolling out the latest round of integrated features. Google Apps administrators can now take advantage of improved email compliance footers, approved/blocked sender lists and file attachment policies. These capabilities help our customers address compliance requirements and effectively manage email traffic. Previously, Google Apps customers used Google Message Security, powered by Postini, to provide these capabilities.

With this new release, we’ve improved these features and designed them specifically to meet the needs of our Apps customers. Admins will manage the features natively in the Google Apps control panel (localized in 28 languages), leverage our granular policy framework to customize settings for different types of users, and join multiple rules together to address very targeted use cases.

These new features are available globally for Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Government and Google Apps for Education editions.

Dominie Liang, IT Director at New Media Group in Hong Kong, was able to use the new features to quickly address his company’s compliance requirements:

"Our legal team wanted us to add a compliance note to all of our outbound email. Thanks to Google's new email feature set, we could easily add the rich text format disclaimer with Chinese characters to the email footer, and solved the issue within a minute."

George Krieger, Technical Services Manager, Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, adds:

"The new message footers in Gmail have made it easy for us to standardize our email signatures and more effectively promote our race schedules. And I love the ability to delegate control of these to our Media department so they can change them when they want without having to call me. This is a major improvement for us."

With the addition of these features to Gmail, there is no longer a need to use Google Message Security (GMS) with Google Apps so we will no longer offer GMS to Google Apps customers. We’ll work with those customers currently using GMS to migrate their settings to these new features. For more information on these features and how customers can migrate to them please refer to this Google Apps Help Center article and the Transition Guide.

READ MORE - Adding business class management features to Gmail

Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

Posted by Ju-kay Kwek, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google App Engine Blog and the Google Code Blog.)

Rapidly crunching terabytes of big data can lead to better business decisions, but this has traditionally required tremendous IT investments. Imagine a large online retailer that wants to provide better product recommendations by analyzing website usage and purchase patterns from millions of website visits. Or consider a car manufacturer that wants to maximize its advertising impact by learning how its last global campaign performed across billions of multimedia impressions. Fortune 500 companies struggle to unlock the potential of data, so it’s no surprise that it’s been even harder for smaller businesses.

We developed Google BigQuery Service for large-scale internal data analytics. At Google I/O last year, we opened a preview of the service to a limited number of enterprises and developers. Today we're releasing some big improvements, and putting one of Google's most powerful data analysis systems into the hands of more companies of all sizes.

• We’ve added a graphical user interface for analysts and developers to rapidly explore massive data through a web application.
• We’ve made big improvements for customers accessing the service programmatically through the API. The new REST API lets you run multiple jobs in the background and manage tables and permissions with more granularity.
• Whether you use the BigQuery web application or API, you can now write even more powerful queries with JOIN statements. This lets you run queries across multiple data tables, linked by data that tables have in common.
• It’s also now easy to manage, secure, and share access to your data tables in BigQuery, and export query results to the desktop or to Google Cloud Storage.

Michael J. Franklin, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, remarked that BigQuery (internally known as Dremel) leverages “thousands of machines to process data at a scale that is simply jaw-dropping given the current state of the art.” We’re looking forward to helping businesses innovate faster by harnessing their own large data sets. BigQuery is available free of charge for now, and we’ll let customers know at least 30 days before the free period ends. We’re bringing on a new batch of pilot customers, so let us know if your business wants to test-drive BigQuery Service.

READ MORE - Google BigQuery Service: Big data analytics at Google speed

More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

Posted by Hong Zhang, Software Engineer

These days it’s commonplace for employees to bring personal mobile devices to work, expecting to get all kinds of business done on-the-go, and this can be both a blessing and a challenge to IT managers. The importance of keeping mobile devices and data secure is as essential as ever.

Starting today, comprehensive mobile device management is available at no extra charge to Google Apps for Business, Government and Education users. Organizations large and small can manage Android, iOS and Windows Mobile devices right from the Google Apps control panel, with no special hardware or software to manage.

In addition to our existing mobile management capabilities, IT administrators can now see a holistic overview of all mobile devices that are syncing with Google Apps, and revoke access to individual devices as needed.

Organizations can also now define mobile policies such as password requirements and roaming sync preferences on a granular basis by user group.

Also available today, administrators have the ability to gain insights into mobile productivity within their organizations, complete with trends and analytics.

