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Cloud Alliance for Google Apps: Webinar Series

As the founding member of the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps, BetterCloud is pleased to announce tomorrow’s upcoming webinar “Close Deals Faster by Optimizing Email Prospecting” featuring Yesware Co-Founder and CEO, Matthew Bellows.

Please join us tomorrow at 2:00 PM ET where Matthew will lead a demo of Yesware, used by over 50,000 sales people worldwide, review use cases from top customers like Hubspot, Groupon and Adroll, discuss upcoming product features and answer any questions you may have.

October 10, 2012 at 2:00 PM EDT Close Deals Faster by Optimizing Email Prospecting Register here

About Cloud Alliance for Google Apps Founded in 2011, the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps is a trusted network of independent cloud software providers that build and deploy applications heavily integrated with the Google Apps platform. Members include AwayFind, BetterCloud, Expensify, Harvest, Insightly, Lucidchart, Okta, RunMyProcess, ShuttleCloud, Smartsheet, Spanning Backup and … Read more →

Schedule a Password Policy for Google Apps with FlashPanel

Google Apps has created a secure way to work and collaborate in the Cloud. However, the cloud has given rise to mobile computing, meaning your users are likely logged into corporate accounts on personal mobile devices and tablets, putting your company at unnecessary risk in case of employee negligence or theft. To protect against lost or stolen devices and ensure unauthorized users are not gaining access to your Google Apps environment, you should regularly reset user account passwords.

Our Google Apps management and security tool, FlashPanel, allows super administrators to create, schedule and enforce regular password resets to protect your domain.

To schedule a password policy, select Enforce Reset Passwords under Security Tools on your FlashPanel homepage.

Once you’ve entered the Password Reset home screen, select Set Up to proceed with the policy creation.

Tradition Meets Technology

Taco Mac and FlashPanel

After making the move to Google Apps in 2008, one of Atlanta’s most beloved eateries was still searching for an effective user management solution. So when the FlashPanel private beta opened this Spring, Taco Mac’s New Technologies Director, Dan Kirk, jumped at the chance to try it out.

FlashPanel has replaced the restaurant’s need for an LDAP system and is making day to day domain management easier than ever before. Mr. Kirk especially loves FlashPanel’s email signature tool, which creates a unified company image and the user deprovisioning workflow, which quickly and securely removes outgoing employees from the system.

For more on how Taco Mac uses FlashPanel, check out the case study.

From Hosted Exchange to Google Apps

Interactive E-Solutions and FlashPanel For 12 years, Interactive E-Solutions helped set up and migrate companies to hosted Exchange environments. But this year, seeking to modernize the company’s mission and its own IT infrastructure, E-Solutions’ CEO, Brandon Foreman, decided to move the company and their customers to Google Apps.

Focusing on the vast cost savings and increased collaboration, Foreman got his staff on board and successfully made the move to Google. Once operating completely in Google Apps, Mr. Foreman sought out a replacement for the Google Apps Control Panel and landed on FlashPanel for it’s streamlined management capabilities. As an added bonus, Mr. Foreman found FlashPanel’s Email Monitoring tool much easier to use than the same tool in Exchange.

For more on Interactive E-Solutions and FlashPanel, read the case study here.

BetterCloud’s Keys to Managing your Google Apps Domain: Asset Visibility

This August, we launched the very first version-now white paper, BetterCloud’s Keys to Managing your Google Apps Domain. We chose to house the white paper in a Google Doc rather than a stagnant PDF because doing so means we can easily update and add to the document. Plus, we’ve given all of our readers comment access, which means you can give us feedback (or a tip we didn’t think of) right in the doc.

Our white paper currently covers a range of topics from user onboarding and deprovisioning to user management, Control Panel settings and even best practices for Gmail settings, and today we’re pleased to announce the addition of Asset Visibility, including the benefits of asset visibility and how to get it.

Read the full white paper here and check back in two weeks for our next update, when we add Best Practices for Change Management.

