Osage Food Moves Forward With Google Apps

I'm excited to announce that OsageFood.com, an ingredient supply company located in Washington, Mo, with a primary focus in the dairy industry, is 5 Star Net's latest company to transform from Microsoft Office / Exchange to Google Apps.   I use Microsoft Office / Exchange, but what I don't like is the reoccurring upgrades, feature incapability between versions, overly complicated interface, file-contention in a multi-user environment, slow loading in outlook, and, most of all, how expensive it is.  Google Apps is only $50 per user, per year and you get email - 25 gigs worth.  If you need more storage, that can be purchased for a fee, as well. Best of all, there's no long download and software to install.  Just open Google Apps in your browser.

Installing Google Apps was a snap.  After we were able to login to the client's DNS provider, and using our Google Apps Reseller Tools, we were able to stage and stack up to 6 MX records for a painless  switch-over. After a training session with the entire OsageFood.com staff, we began eating lunch so I took the opportunity to switch MX records.  Knowing how DNS records can take hours to update was not a concern as it switched over instantly.  Following the switch-over, we were able to login as each employee, reset the password, and get all the mobile devices setup, too.  Part of the setup required us to migrate data from existing outlook users. Google provides a simple Google Apps Outlook Migration Tool that make the process of storing old outlook data in Google Apps, very simple. 

By the time I left the building, the entire staff at OsageFood.com was able to use Google Apps on their desktop computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, and smartphones.  It's like the devices were made for Google Apps.  In fact, there were so many devices in the building that network services had to provision 50 more ip addresses so we could all communicate.  Bill Dickenson, owner of OsageFood.com, sent me this note just a few days after starting with Google Apps, "Everyone seems to be getting the hang of the Google Apps.  Some bugs to work out and still need to learn all the features but everyone seems to think it will be better."  

There are many neat features in Google Apps, but my favorite isn't a feature.  It's how Google designed Google Apps to be extensible with the Google Apps Marketplace.  There are so many additional products that can be turned on in minutes.  Pro Athlete uses the Mojo Help Desk solution for a help desk system and it works great.  There are so many others like, Run My Process. It's got 200 connectors, and counting, that allow workflow. For example, workflows to connect to an api, execute a command, retrieve the results, could be automated and setup within a few clicks.

I'll be sure to provide an update as to how Bill and OsageFood.com are doing in a few months of using Google Apps.

Creating a Management Dashboard Using Google Docs

It's never been easier than now to create a simple management dashboard using the free Google Application Suite.  After setting up some objectives, strategies, and action plans for our fictious company in a Google Doc, I'll show you how to use Google Sites to tie it all together.  Finally, I'll use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of the data and formulas for all the calculations.  Let's get started.

Go to www.google.com and login.  If you do not have a login, create one using your an email address, and you'll have access to all the tools I using for the article.

Go to docs.google.com and create new spreadsheet.  It will open by default.  First thing is to set a goal.  For our fictious company,  XYZ Corporation, I've set a sales goal of $1.2 million, which is 16.7% higher than last year.  I enter this value in one of the cells in the Google Docs - Spreadsheet.

 
Now we've setup a sales goal, let's add our sales plan to a Google Site.  During your first visit, you'll be asked by Google Sites to setup a site so you'll need to provide a name and template.  I just picked a basic one from the list that was offered at the time this article was written.  I called it Company XYZ Corporation and create a new page called CEO Plan.

The mission, objectives, strategies, and actions plans for acheiving 16.7% growth must be added now.  You might be asking yourself, why am I just now developing the mission, objectives, strategies, and action plans for the current year?  The mission, objectives, strategies, and actions plans must be determined and strategized in the previous year by the decision makers way before the new starts.  If this cannot be acheived in your business, there are greater issues you must deal with.

Here is the mission and the objectives, strategies, and action plans for XYZ Corporation in a Google docs that I am going to cut and paste to the CEO plan page.



Next step is to setup a spreadsheet to track sales.  Go back to the spreadsheet you used to set the sales goal, open it, go to a new tab.  Here's a very basic, scaled-down version of my sales spreadsheet.  I'm tracking the instore and online sales separately and adding one line per date and a total column.  
 

 
Now, I need a spreadsheet to track customers.

Now that we have the goal I going to transfer the mission, objectives, strategies, and action plans to the new Google Sites page.  Next to the objectives, I've added color-coded bullet points that I can click on to see the detailed spreadsheet graph of what's going on with each strategy and action plan.

I've setup a new page for Objective 1 and Objective 2 and linked to yellow and red bullet points to these pages.  Clicking on the yellow ball takes me to the first objective page.  I've created a chart in Google Docs Spreadsheets, and published the chart which produces an image tag that I can embed into the html of the Google Sites objective one page.

 

The final page appears like this.

As the Google Docs Spreadsheets continue to update, so does this image, dynamically.

Now that's a management dashboard that works.  All built using open tools and ideas easily found on the Internet.

5 Star Net Communications L.L.C. Joins Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program

It's Official - 5 Star Net Communications L.L.C. (5 Star) today announced it has become an authorized reseller of the Google Apps™ suite of communication and collaboration tools.  5 Star plans a phased rollout starting with its current customers who been asking for the solution, and then ramping up a fast track service aimed to decrease implementation time, increase adoptability using 5 Star's Adoptarank™ system to determine adoptability success before starting any project, and a solutions knowledge base for "cookbook" solutions to common questions with Google Apps.

