This is the main category of this blog site. The Google Workspace category contains the majority of the blog site’s posts.
Gmail, Google Slides, Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Meet and other components of Google Workspace are covered.
At the 2021 Google I/O, Google announced that Rooms in Google Chat will be rebranded “Spaces” and will get a number of enhancements.
Spaces appears to be a viable alternative to Slack (which is in the process of being acquired by Salesforce) and Microsoft Teams.
Smart chips in Google Workspace are an easy way to connect people, files or events to a Google Doc. Smart chips are part of smart canvas, which is an updated product experience announced by Google in May 2021.
Let’s look at how smart chips work and why you would want to use them.
In many businesses, the marketing department signs up for a variety of Google services. These services include:
Companies that are not using Google Workspace need to set up access to these Google services via an individual (consumer) Google account. This is usually a Gmail account, but it is also possible to sign up for an individual Google account using a business email address.
With the help of four Google components, two of which are included with Google Workspace and Google Workspace Essentials, you as a marketer can create a free marketing dashboard. This can also be done with a Google account, even if your company is not using WorkSpace.
Once you’ve created a dashboard, you can easily share it with anyone within your organization. All they will need is their Google Workspace login to access the dashboard.
You can optionally share the dashboard outside of your organization with someone who has a Google Workspace or Google account.
The needed Google components are:
Google launched Google Workspace Essentials in May of 2020.
Essentials can be viewed as a slimmed down version of Google Workspace. It includes Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Sites, Forms and Keep. It does not host your email and it is not your users’ calendar system. Essentials does not include Google Drawings, My Maps or Jamboard.
There are a number of reasons an organization may want to have multiple domains associated with their Google Workspace account.
First, we’ll look at some of the reasons for having multiple domains. We will then provide instructions for how to associate additional domains with your Google Workspace account.
The Chrome browser and Google Workspace can work together in several ways.
These connections will help you create and find documents more easily. They will save you mouse clicks.
The following tips also work for consumer Gmail accounts.
Most people are aware of consumer Gmail. If you don’t personally use Gmail, you likely receive email from friends and family with gmail.com addresses.
Many people don’t realize that Gmail is also available to organizations.
Gmail is just one of the components of Google Workspace. Other components include Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Sites.
When someone uses a free service such as Gmail, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, they are not a customer of the service provider.
For free services such as these, the customers of the service provider are the advertisers.
The product offered by the service provider to advertisers is a combination of the service itself and the users of the service. In other words, free users are a part of a product offering for advertisers.
The core applications of office productivity suites such as Google Workspace are: email, documents, spreadsheets and presentations. These are the basic software tools most people use at work.
In addition to these core applications, there are a number of Google Workspace extras that are included in the monthly per user price. Not everyone is aware of these bonus applications.
At Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference in 2017, a strategic partnership with Google was announced.
Often, these alliances come and go. However, the Salesforce/Google partnership has gained momentum. Google had a noticeable presence at the 2018 Dreamforce conference.
Among a wide range of facets to the partnership are the following five Salesforce to Google Workspace integrations.
Many small businesses do not have the in-house resources needed to fully implement and properly manage Google Workspace. These companies often seek help from a Google Workspace Partner.
There are a lot of companies that advertise Google Workspace services, but not are all official Google partners.
In 2017, Google launched its Cloud Partner directory, which is a searchable listing of all companies that have been accepted into the Google Cloud Partner Program.
Updated: March 14, 2019
If you’re using Google Workspace or considering Google Workspace for your organization, there may be questions about Google Workspace security in your mind.
After all company email and business documents (if you are leveraging Google Drive for cloud backup of local files) are stored in Google’s data centers.
Google Workspace, as you’d expect, has multiple levels of built-in security.
Updated: April 10, 2019
Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and Microsoft Office 365 are the two most popular cloud-based suites of business productivity applications on the market. Among the best known applications within these suites are email, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, presentations and online storage.
Google and Microsoft continue to add their own flavors of additional components to their respective suites. For example, Google Workspace includes Forms, Drawings, My Maps and new Google Sites. Google Jamboard and Voice for Google Workspace (2019) are paid extras. Included extras at no additional charge are Google Chat and Google Meet.
Microsoft Office 365 plans variously include Sway, Yammer, Skype for Business, Office 365 Video and Microsoft Teams.
Let’s begin with a distinction between Google Sheets & Microsoft Excel:
– Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet application that is a part of Microsoft Office 365.
– Google Sheets a spreadsheet app that is available with free consumer Gmail and also with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite).