Finding Success with Google Apps

Genesis Career College and FlashPanel

In 2010, Genesis Career College became one of the only career institutes to provide official school email accounts for all students. This was made possible through Google Apps for Education. Now Genesis, with the help of Robert Warren, the school’s Director of Technology, uses Google Apps to provide messaging and collaboration capabilities to more than 2,000 students, faculty and staff.

Though there are endless benefits to going Google, using the suite at an educational institution poses a unique challenge – deprovisioning users quickly and efficiently. Unlike a corporate environment, where employee turnover is fairly steady and slow, at a school, hundreds or thousands of students will need to be deprovisioned in the same time period (think graduation).

To make the user deprovisioning process easier, Mr. Warren installed FlashPanel and immediately saw the value of the tool’s step by step deprovisioning workflow. Now Robert … Read more →

Delegating Access Control for Google Apps Mangement

At BetterCloud, FlashPanel helps us manage our Google Apps domain in dozens of ways. Just last week we used FlashPanel to rename and repurpose the accounts of our summer interns and the Apps Butler’s broadcast feature helped us inform the team of an upcoming building fire drill.

We’re certain there’s an endless number of management tasks that can be quickly and easily accomplished with FlashPanel, so each week we’ll share one example of how FlashPanel is making the lives of our users easier one task at a time.

How are you using FlashPanel? Let us know if the comments section below or send an email to info@bettercloud.com.

Access Control and Group Management

FlashPanel’s Access Control feature allows super administrators to grant certain permissions to other non-super admin users. One specific use case would be allowing a receptionist or administrative assistant to manage group memberships.

To enable Access Control for Group Management, visit the Settings tab at the top right corner of FlashPanel.

Cutting Costs and Increasing Efficiency

Great Lakes Wholesale and FlashPanel

After trading up to Google Apps from an outdated and expensive Microsoft Exchange server, Great Lakes Wholesale’s Network Administrator, Jamie Jahnke, went looking for a simple and easy way to share contacts throughout the company.

Mr. Jahnke discovered FlashPanel, first implementing the tool’s Shared Contacts Management feature. Ultimately, Mr. Jahnke found a broad range of functionality invaluable, especially the Inbox Delegation the feature.

For more on how Great Lakes makes use of FlashPanel every day, check out the case study.

Cloud Alliance for Google Apps: Webinar Series

The Cloud Alliance for Google Apps, a group of independent software vendors whose products integrate with the Google Apps platform, aims to educate Google Apps end-users and administrators and create a sense of community within the ecosystem.

In an effort to bolster the strength of its educational content, the Cloud Alliance added five new members to its prestigious roster this summer and this Monday, September 10, marks the beginning of our new member webinars.

Please join the Cloud Alliance and ShuttleCloud for an hour-long webinar detailing the application’s cloud to cloud migration service and focusing on best practices for migrating and managing employee data.

September 10, 2012 at 2:00 PM EDT Migrating to Google and Managing Employee Data Register here

About Cloud Alliance for Google Apps Founded in 2011, the Cloud Alliance for Google Apps is a trusted network of independent … Read more →

How Google Apps is Accelerating the “Revolution at the Edge”

Yesterday’s blog post by Tidemark CEO and Founder Christian Gheorghe, entitled “Revolution at the Edge” and published on the blog of Ben Horowitz (co-founder of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz), compared the current enterprise IT revolution to the Romanian revolution in which Communism was defeated and the people of Romania were liberated.

The enterprise IT revolution he refers to, which Google Apps sits firmly in the middle of, is set to free thousands of companies and millions of workers from what Gheorghe calls the Wintel duopoly, a world in which CIOs and IT departments (and thus entire businesses) are dependent upon two stagnant and subpar technology systems and spend up to 80% of their time just maintaining status quo.

The post discusses how in the future (and for some businesses, the present), the IT department and CIO will focus exclusively on analyzing data, building and deploying scalable applications, enabling aspects of technology that add value to the company and creating open channels … Read more →

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