Boyd-HQ Ramblings

Google Challenge - Day Five, Six and Seven

2011-03-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

I've combined the last couple of days into Friday's post as I didn't really use the computer at all over the weekend so there is nothing much to report.

However Friday was a useful day in the challenge as I looked at a couple of new features that are quite handy.

The first feature found that I thought was really useful was related to Labels in emails. Microsoft call them folders. When I was using Outlook I would create a folder for each customer and major project and when I was finished with emails I would archive them to the appropriate folder. As you can imagine there ended up being lots of folders.

In Google Mail you can still have lots of Labels (Folders) but you can set each one so they only show if there is unread emails in them. You can still access them if you need to but otherwise they don't get in the way. That to me is really useful.

Also another Labels feature which is really really useful is that you can set up a filter to automatically mark an email with a label. For example you can mark all emails from a certain person or company with a label so as soon as the email comes in it's already filed. I know, I know you are saying well we can do that in Outlook, well you are sort of right. The difference is that while the label is applied to the email the email is still in your Inbox so you don't have to remember to go looking for the emails in other folders which is what you would have to do in Outlook unless you wanted multiple copies of your email. So all and all a very nice feature :)

Another feature which I haven't used much in Google Apps is the search function which is absolutely fantastic. I wondered to myself on Friday why I didn't use search more often and the only conclusion I could come to was that I had been conditioned not to by my use of Outlook. While Outlook does have a search function it's so slow and limited I basically didn't bother. However Google Apps it's blindingly quick and there are a large set of keywords you can use to define your search. On reflection I suspect that is why I created so many folders for different customers and jobs as it was the only way to find things quickly.

And finally on to something that is not really a feature but more a lifestyle choice for emails which I found quite logical and will definitely use. When you have finished with an email you have two main choices, Delete or Archive, rather than explain the difference I'll leave it up to the Google help which sums it up perfectly.

When you're positive you won't need a message, use the Delete button to send it to Trash. Deleted messages and conversations are permanently removed from Gmail 30 days after you send them to Trash. Deleting unimportant mail is a great way to free up some of your storage, but with Gmail's free storage, you can probably keep those messages, too! If it's possible that you'll need a message or conversation in the future, we recommend using the Archive feature.Archived mail moves out of your Inbox and in to All Mail -- you won't be bothered with extra messages cluttering your Inbox, but you'll still be able to find a message if you need it six years from now!

Well that's pretty much it for the Google Challenge, there are lots of features that I could document and in fact if I find one that really merits shouting about I will let you know.

As for whether I will continue to use Google Apps and Google Docs the answer is a definite Yes!

While I will still need Excel for some of the programming and reports that I write for customers and I will still keep Office installed (I am a computer support person after all and do need to help my customers which office problems from time to time) I will be personally and for the internal company stuff be using Google Apps and Google Docs.

Now that I have made that decision, my next investigation projects will be to see if Google Docs have an API that I can use to program some of my customers reports. Imagine having a process that runs overnight that generates a Google Docs spreadsheet from your business data and being able to access it from anywhere in the morning, now that's useful.

Secondly I'll be looking for a replacement for my current Helpdesk system, something cloud based, starting with some of the offerings within Google Apps. If anyone has any suggestions I'd be very interested in hearing them.

Google Challenge - Day Four

2011-03-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

I've always hated "Conversation View" for emails and since Microsoft made a real hash of it in Outlook 2010 I normally can't turn it off fast enough. However after reading Maureen's comments on the subject I thought I better try out Google's version of "Conversation View". After all this is the Google Challenge and what is a challenge without a bit of hardship and adversity.

Well I tried it......and I still hate it. I just find it such a pointless piece of functionality. An email conversation by default it collected together and presented in a nice linear fashion. When you reply to an email it copies the email you are replying to into your email at the bottom. This repeats for the whole conversation, so you can easily review the whole conversation simply by scrolling up and down the latest email...

