Google Forms, Refreshed

Posted by: Nick Santos, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted on the Google Drive blog.)

With Google Drive, you can do more than just create, store, and share stuff. A variety of apps can help with everything from editing spreadsheets to signing documents electronically.

Forms let you easily create questionnaires and automatically collect responses in a spreadsheet. Today a new version launches, rebuilt to bring you a faster, cleaner, and more collaborative experience.

Now with collaboration 
Create a form faster than ever. Just as with Docs, Sheets and Slides, you can now collaborate with others in real-time. If you need to work with two colleagues on a survey, all three of you can work on the same form simultaneously and even have a group chat on the side, without leaving the form.

Better editing 
Even if you’re working solo, some new changes will make creating and editing forms easier. All your changes are auto-saved and you can quickly undo/redo edits. Improved copy-and-paste will let you copy a list of bullets from the web or multiple rows of text from a spreadsheet; then, when you paste into a form, each line will be appear as an individual answer. And you can use keyboard shortcuts to get things done more quickly.

Some things unchanged 
With the new Forms editor, you can continue using all the features you’re already familiar with:

• Scale: Whether you’re collecting responses from ten friends for a baby shower or ten thousand attendees at a conference, you can count on Forms to reliably collect data for any number of responses. 
• Analyzing: See the responses you’ve received right in Google Forms or collect them neatly in Google Sheets. And you can now download a .csv file for more detailed analysis and reporting. 
• Sharing: If you share a form directly in Google+, anyone in your circles can respond without leaving their stream. Or if you send a form via email, respondents can submit their answers right from Gmail.

This update to Forms will be rolling out to Rapid Release over the next few days, and to Scheduled Release in the coming weeks. You can create forms directly from Google Sheets or Drive, or install the Chrome Web App for easy access from your browser. Also check the Google Drive +page all week for tips and tricks.

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Chicago Public Schools get high marks by going Google

Posted by Lachlan Tidmarsh, CIO, Chicago Public Schools

Editor's note: Today’s guest blogger is Lachlan Tidmarsh, Chief Information Officer for the Chicago Public Schools, the third largest school district in the United States. Chicago is one of many districts that have moved to Google Apps for Education. Join the Google team at FETC and BETT this week to learn more.

Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is a diverse learning community that encompasses 681 schools, including 472 elementary schools, 106 high schools and 96 charter schools. With over 40,000 teachers, administrators and support staff across the city working to improve the education of Chicago children, communication and collaboration are essential.

Technology can play a vital role in making the teaching and learning experience as effective and rewarding as possible. For years CPS relied on two different communication systems—Microsoft Outlook used by administrators and principals, and OpenText FirstClass used by our teachers. Even after federal subsidies, our cost to run these systems exceeded $2 million per year. Having two different systems was frustrating for users and remote access was clunky.

After deciding to move to a single consolidated system, we vetted our two final options—Google and Microsoft— with our teachers and administrators. The decision was overwhelmingly to go with Google Apps for Education. For one thing, many of our schools were already using Google Apps and were enthusiastic about the collaboration capabilities. From an executive management viewpoint, Google Apps would save the district millions of dollars each year. Who could argue with that?

Of course, we had to ensure that the applications were secure, that they met our functional requirements, and that our people were productive on day one. We engaged Google Apps partner SADA Systems to help with the migration and training, and set a goal of finishing before the start of the 2012 school year. Between March 28, when we signed the contract, and August 20, we migrated 270,000 administrators, teachers and students to Google Apps. It was easily the fastest and smoothest migration of this scale I have ever seen.

We had staffed up our help desk but had very low call volumes and little drama. The real key to this was strong communication from the get-go and well-planned training. We established “Google Heroes” in each school to lead the charge. Our “Heroes” were critical to ensuring we had at least one trained user in each school from day one. As a result, many of our teachers and principals knew what was coming and when. We also offered a variety of additional training options for faculty and staff, including online tutorials, blogs, and classroom-based instruction. In follow-up surveys of trainees, we received satisfaction levels of 80% and higher for both the training and the tools.

