Major Enhancements to Google Forms

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Google Forms have always been a convenient easy way to gather simple information, but have lacked some of the features found in commercial survey tools. We are happy to share that this is changing. With several recent rounds of updates, Google Forms have are maturing.

The first round of enhancements include:

  • A new Grid question type
  • Support for bi-directional languages
  • Improved formatting of statistics and better formatting of charts for each question type
  • The ability to pre-populate responses in form fields using URL parameters
  • The ability to create forms which require sign-in to access

To learn more about how to use these features, click here.

Blackberry Add-On Adds Value for Gmail Users

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Blackberry offers an enhanced Gmail plug-in that gives you the following capabilities:

  • Archive a message
  • Add a star to a message
  • Add a label to a message
  • Report spam email message
  • Perform local and remote searches
  • View related messages conversation view
These features work within the plug-in but do not effect email in Messages application. The plug-in works if you are connecting to your mail account over Blackberry Internet Services.

To learn more, click here.

Administrators Get More Control Over Chat

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Two new features let administrators secure and manage Google Talk chat sessions.

  • Enable/disable their user’s ability to chat outside the domain.
  • Enable a setting to automatically accept chat invitations between users in their domain.
These features are only available in Education and Premier Edition (a few more reasons to upgrade).

Google Apps Improves Cloud Integration to Internal Services

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Google recently released an update to Directory Sync with the following features to support new use cases that make deployment easier, including:

  • The ability to sync users as suspended from LDAP
  • The ability to suspend a user in Apps, when the user is deleted from LDAP
Contact us for more information, or if you want to setup Directory Sync.

Collaboration with Google Sites Just Got Easier

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Several recent updates to Google Sites greatly improve their use and value for collaboration.

  • The ability to copy an entire site

  • More control over the search box to do things like search across multiple sites

  • The “recent announcement” gadget now allows you to control how much text is shown in the post summary. You can also configure the gadget to show a thumbnail of the first photo in the post

  • The Start Page is now available in all editions of Google
Of these features, the site copy and search improvements offer significant new value.

With the ability to copy sites, it is now possible to create a template site, for customer portals as an example, and copy the site for easy replication. Search gives you the ability to have users search over several related sites, providing easier access to information.

Want the details? Click Here.

Translate Google Docs — 42 languages

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Collaboration across languages and cultures is easier when you speak the language. Google Docs now supports translation across 42 languages.

More Task Features

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If you use Tasks in Google Apps, you can now email task lists. With the ability to have multiple lists, emailing task lists makes delegation easier.

Most Companies Underedstimate the Cost of Messaging

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Do you know how much you really spend on email and related services?


A September 2009 study by Osterman Research finds most businesses under estimate the full cost of messaging services, often by more than 50%.

Google Postini Service Update: 10/14 11:45 AM ET

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The following is the latest status report regarding the Google Postini Service problems, as of 4:45 AM ET this morning:
“We experienced an issue that caused significant delays to inbound mail delivery for users on System 7. Postini Engineering and Operations have resolved the issue, and mail delivery rates have returned to normal. Engineering and Operations continue to closely monitor the situation.

During this incident, incoming messages may have been deferred; no messages were bounced or deleted.

Some sending mail servers may have returned a “failed delivery” notification after four hours, but continued to try to resend deferred messages (up to five days for a typical configuration). Outbound mail delivery and filtering performed as normal during this time.

We sincerely apologize for the impact to your organization and users. We will post an incident report, which includes the root cause analysis and corrective and preventative actions, within the next 48 business hours. Also, if you filed a support case, we will include the incident report in the case response.”
Horizon expects that some users may continue to receive delivery of emails that were deferred, or that were resent by protocol from the sender, throughout the day.

As your reseller, we have access to the portal and will post the incident report when it is available. Please contact support if you have questions or concerns.

Look Past the Price Tag

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The online backup market is a mess! Companies are coming out of the woodwork offering great deals on backup services. With cloud-based disk space providing cheaper storage, the downward pressure on price seems unstoppable.

For businesses, where do you begin? As recovering consultants, we always advise businesses to start with requirements.
  • Why are you creating backups?
    To protect users from document errors? To recover user-deleted files? To recover from system failures? To recover from a larger disaster?
  • How many versions of each file do you need?
    For recovery from disaster or system failure, you really only need one. To recovery from user error, you may want more.
  • For how long do you need backups available?
    Days, weeks, months, years?
  • How quickly do you need to be able to recover?
    Hours, days, or longer?

These questions are important, as the answers often eliminate the low cost providers. Backups at 50 cents per GB is attractive, unless you need retention for more then 30 days. If one version on backups is not enough, then the unlimited space for $50 per year per machine is not the solution. If you may need to restore whole servers or large data sets, services without off-line recovery options will leave you waiting, literally, for your data.

When evaluating online backup solutions. Look past the price tag at how well the solution meets your needs. Whether from a reputable service provider or an in-house attempt to build a solution that saves money, if the backup solution doesn’t meet your needs, you are wasting money.