Finally, we’re also updating the Google Apps Device Policy app for Android. The new version provides users with more transparency about information available to administrators, and includes support for Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich. These new mobile management features will roll out for customers using the Next Generation Release version of the control panel starting today, and will be coming to the Current Release version in a matter of weeks. We invite you to explore our help center for more details.

READ MORE - More flexible mobile device management with Google Apps

A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Product Marketing Manager

Over the last few weeks, we’ve covered some of the ways that Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites have really improved over time, and in this final installment, we’re shifting our focus to how the administrative capabilities in Google Apps have grown up, too. We’re always looking to streamline how administrators can foster better teamwork, easier mobile access and a more secure environment through easy-to-use management tools.

We hope you’ll discover a few admin capabilities here that you weren’t familiar with before, or just haven’t used in some time. If you’d like to hear more about these developments for administrators, please join our webinar on September 1st (details below).

Designed for Teams
Google Apps is designed with the idea that working together should be easier, faster and more fun than working alone. Google Apps makes this simple for administrators by letting users handle many routine tasks without IT support, and by including collaborative capabilities that you’d need to purchase and manage separately with other solutions.

• Google Sites lets employees set up private, secure workspaces ranging from team sites and project portals to intranets and status dashboards, all without burdening IT for setup help. End-users can initiate a site quickly, and don’t need any special programming skills to collaborate together on a great site.
• User-managed groups also facilitate teamwork and take the burden off of IT. Teams can self-assemble and manage their own workgroups and mailing list aliases, so administrators don’t need to constantly keep these lists up to date.
• Google Apps also makes it painless for organizations to have private template galleries for team-oriented sites, documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations. Administrators don’t need to hassle with setting up special template repositories, because they’re built right into Google Apps.
• Likewise, administrators don’t need to manage servers and complex file share systems to let employees upload and distribute documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other kinds of files. Google Docs handles this without customers needing any special infrastructure on site.
• PC-to-PC voice and video chat also comes standard with Google Apps. Instead of needing to purchase, install and manage special software and server infrastructure, these real-time communication channels are part of Gmail, and accessible from the browser.
• Users can also make calls from Gmail to mobile and landline phones without businesses having to manage any specialized telephony technology.
• Form and survey capabilities are also packaged with Google Apps as part of Google Docs, so it’s easy for users to collect structured responses from colleagues and external audiences, and you don’t have to license surveying software from another provider.
• Another powerful collaboration technology included with Google Apps without any additional administrative complexity is translation functionality. Instant translation works in documents, spreadsheets and sites, and Gmail can even translate multilingual IM conversations in real-time between dozens of languages.
• Want to provide multi-person collaboration in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint without upgrading to Office and SharePoint 2010? Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office is a lightweight Office plugin that lets people work together simultaneously in these applications, without the hassles of collaborating over attachments.
• Administrators also have the ability to fine-tune user collaboration capabilities across Google Apps. Admins can provide different applications for different groups of users, set permissions for who can email outsiders, and enforce sharing controls in documents and sites to limit information sharing beyond the organization.
• More complex organizations with users at multiple domains can still work like a cohesive unit with multi-domain management. This feature lets people all across your organization share information seamlessly together without the traditional barriers that domain boundaries can create.
• Finally, our 100% web applications allow administrators to see a snapshot of how their users are working together with these tools, through an intuitive collaboration dashboard integrated into the administrative control panel. You can see stats like the number of active documents, the average number of people documents are shared with and more.

Productive Anywhere

Gone are the days where supporting a new mobile platform or operating system requires a heroic effort.  With Google Apps, users just access their work from any modern browser or major mobile operating system.  We also provide administrators with tools to secure and manage mobile devices at no additional cost.

• 100% web-based applications mean that users can access their email, calendars, documents and other applications right from their browsers, on any operating system.  This makes it much easier for administrators to support a heterogeneous OS environment without leaving any users behind.
• Android natively supports Google Apps through a comprehensive suite of mobile apps built right into the mobile platform.  For iOS devices and Windows Mobile, Google Sync enables synchronization of email, contacts and calendar.   BlackBerry sync is also available through Google Apps Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server.
• To help administrators manage and secure a diverse fleet of company- and user-owned mobile devices, our mobile device management tool allows administrators to enforce mobile password requirements, remotely lock devices, and even wipe devices over the air.  Employees can also access self-service tools, like the ability to view the location of a lost phone.

Simple & Affordable

Deploying and managing Google Apps should be as easy as using Google Apps, so we’ve added tools to help businesses get started quickly, integrate with existing systems and customize the experience to their needs.