Each to their own I guess :)

Another email feature I have turned off is the Priority Inbox. For anyone that hasn't tried it the priority Inbox it's just a partitioning of your normal Inbox with important email at the top and everything else at the bottom. You can mark people and conversations as important in which case from then on they will appear at the top.

While I think some people will find it great it just didn't work for me.

I've come to the conclusion that while the Priority Inbox and even the Conversation View are good features that's just not how I use email. For me every email is important to me until I decide it isn't at which point it gets deleted so I don't want a computer telling me what is important. Some days the joke email from a mate that makes me laugh is the most Important email in the whole Inbox, other days it's the response to the big quote I've just sent out.

I treat my Inbox like my desk, everything in it is work in progress, as I finish working on an Email it's either deleted or archived in some way.

I'd be interested to hear how other people work with their emails, feel free to leave a comment if you work differently with your emails or even if you agree and work the same way.

Well now that I've had my rant on to the topic I was originally going to talk about.

Since it is getting to the end of the challenge I decided that I have to seriously look at whether I'm going to adopt Google Apps and Google Docs as my main suite of programs or am I going to go back to the Dark Side and use Microsoft Office.

Well I'm not going to tell you until the end of the challenge but one thing that is very important to consider which I think a lot of people forget about is an Exit Strategy or Disaster Recovery. If you load all your emails and all your documents and spreadsheets into a system (essentially the whole electronic side of your business) and then decide to change or that system becomes unavailable can I get my data?

In the case of Google it's extremely unlikely that their systems are going to be unavailable but you just need to look at what happened in Christchurch and even more so in Japan to think it's worth considering what your plan is. It's amazing how easily a nuclear reactor blowing up can spoil your day.

A more likely scenario is that Google start charging huge amounts of money and you decide to take your data and run.

Well I'm pleased to say that Google Apps and Google Docs both have excellent exporting functionality, especially Google docs where you can export your Documents and Spreadsheets, even the ones stored in Google format and get the export process to convert them into Microsoft Word and Excel files.

This I find quite comforting as it not only gives you an exit strategy but means you can archive your documents to backup media quite easily on an ongoing and regular basis.

Google Challenge - Day Three

2011-03-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well its almost half way through the challenge.

Another good day today, didn't have any problems with any of the areas today Email, Calendar, and Docs all working well and in fact I found some great features and was able to fine tune my setup a little bit as well.

Emails

In the email area I found the if you have receive a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet in an email one of the attachment options is to open it as a Google spreadsheet. This is great if you have received it on a machine that doesn't have Excel and also would be pretty handy if you are converting your document library over to Google Docs.
If you do get emails with attachments and the attachment is something that is capable of being infected by viruses, it's automatically scanned by Google as you open the email. Once it has been scanned it becomes available in the email. Logic would dictate that if it was infected Google would just not let you have access to it however strangely enough I don't have any viruses lying around that I can test this with. Of course you should always have Antivirus software on your machine but its nice to know you have that extra check.
I also found that the mail notify application I installed earlier in the week that generates a popup when you receive new emails is probably surplus to requirements for me. While it's a handy little application if you have your email up using the Google Apps suite you get popup notifications anyway. The advantage of the Mail Notify utility was that it would work whether you were in mail or not, but I find that am in my email client all day.

Calendar

I had cause to test the invite attendee functionality today, obviously this is an important part of calendar functionality for business. I have to say while the interface is not as slick as Outlook, the functionality is just as good and probably a little better. All the normal accept and decline functionality is there but I think its displayed in a more intuitive way, certainly it's nice and simply presented.
Also found a great feature where you can get Google to email you your schedule for the day. Each day at 5am you will receive an email which lists all your appointments for the day. This is fantastic even if you are going to be out all day as you can print it out and have it handy for referring to. Even if you do have a computer handy I find that a useful and intuitive way to show my calendar.