When school started in fall, many teachers immediately began sharing assignments with students through Google Drive. As the year progresses, they continue to find new ways to enhance the educational experience inside and outside the classroom using Google Apps. For example, some teachers create daily quizzes in Google Forms to determine if students have understood key concepts and adapt the next day’s lesson plan accordingly. In the case of a major weather event such as a snowstorm, we can use Google Apps to efficiently coordinate school operations and make sure students know where they can go to for safety.

For Chicago Public Schools, Google Apps is fundamentally transforming both educational and administrative processes for the better – all while saving us millions of dollars each year.

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Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana Sees an Opportunity with Google Apps

Posted by Jeff Ton, SVP of Corporate Connectivity & Chief Information Officer for Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana

Editor's Note: Our guest blogger this week is Jeff Ton, SVP of Corporate Connectivity & Chief Information Officer for Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana, based in Indianapolis. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

Goodwill Industries’ mission is to give people an opportunity in life that they may not otherwise have, like a job or better education. As one of the larger Goodwill organizations, we at Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana aim to run as efficiently as possible to best serve our 3,000 employees spread across 29 countries and the greater Indiana community.

When I joined the company in 2010, we were running Microsoft® Exchange 2003 and we badly needed an upgrade. As a CIO, the last thing I want is to tell the executive staff we have to spend two months and thousands of dollars to upgrade our email system. We chose Google Apps because we wanted a cloud solution that gave us leaner infrastructure, better business capabilities, and security. We saved tens of thousands of dollars, and avoided future costs from server maintenance, upgrade costs and lost time dealing with email problems.

Since moving to Google Apps, we’ve changed how we communicate and collaborate with our 1,200 business users. Google Forms and Sheets in Google Drive have been powerful tools for us. Our Corporate Connectivity Committee – a cross-functional group spanning four different business areas – used a Google Form to collect research during a six-month tour of our 70 locations into a Google Sheet. They were able to analyze results and find the best ways to distribute information to employees and make them feel more included the company. This would’ve been a messy process before, compiling 70 different questionnaires. I also use Google Sites for my personal dashboard to collect, maintain, and organize data. I spent about four months trying to piece this together on our old platform, but it never worked. On Google Sites we had it working in about 20 minutes. It updates in real time so my monthly report is a 5-minute task instead of a month-long project.

Google+ Hangouts have also transformed the way our teams connect. Our Benefits Committee used Hangouts instead of traveling to attend in-person meetings about a new payroll system and benefits structure. Additionally, our recruiting team uses Hangouts for interviews – again, saving driving time without sacrificing the face-to-face relationships with candidates. I personally use Hangouts for my weekly meetings with my staff when I am working from home. Using video makes the meetings much more cohesive, and we can work simultaneously in shared Docs so we’re all on the same page.

As a CIO, the best part about moving to Google Apps is seeing the adoption happen organically – the first time a Google Doc was shared with me, it came from outside of IT. Google Apps has helped us immensely, allowing us to take our focus off of internal processes and problems and put it instead on those who really need it.

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Korea’s POSCO launches “Smart Workplace” powered by Google Apps and Google Search

Editor's note: Today’s blog post is from POSCO (formerly Pohang Iron and Steel Company), a multinational steel-making company headquartered in Pohang, South Korea. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

For more than 40 years, POSCO has been a pillar of economic development in Korea. Now the fifth largest steel company in the world, our organization has seen dramatic growth and we are proud of our extraordinary productivity and ongoing innovation. While we are well-known in our community and throughout the world for our steel works, we are also committed to effectively managing, inspiring and growing our workforce. Without our employees, the steel and other products wouldn’t be possible.

Our POSPIA 3.0 Smart Workplace initiative is just one of ways we are ensuring that our employees are engaged, empowered and given every opportunity to succeed in the global business environment. Smart Workplace launched on December 10, 2012 with key partnerships from Google and other technology providers.