• It all begins with a free 30-day trial that takes just a few minutes to start, and you don’t even need to put down your credit card.  If you like what you see, Google Apps for Business is a simple $5 per user per month or $50 per year. 
• Once you begin your trial, the interactive setup wizard will guide you the process, from creating user accounts to managing mobile devices.
• For organizations that already have IT systems in place, Google Apps plays nice with other systems through tools like Directory Sync, which can automatically provision Google Apps accounts, groups, shared contacts and more, all based on your existing user directory.
• Some organizations deploy Google Apps to make a fresh start, while others want to bring along data from old systems to Google’s cloud.  With migration tools for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Exchange, and many other platforms, you can go with either transition approach.
• You also have choice when it comes to the pace of innovation that’s right for your business.  With our new release process, you can join the Rapid Release track to get new features as quickly as possible -- often several times per week -- or choose the Scheduled Release track for a bit more time to digest changes before they roll out to users.
• Flexibility also comes in the form of customizable administrative roles.  Delegated administration lets you assign full or partial administration rights to other users or groups, making it a snap to give teams like help desk staff the right privileges to do their jobs effectively and safely.
• The possibilities for adding custom functionality to Google Apps are also endless.  You can select from dozens of additional Google applications, layer on integrated 3rd-party applications from the Google Apps Marketplace, write your own custom interactions between applications with Google Apps Script, or tap into a full spectrum of management and application APIs.
• These same APIs power another essential tool: the ability to take your data and move to a different provider if we ever stop meeting your needs.  Our Data Liberation effort includes a comprehensive set of tools to help you get your information out of Google’s cloud should the need arise.

Pure & Proven Cloud

Google Apps for Business not only has an uptime guarantee, but we also provide transparency by offering a publicly available status dashboard.  In addition to our reliability efforts, we also provide administrators with options to help keep their data more safe and secure.

• Our 99.9% uptime SLA guarantees reliable access to Google Apps, and our commitment doesn’t have any exceptions for planned maintenance.  This is because our systems are designed to handle updates without interruptions for customers.
• Our publicly available status dashboard offers transparency about the health of our systems, and 24x7 phone and online support is there when you need it.
• Google goes to extensive lengths to protect the customer information in our data centers, including extensive personnel background checks, security-focused processes, advanced technology, and around-the-clock physical protection.
• Google Apps has completed a SAS 70 Type II audit, a SSAE-16 audit, and has achieved the U.S. Federal goverment’s FISMA certification.
• With default https connections, your users’ information is encrypted as it travels from your web browser to our servers.  This helps protect your data by making it unreadable to others sharing your network.
• Google Apps accounts can be further secured with 2-step verification, which requires users to sign in with something they know (their password) and something they have (their mobile phone).  With verification codes available via SMS, even basic mobile phones can serve as powerful authentication devices.
• Account access can also be fortified with custom password strength requirements that administrators can tailor, and the ability to put Google Apps behind your own single sign-on infrastructure.

Customers tell us they love rapid, continuous innovation in our applications, but we’re just as focused on making the administrative experience faster, easier and more powerful over time.  I hope you found a few new management capabilities here that will make Google Apps even more useful at your organization.  Join us for a free webinar on September 1st if you’re interested in learning more about many of these improvements.

A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

9:00 a.m. PDT / 12:00 p.m. EDT

Register here

READ MORE - A look back as we move ahead: Google Apps management capabilities

More power to Google Apps administrators

Posted by Muzammil Esmail, Product Manager, Google Apps

In our continuous drive to make it easier for Google Apps administrators to create, manage and secure their users and data, we’ve introduced a number of features over time in the Google Apps for Business administrative control panel, such as the delegated administration, multi-domain support and fine-grained user policy management, just to name a few. These features have been well-received by the administrator community and we’ve seen healthy adoption among Google Apps for Business customers where these capabilities are helpful.

Starting today, millions of organizations using our free Google Apps service can begin taking advantage of these capabilities and many more as well. Now all Google Apps administrators can use advanced control panel features to manage users and customize the security policies for their organizations, regardless of which version of Google Apps they’re using.

If your company uses our free Google Apps service and requires additional business-critical features such as 24x7 support, 25GB mailboxes, enhanced functionality like email routing, or advanced reporting or migration tools, you can try a 30-day upgrade to Google Apps for Business for free.