Google Docs

Not really a feature as such but I discovered that if you are storing documents and spreadsheets in Google format it doesn't subtract from your space quota like storing Microsoft files does. Obviously I would expect that to change in the future if Google Docs becomes more popular but it's handy to know.

Well thats all for today, if anyone is using Google Apps and/or Docs i'd love to hear about your favourite features.

Google Challenge - Day Two

2011-03-15T12:04:00.000-07:00

Well I managed another day with no Outlook, Word or Excel.

I'm finding that I'm starting to like the light footprint of the Google Apps/Docs compared to the Microsoft programs and I really like that I can log on from any workstation and there is my stuff which is great especially from home since I can log in from the home computer and avoid having to boot up the laptop just to check or send emails.

Couple of nice things I found yesterday to improve the usability.

I found a Google Apps application that puts three icons on your desktop which take you to the three main areas, Email, Calendar, and Docs. It's still a Chrome browser window but without all the tool bars and tabs that you normally get when you go to Google Apps in your browser.

Second thing I found is that if you hold shift down when you click Compose Mail it starts the email in it's own window. Great for if you are composing a big email or it's taking some time, you can leave that window open as long and you want and it doesn't effect the main email window. That certainly helps when you are doing multiple things which tends to be the way of a support person.

Anyway that's it for now, again a positive day for the Google Challenge.

Google Challenge - Day One

2011-03-15T11:58:00.000-07:00

Well I made it through the first day without running Outlook, Word or Excel even once.

I had three issues with emails, primarily with the fact that its only an average interface compared to Outlook

The three issues were

While you can have an image in your signature it needs to be accessible on the internet which is fine but of course that means that most peoples email client wont download it unless you are in their while list of people to download pictures
When you reply to an email it puts the signature at the very bottom under the all the old email conversation.
You can't paste images into an email.

I managed to sort 2 of the issues and have not worried about the third.

I didn't worry about the pictures in the signature and made a simple one that had my info but not the image I normally have. At the end of the day it's not going to matter too much. When I look at re branding I'll look at the issue again.
There is a feature called Google Labs which is a whole set of features that are in beta. There was a fix for the signature so now it appears above the previous emails (same as Outlook).
Another Google labs feature that lets you add images into your emails. Not quite as good or as easy as outlook but if you need images in your emails you can do it and it actually has some nice sizing options which are better than Outlook.

Some of the great features I discovered are.

Some of the sharing modes of Google Docs are great, from private, to just within your company, to everyone if they have the link.
The viewers in both the email client and the Google Docs are pretty nice, especially for multi-sheet spreadsheets and documents.
When setting up an appointment in the calendar you can either have a pop-up or get it to send an email to you to remind you about the appointment and you can have as many reminders about an appointment at different times as you want.
I found a new application that you install on your machine and lives in the system tray. It provides a outlook style pop-up whenever you receive new emails even if you aren't in the mail client. The only issue I found with it was that when you start your machine it pops the login box even when you have saved the password. There might be a solution to this though.
Both the email client or Google Docs have great auto save functionality.

So all things considered day one had more pros than cons.

Google Challenge

2011-03-15T11:43:00.000-07:00

I have decided I'm doing a one week Google challenge.

Until next Sunday I will not be using. Microsoft Outlook, Word or excel.

Instead I will be using Google Apps for my emails and calendar and Google Docs for word and excel.

The reasoning behind this is simple. Since Google will be bringing out their new Chrome operating system in the not too distant future I thought it would be interesting for me to see if I could live without the main Microsoft applications I use every day all day.

I've been looking at Google Docs and while it isn't as feature rich as Word or Excel I would argue that there aren't many people of the planet that use all the features available in Word or Excel. I know I certainly don't.

While the google mail and calendar interfaces aren't fantastic I think they might be good enough to use and I'm hoping that I will find some tweaks or add-ons that will help.

Anyway I'll keep you posted.