When we first started building FlashPanel, we realized there was a huge opportunity to report on the vast amount of data surfaced by the application. Since then, we’ve steadily enhanced FlashPanel’s reporting capabilities, and today we’re excited to announce some major new updates to our Google Apps reporting tool.

In addition to churning out common reports found in the Google Apps Admin Panel like audit logs, email and Drive quotas and login activity, FlashPanel also reports on information far beyond what is available natively in Google Apps – specifically around Google Drive sharing, Gmail settings and more. We’ve also added handy tools like Canned Reports and the Report Builder, which give IT admins unmatched customization and visibility when it comes to reporting on a Google Apps domain.

Canned Reports

Canned reports in FlashPanel provide quick links to commonly requested reports. In the application’s canned reports section, you’ll find more than 20 ready-made reports for users, groups and org … Read more →

When it comes to creating, editing and browsing user profiles in Google Apps, the Control Panel leaves a lot to be desired.

Administrators lack the ability to add custom fields to user profiles like ‘Manager’ or even ‘Title,’ add and remove users to and from groups in bulk, bulk edit contact details and profile pictures and much much more.

And without the help of a third party tool, those additional contact fields are not surfaced in the end user ‘Directory.” The native directory is also difficult to navigate since it requires a user to click on a contact’s name to view more details – slowing down the browsing experience.

To remedy the disparities, we built granular user profile editing capabilities and a robust directory search tool into FlashPanel. And now, to provide an even better operating experience, we’ve updated the look and feel of the application’s corporate directory and user detail pages.

New User Profile View from an Admin’s Perspective

To start, Google Apps admins will notice that the Google … Read more →

Kevin Harris is the Senior User Experience designer behind FlashPanel.

To continue improving our cloud management tool, FlashPanel, we take customer feedback to heart. Most recently, we launched a feature contest to turn customer suggestions into actionable advice. The amount of great suggestions we received was actually pretty overwhelming. We picked two winners and plan to roll out the first feature, Conditional Formatting for Email Signatures, before the end of the year. The second, Calendar Management and Delegation, is on our roadmap for early 2013.

But it doesn’t take a feature contest to get us listening to customer input. We’ve been improving FlashPanel based on user suggestions since we launched in Alpha last Spring. Through wireframe reviews, phone calls, demos and feature suggestions left in our Knowledge Base, we’ve learned so much about what our customers need, and have put this knowledge … Read more →