READ MORE - More power to Google Apps administrators

New email security settings for Google Apps

Posted by Adam Dawes, Enterprise Product Manager

Postini email services help provide Google Apps users access to robust, cloud-based email security, filtering and archiving services. Today, we’re excited to announce our first step in creating a unified Google Apps experience by moving some Postini features directly into the Google Apps administrative interface.

The new Objectionable Content and Content Compliance email security settings, available directly in the Google Apps control panel, will allow admins to filter messages based on word lists or predefined sets of words, phrases, text patterns, or numerical patterns. And because these are built into the Google Apps infrastructure, admins will be able to use their existing user and organization structures set up for their domain to customize policies for different groups.

Bill MacKenzie, ICT Consultant for Ontario's Upper Grand District School Board, finds the new settings useful and easy to manage: "The content compliance feature has been a great addition to our cloud solution. It was a snap to set up, surprising our tech folks at how little work and time it took to implement. The compliance tool lets students, parents and administrators know that the email at our district is being supervised."

Over the coming weeks, we will be making these features available to business, education and government customers. We're especially excited to introduce these settings to K-12 schools. With these email filters and the walled garden functionality we announced earlier this year, K-12 schools will be able to address their email security needs and easily manage policies for students and teachers -- all within Google Apps.

Because all K-12 schools will automatically have these advanced email security features, we will no longer offer Google Message Security free of charge to new K-12 Google Apps customers. While we will continue to provide the service to K-12 schools currently using advanced features of Google Message Security, we plan to add even more email security features to the Google Apps control panel during the next year. Once comparable features are available in Google Apps, we will require K-12 Google Apps customers using Postini to consolidate their email security features into the Google Apps control panel. Google Apps for Business and Google Apps for Government customers are welcome to try these new features but will not be required to transition until a later date next year.

We invite everyone to start trying these new features for your domain. You can create similar filters to those you have in Postini in the improved Google Apps control panel interface. For more information about the transition to the new email security settings in Google Apps, please visit the Help Center documentation for Objectionable Content and Content Compliance and read the FAQs.

We're excited to begin the process of building Postini features into Google Apps and simplifying email security policies for Google Apps domains. Stay tuned for new features in the future!

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A customizable approach to administrative privileges

Posted by Jaideep Mirchandani, Product Manager, Google Apps

Managing Google Apps for an entire organization is not always a one-size-fits-all job. Google Apps Administrators often need to securely share management responsibilities with others. These users may need to have access to certain administrative privileges like user creation, password resets or managing groups, but not to all of them. To address these needs, we’re launching Delegated Admin to our Business and Edu customers. With this new feature, your primary administrators or “Super Admins” can now offer other users specific administration controls.

Lukas Karlsson of the the Broad Institute summed it up, “I like the fact that I can create additional administrator accounts and grant them access to certain administrative functions without having to make them full-fledged administrators. Our organization is growing quite large and, as that happens, we want to grant more folks access to specific tabs in the control panel, so this is very useful.”

Joseph Dellano of Tempus Nova, Inc. believes, “this will be well-used by enterprises that have specific people in charge of of responsibilities like mailing list administration.” Specifically, a Super Admin can create a help desk for your organization by granting other administrators the minimal access necessary to do their jobs. Consider an example:

Collin is an IT Associate at your company who is responsible for helping employees who have lost their password or username. You can now give Collin the ability to access the “Organization & Users” tab in the Control Panel, so that he can manage user access to Google Apps. You can also further control which actions he has the right to perform. For example, you may give Collin the right to reset passwords, but not to create new user accounts.


With these customizable privileges, Delegated Administration is another way you can tailor Google Apps to your business needs. To get started today:

1. Log in to the Google Apps administrator control panel
2. Under “Organization and Users,” find and click on the user account to which you wish to grant privileges
3. Click the “Privileges” tab
4. To make the user a Super Admin select the check box labeled “This user has full administrative rights within this Control Panel.” To restrict the user's access to selected functions the Control Panel, select the check boxes next to the tabs you want the user to access
5. Select the specific actions the user is allowed to perform under each tab
6. Click “Save changes” to confirm that you want to grant administrator access to the user

When the user signs into the control panel, only the Dashboard and the selected tabs will appear in the menu bar. The user will have administrator access to the settings you granted them, but nothing more.

We look forward to continuing to make it easier to help Google Apps administrators share tasks across teams and Help Desks.

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