Is Microsoft Office a pain for your organization? Is your mail server costly, limited and slow? Email is a service like electricity. Just plug-in and go. Can you get your email at home, without VPN, or on your phone? Switch to Google Apps and these problems will go away. Users will gain ultimate flexibility, your email now in hand of experts, updates to software are automatic and cost nothing, document collaboration now enabled instead of document collision, training minimal since it's a Google-designed product, other features like Google Sites, Chat, Groups and the App Marketplace with third-parties selling Software-As-A-Service, and ultimately the organization will require less to do more. 
 
 

The Google Apps reseller program along with 5 Star Net's add-on assurance services to improve implementation, and offer follow-on services, provides a no-risk opportunity to take your business to the next-level using Google Apps.  With the addition of Google Apps Marketplace, an apps store for your company, there's no reason your business cannot achieve its goals using Google Apps.  Contact us at http://www.5starnet.com today for your assessment.

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Google and Google Apps are trademarks of Google Inc.

5 Starnet Now Offering Google Apps Migration Fast-track System

5 Starnet Communications L.L.C. is proud to announce that it's now offering a Google Apps Migration Fast-track System.  

 

Is Microsoft Office a pain for your organization? Is your mail server costly, limited and slow? Email is a service like electricity. Just plug-in and go. Can you get your email at home, without VPN, or on your phone? Switch to Google Apps and these problems will go away, plus, new features are available. Users will gain ultimate flexibility, email now in hand of experts, updates to software are automatic and cost nothing, document collaboration now enabled instead of document collision, training minimal since it's a Google-designed product, other features like Google Sites, Chat, Groups and the App Marketplace with third-parties selling Software-As-A-Service, and ultimately the organization will require less to do more. 

Check out Google's cost saving page, then Contact us to get your personalized assessment. 

Memoirs From a Google Apps Migration

Switching over to Google Apps for domains does have many strong points, but there are some things to consider before proceeding. 

Being able to use the Gmail interface in Google Applications, compared to outlook, is a breath of fresh air.  Receiving a flood of email and using Outlook for email management can be very slow at times and that's counter productive.  Some people may enjoy that morning break, but it drives me nuts.  Having an exchange server does nothing to speed thing up searching or rules processing if all your mail is local.  Gmail was designed to excel with speed, especially with searching, which it does very well.

Now, from a management perspective, our mail server still exists, but is simply a smtp relay to Gmail.  All of the real mail server "guts" now sit on Google's infrastructure and is managed by Google Engineers for about $50 per person, per year.  That is very valuable to our organization.

Having docs in the cloud is not new for me since I've been using Gmail and Google Docs for many years.  I use the collaborative features in Google Docs to "work in tandem" with others to complete a project task or write a document.  I especially like to attach an analytics id to certain, high-visibility documents to monitor the activity.  The work turns into a fun exercise to experience this collaborative feeling in action.  Trying this with a Microsoft product will only leave you with an error - file locked by john doe.    

Using Google Docs Forms is handy for gathering poll data or working collaboratively for entering data.  If you have organized or migrated a website before, then you can respect the the cleanliness and organization of content as you move it around or set it up.  You can also enable your customer to assist with the data entry using Google Docs Forms.  

Having an integrated chat tool, like Google Chat embedded in the Gmail interface, makes it real easy for employees to communicate.  The chats, by default, are stored in Gmail search history, so they can be retrieved just like an email.  Some of our employees extend the chat to their cell phones, so they can stay in touch even when they are away from the office.  Mail and calendar can also be extended for mobile devices. 

They even have Google Groups, for discussions, Google Sites, for simple website generation, and Google Video, for hosted video.  These features have not been used for anything production, yet.  

Things I really like about Google Apps.  It's under the Google.com domain and not Gmail.com, so you can be logged in to both at the same time.  Sure, you could connect the accounts too, but I keep mine separate because I can.  For people who have used Gmail, they know the spam filtering is the best.  Plus, it's fast, about 90% (disappointed - more about this later) of the time.  My calendar is now so flexible I can view and update it using many mail programs on mac or pc.  I can add my personal calendar and view and update it in the same space.  I can schedule a meeting and see everyone's schedule, just like exchange.  It shows meeting room schedules too.  It's very mature and well done.  Not once has Google Calendar been slow.  Google provided a team of people to assist us in the migration doing much of the account leg work.  We were also able to migrate all our old email from Microsoft PST files to Gmail.  They have a team of people monitoring our email and their system.  New features are rolled out and upgrades are made without my team being concerned about it.  Most of all, they give you a phone number to call when you have an issue.  

Things I don't like about Google Apps.  Depending on the size of your organization, it can take some time setting it up, but Google does offer a team of people to help.  They did, at least, we when migrated in late 2009.  If all your requirements are not met, you may need to find permanent replacements since the Google Apps platform is new, and somewhat, limited.  Heavy Outlook uses who have many folders and rules, will have to rebuild everything in gmail.  Is that the fault of Google or Microsoft?  In all fairness, there is no easy way to export this form Outlook so importing is out-of-the-question.  The only slowdown occurs when Gmail can get slow about 10% the time, which happens about 90% of the time when sending new mail.  Setting up Google Apps can be different for mac users vs pc users, so have a plan for both if you support them.  Overall, I have few complaints and the team is energized with the new features and options of this cloud based service.