Some people use only one or the other. Other people use both.
If a Google user who does not have Excel installed receives an Excel spreadsheet via email, the user can preview the spreadsheet within Gmail and then convert the spreadsheet to Google Sheets.
There are several ways to move spreadsheets and spreadsheet data between Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. Here are examples of Google Excel information exchange.
Updated: July 15, 2020
It’s a challenge to keep with Google’s various iterations of chat, online meeting and Hangouts products—as well as the branding of these apps. In fact, we need to frequently update this post.
Google now has three distinct components in this category that are a part of Google Workspace’s core services, a.k.a. core apps.
Here is a roundup of the Google Hangouts, Meet, Chat (and now Rooms) offerings.
Gmail and Google Workspace use the same global data storage as Google’s search engine.
Google currently has 23 data global data centers. The first data center was built on the Oregon side of the Columbia River in 2006 (see picture below).
Google stores subscriber data (email, documents, spreadsheets, etc.) in small pieces. Each of those pieces is copied several times and stored in multiple geographic locations.
Updated: April 25, 2019
Google has made significant inroads into the small business market with Google Workspace. For business owners and employees who have been using consumer Gmail, moving to Google Workspace is an easy transition.
However, Google has faced several barriers to widespread Google Workspace enterprise adoption. Here are some of those blockers and what Google has been doing to address them.
For anyone who is in sales and who uses either Google Workspace or Gmail, there’s a new sales productivity platform from Cirrus Insight that’s worth taking on a test drive.
Cirrus Insight’s flagship product was a Chrome extension for Gmail to Salesforce integration. Recently, the company expanded its offering to become a a broad and useful feature set for any user of Gmail or Google Workspace — regardless of whether they are using a specific CRM application.
Through a combination of internal inventions and acquisitions, Cirrus has assembled a “dream suite” of tools that most salespeople will appreciate.
Here is an overview of a few of the ways that salespeople can benefit from the Cirrus platform.
Updated: October 7, 2020
The current Google Workspace pricing is different than it was when Google Workspace was known as G Suite.
Prior to December 6, 2012, Google offered a free business version of Google Apps. Businesses that signed up for that version are grandfathered at no cost for up to 10 users.
Google still offers free versions of Google Workspace to qualified educational and government institutions as well as to qualified nonprofit organizations.
For for-profit businesses, Google Workspace does come at a cost.
The adoption of Google Workspace began with small to mid-sized businesses. However, the shift to Google Workspace for enterprises is ostensibly underway.
At the March 2017 Google Cloud Next Conference, both Colgate and Verizon talked about their move to Google Workspace.
Colgate-Palmolive has moved 28,000 users to Google Workspace from IBM’s legacy Notes and Domino systems. Verizon is planning to move 150,000 users to Google Workspace.
When a small business owner or manager decides to make the move from free consumer email addresses (e.g., jake2874@comcast.net) to custom email addresses (e.g., jake@abbottsolar.com), there are a number of business email options.
Aside from Microsoft, two of the most popular business email providers are Rackspace and Google.
As service providers, Google and Rackspace differ in many ways. However, they do overlap in a couple of areas.
There are two ways in which a Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) user can have an unlimited number of inbound email addresses associated with their Google Workspace account. We’ll refer to these ways as “dimensions”, as they can be used in combination.
The first dimension of unlimited email addresses are email aliases. Aliases are assigned to a user account by a Google Workspace admin. An admin can assign multiple values to what is technically called the Local-part of the email address, or the part before the @ sign.
In the following example, you will see that Lou’s default email address is lou@yourcrmdemo.com. Lou must use this address to login to her email account.
Updated: April 25, 2019
There are more similarities between free, consumer Gmail and Google Workspace than there are differences. In fact, Google Workspace can be viewed as a multi-user version of consumer Gmail.
When a single user platform becomes multi-user, an administrative level is needed for tasks such as adding and deleting users, creating groups, assigning apps and managing security.
Fortunately, adding users to Google Workspace is a straightforward process for an admin. The creator of a Google Workspace account is a super administrator by default. One or more admin roles can optionally be assigned to any user. One of the admin roles is called User Management Admin. This role allows a user to create, delete and update individual users (other than admin users).
Only a super administrator, however, can bulk upload new users.
The topic of email security is all too frequently in the news. On September 22, 2016, the story broke that data associated with 500 million Yahoo! email accounts had been stolen in 2014.
There are many reasons why hackers spend their time trying to infiltrate email servers and email clients. Sometimes it’s to steal intellectual property.
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