Olark lets customers live chat with website visitors directly from the Gmail interface through Google Talk, and provides easy access to chat transcripts. Peter Macaulay of KitchenwareDirect.com.au says, “The ability to live chat with customers without leaving the Google Apps interface is a huge productivity advantage. The simple and elegant implementation meant we were up and running in a matter of minutes. Staff members are easily able to set their availability for chat, enabling them to easily multi-task.”
WORKetc is another app that makes Gmail into the front end workspace, but for CRM, project management, and customer support. It let’s you easily share emails related to particular projects with relevant team members without forwarding or copying other email addresses. D. Hogan of Varis Energy says, “Any emails that need to be shared with my team get tagged in the WORKetc gadget that is built right into Gmail. This immediately lets everyone else who is assigned to a project or lead have access to the new information from the received email.”
Access all the time As compared to larger businesses, small businesses are even less suited to managing servers, and tend to have many employees on the road or in non-office locations. Accessing their data and documents from anywhere, on any Internet-connected device is a core benefit of using web-based tools like Google Docs. OfficeDrop digitizes paper documents to make them text-searchable in Google Docs. Greg Skidmore of Belpointe Asset Management says, “Each month we send a box of paper files to OfficeDrop and have them scanned directly into Google Docs. If I have a document that I need scanned right away, I use OfficeDrop’s scanning software, ScanDrop, and upload it immediately.”
Easy to Use Small business owners and employees often wear a lot of hats and they’ve asked for solutions that are easy to learn and use. Michael Bower of Michael Bower Digital says, “I always need to know where my money is, without wasting time organizing my paperwork. As my business grew, I was losing control of my cashflow. Both Google Apps and FreshBooks have just enough features to keep my workflow and invoicing organized, allowing me to focus on my work.”
These are just a few examples of the many Small Business Web app vendors in the Google Apps Marketplace who provide the functionality and integrations a small business needs. Over 30 Google Apps Marketplace apps have already joined the Small Business Web and declared their commitment to helping small businesses focus on what they do best. They include:
We celebrate National Small Business Week to recognize the importance of small businesses for promoting a healthy economy, and we’re excited to help them continue to grow and succeed through the smart use of technology.
As always, all Marketplace apps offer single sign-on convenience and hassle-free access through the universal navigation bar. Many go even further by integrating with your Google Docs, Google Contacts, Google Calendars and more to improve your productivity.
This month we welcome more apps from long-time vendors, Zoho and SADA, as well as fresh apps from many new ones:
Assistly is a helpdesk tool that allows teams and entire companies to support customers via email, phone, chat, web, Facebook and Twitter.
WorkETC combines CRM, project management, billing, sales and more with a powerful automation engine to help small businesses.
Orangescape is a visual development platform for building and deploying business applications on Google App Engine.
SADA Audit Tool is a centralized admin tool that gives you an overview of how resources (Docs, Sites, etc.) have been shared externally.
You can browse all of our newest apps in the Google Apps Marketplace. Now everyone can use the Marketplace to discover new apps — and directly install an app if you’re the domain admin or send a request if you’re not.
Posted by Harrison Shih, Google Apps Marketplace Team
At Revevol, we train clients’ employees who have just migrated to Google Apps, to help them get the most out of their new system. The more Revevol grows, the more customer trainings we have to handle, so we need to quickly find available trainers depending on parameters like the training date, language, location of trainers and trainer skills.
Google Apps Script, a cloud scripting language based on JavaScript, is wired into almost every Google product, so it’s a perfect solution for checking calendars and spreadsheets, and solving our scheduling problems. In the early days, we were using a simple Google Form. It was really easy to put together and simple to use, but one thing was missing: the form just collected data -- there was no way it could automatically take action based on information submitted. Someone had to manually process the information.
This is where Apps Script came to the rescue -- with a little JavaScript code we could build an interactive form that we so badly needed. In a single day, Apps Script let us build a shiny new graphical user interface for our tool, which lets let us dynamically search for available trainers across all skill levels and categories.
How did we do it? We recreated our form using Ui Services in Apps Script. We added a panel next to the form, to show the search results of trainers that match our queries. By using Spreadsheet Services in Apps Script, we could search and fetch data from a spreadsheet that serves as our database of trainers. We also added the ability to sort the search results of trainers by skill level and distance from the training location.
Thanks to integration with Google Maps Services in Apps Script, we're even able to display a map to help our project managers find the closest trainer. Project managers can select more than one trainer from search results and each selected trainer will receive a calendar invitation. The first to respond “Yes” gets the training assignment. It was incredibly easy to build and deploy this application. In one click, we published it so anyone at Revevol can access the tool in their browsers. Apps Script helped us automate this tedious business process!
11. Grockit, our first ever app focused on education
Best Integration Gmail contextual gadgets - This integration, offered by many Marketplace apps, allows you to access your most relevant and important data streams right where you need it, inline with your emails. For example, many CRM apps provide gadgets that populate information about contacts in an email thread to add context to your communications.
Looking forward to 2011, we have a number of new ideas in the pipeline. We have plans to help improve your shopping experience, find the exact apps you need, and add additional integration capabilities to make users more efficient.
As you prepare for 2011, consider making a new year’s resolution to go 100% web to capture the benefits of reduced costs, greater scalability and flexibility. Whether it’s switching your messaging and collaboration tools to Google Apps or augmenting your sales and marketing efforts with web applications from the Apps Marketplace, resolve to make 2011 the year your business moves to the web and boosts productivity.
Posted by Harrison Shih, Product Marketing, Google Apps Marketplace
Viewpath - manage project tasks and resources with drag/drop simplicity Cohuman - task-centric communications to synchronize people & teams Comindwork - fully customizable Gantt views, workflows and to-dos
Teamup - anytime, anywhere project tracking for businesses of all sizes WorkforceTrack - online collaboration, reporting, time tracking and billing
Project Collaboration Project management, with a focus on communication and sharing
Manymoon - social productivity, project management & task management Teambox - project management software and social collaboration Bright Green - intuitive project collaboration - Agile, Kanban and Waterfall LumoFlow - project workspaces that motivate people to participate Glasscubes - organize your day to day work - manage projects, info & people Emforge - project platform with a wide set of tools for distributed teams DeskAway - simple yet powerful web-based project collaboration tool
Task Management Project management, with focus on task list sharing and collaboration
RapidTask - make project management as easy as email Producteev - turn your emails into tasks GQueues - share lists, assign tasks, get reminders, stay organized Thymer - project management and task planning for people who hate it ToBeeDo - simple online task management service with time tracking
Timesheets Project management, with a focus on tracking and billing hours
gTrax - simple time tracking app to manage resources & project budgets Harvest - simple time tracking and timesheets for teams and freelancers Paymo - easy online project management, time tracking and billing app BeeBole - a fast timesheet for teams - fully customizable. TrackMyHours - a powerful time tracking & billing solution Cube - start tracking time and expenses in less than 15 seconds
Product Development Projects Project management, with a focus on software development
Acunote - enterprise online project management and Scrum software Jira Studio - software dev tool suite with Subversion and agile management Gravity - a simple but powerful tool to help you manage agile projects
If you’re looking to improve the way you manage and collaborate on projects, we encourage you to evaluate these apps. We’re adding new apps to the Marketplace all the time, so continue to check back for apps for all your organization’s needs.
Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise
