Google+ Pages now available with Google Apps

Posted by Dennis Troper, Product Management Director, Google+ Pages

Just over a week ago we opened the doors of Google+ to Google Apps users, and today we’re welcoming the millions of organizations they’re a part of. Now your business, school or nonprofit can create its own corner on Google+ with Google+ Pages.

A Google+ page is your organization’s identity on Google+. Your business, school or nonprofit can post updates and news, send tailored messages to specific groups of people, and engage in conversations with customers and followers.



Circles
Circles allow you to group followers of your page into smaller audiences. This lets you share specific messages with specific groups. For example, you could create a circle containing your business’s loyalty program members or your university’s alumni so you can reach the right people with the right message.

Hangouts
Sometimes you might want to connect with your fans face-to-face. For example, if you run a bookstore, you may want to invite an author to talk about her latest novel, or a college athletic department could host a roundtable connecting athletes with fans. Hangouts make this easy, by letting you have high-quality multi-person video chats, with a single click. You can use Hangouts to get customer feedback, help solve problems or simply get to know people better, all in real time.

Google+ Badge
To help customers find your page and follow you, we have two buttons you can add to your website by visiting our Google+ badge configuration tool:

• The Google+ icon is a small icon that directly links to your page.
• In the coming days, we’re introducing the Google+ badge, which lets people add your page to their circles, without leaving your site.

We wanted to help you get your business, school or nonprofit on Google+ as soon as possible, so we’re opening the field trial for Google+ Pages to everyone today. Once you’ve enabled Google+ for your organization and created a personal profile, you can get started creating a Google+ page for your organization at plus.google.com/pages/create.

Google+ is now available with Google Apps

Posted by Ronald Ho, Product Manager

Google Apps fans, today we’re ready to add you to our circles. Google+ makes sharing on the web more like sharing in the real world, and now Google+ is available to people who use Google Apps at college, at work or at home.

Starting now you can manually turn on Google+ for your organization. Once Google+ is turned on, your users will just need to sign up at google.com/+ to get started. For customers who use Google Apps for Business or the free version of Google Apps and who have chosen to automatically enable new services, Google+ will automatically become available to all of your users over the next several days.*

Google Apps users will have access to the same set of features that are available to every Google+ user, and more. In addition to sharing publicly or with your circles, you’ll also have the option to share with everyone in your organization, even if you haven’t added all of those people to a circle.



Google+ at home, at work and at college
You use Google Apps in lots of different ways, and we expect the same for Google+. Apps users from artists to doctors to parents to students to teachers have told us that they are ready to join the 40 million people already sharing on Google+.

Circles is a great way to share relevant content with the right people. With Circles, your photography crew doesn’t have to get an update about your morning workout, your triathlon team doesn’t have to see all your thoughts on the latest camera gear, and your project teams can be kept separate from all of this.



Hangouts with extras, which combines multi-person video chat with screen sharing and collaboration in Google Docs, lets you work together on projects even when your team can't be in the same room. Whether you’re out of town, working on a project with a distributed group, or just don’t feel like walking to the next building for your meeting, Hangouts with extras can give your team the productivity boost it needs.



Google+ coming to a campus near you
Many students and teachers have sent us their ideas about how they can use Google+ to teach, learn, work, and play. These are a few Google Apps for Education universities from around the world that are bringing Google+ to their campuses today:

• Abilene Christian University
• American University in Cairo (Egypt)
• Arizona State University
• AT Still University
• Boise State University
• Central Piedmont Community College
• Dublin City University (Ireland)
• ESSEC Business School (France)
• Leeds Metropolitan University (United Kingdom)
• Loughborough University (United Kingdom)
• Saint Louis University
• Strathmore University (Kenya)
• Universidad Panamericana (Mexico)
• University of Ferrara (Italy)
• University of Maryland Baltimore County
• University of Minnesota
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Pavia (Italy)
• University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom)
• University of Washington
• Vanderbilt University
• Wake Forest University

Just the beginning
For those of you who’ve already started using Google+ with a personal Google Account and would prefer to use your Google Apps account, we’re building a migration tool to help you move over. With this tool, you won’t have to rebuild your circles, and people who’ve already added you to their circles will automatically be connected to your new profile. We expect this migration option to be ready in a few weeks, so if you’d like, you can go ahead and get started with your Apps account today and merge your connections once the tool is available.

It took more technical work than we expected to bring Google+ to Google Apps, and we thank you for your patience. This integration is just the beginning. We’ll continue to add features and improve the way that Google+ works with Google Apps, and we encourage you to share your ideas.


* Google+ requires Picasa Web Albums for photo sharing and Google Talk for chat, so if these services are not enabled then Google+ will not automatically become available, even if your domain has chosen to automatically enable new services. The option to automatically enable new services is controlled in the Domain settings tab of the administrator control panel. More information about using Google+ with Google Apps is available in the Help Center.


Update: For Google Apps for Education customers, we're starting with higher ed institutions and are looking into making Google+ available to K-12s at some point in the future.


Update 2: The Circles migration tool referenced in this post is now live at google.com/takeout. You can learn more about how to use the tool in the Help Center.

Now available with Google Apps: Google Groups

Editor’s note: Last year we launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.



Welcome to Google Groups
Google Apps for Business and Education customers have traditionally had access to Google Groups for Business, which has allowed the creation of groups and mailing lists within the organization. Today we’re expanding the discussion by making the general Google Groups service, which allows users to participate in public discussions with others outside the organization, available with Google Apps.

Google Groups allows the creation of groups and mailing lists with any group of people from all across the web and includes Usenet archives and archives of public groups. For example, if you’re writing a new mobile app and want to follow the Android Developers forum or are interested in the latest news about Chrome OS in the Chrome notebook pilot forum you can use Google Groups to get involved in the discussion. There are millions of public groups available, so no matter your field or focus, you’re likely to find relevant discussions that you can follow and join using Google Groups. You can also set up your own public discussion community using Google Groups

Google Apps for Business and Education customers will continue to have access to Google Groups for Business, which is part of the core Google Apps suite. Google Groups is a separate service, and will be available to users of the free version of Google Apps as well as Google Apps for Business and Education. Administrators can turn on both services, or only the one that makes most sense for their use case, giving more control over how users participate in groups inside and outside of the organization.

Learn more and get started
Google Groups can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.

For more information please take a look at our Help Center.

Posted by Chandrashekar Raghavan, Product Manager, Google Groups

Note: Google Groups may not be available in all areas.