As a part of this initiative, we have invested in tools like the Google Search Appliance and Google Apps. Google Apps has made it possible for POSCO to offer the right blend of technology to facilitate better collaboration, productivity and efficiency in the workplace. With tools like Gmail, Calendar, Google+ Hangouts and shared docs on Google Drive, our employees are working together more frequently and with better results. We are no longer tied to the traditional top down approach to management. Instead, with Google Apps, our organization has more flexibility to work together at all levels within the company and collaborate easily and effectively across businesses and borders. We want the entire POSCO family of companies to benefit from this way of working together, and we plan to roll out Google Apps to our family companies in the future.

POSCO Smart Workplace launch December 10, 2012. POSCO employees moved to Google Apps and the revamped POSCO Enterprise Portal went online with the Google Search Appliance.

One of the most exciting benefits we have seen is around real time collaboration within teams using Calendar. Previously, coordination meant using manual spreadsheet or colored paper Post-It notes. Now, employees can not imagine living without the ability to visualize a day, week or month and easily coordinate schedules, meetings and teams.

The Google Search Appliance (GSA) has also helped productivity, letting employees find information and search through over 10 million documents. Before we implemented GSA, many of our office employees would have difficulty finding the right information. Now the search results are fast, and most importantly - relevant to what they are searching for.

POSCO is steeped in great tradition, but we also recognize the need to evolve both in how we run our business and how we engage the workforce that keeps our business running. Google Apps and GSA are helping us manage our technology evolution so that we can continue to innovate and provide the materials that make up the world’s infrastructure.

Update Jan 31: minor edits made to post.

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Quixote Studios helps Hollywood visions come alive with Google Apps

Posted by Bill Schechtman, IT Director at Quixote Studios

Editor's note: Our guest blogger is Bill Schechtman, IT Director at Quixote Studios, a Los Angeles-based company that rents stages, vehicles and production supplies for photo shoots and movie and TV productions. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.

At Quixote Studios, we work with the bleeding edge of American pop culture. We’ve hosted pop legends like Madonna, brought Jay-Z’s “On To The Next One” to life, and stood in for countless precinct offices, crime scenes and killers’ hideouts on the CBS show “Criminal Minds.” We have more than 200 employees at six locations giving studios what they need to make movies, helping photographers and fashion houses make their clothes look stunning, and playing a part in bringing the television shows you love to the small screen every week.

We work in a forward-leaning industry, but until we moved to Google Apps for Business, we worked with painfully outdated technology. Our server was unreliable and our employees couldn’t access email from their smartphones. Fixing these and a host of other problems was my first priority when I joined Quixote Studios as IT Director two years ago. We considered Microsoft Exchange, but the storage, licensing and support costs were more than we bargained for. We also looked at Office 365, but it didn’t offer the full suite of tools we needed or the simple pricing structure Google Apps has. So, with the help of our reseller, Dito, we switched to Apps.

We started with the fundamentals: moving everyone to Gmail and setting up device syncing so people could access email from their phones and tablets. Before we knew it, we started seeing employees picking up more advanced product features on their own: shared calendars became a company standard and Docs became the norm for team meeting notes.

But Google Drive has been the real revelation. Every important document in our company is stored in Drive, from onboarding and exit forms to organizational charts, permits and checklists. It's a far cry from our old system, a complicated file server that was stuffed full of different versions of Microsoft Word and Excel files, all with their own cryptic names for versions or dates.

Drive has also dramatically improved the way we collaborate. Creating our company all-hands presentations, for example, is a team effort that involves up to ten stakeholders working together on a single document at the same time. It's powerful to see that many employees collaborating so seamlessly and efficiently. It's even more exciting to think about how much time we save by eliminating the need to send attachments back and forth or check that we're working on the most up-to-date version.

Google Apps has helped turn technology into an incredible resource for our employees – smooth, hassle-free email and an easy collaboration hub. Now we can put all of our energy into helping our clients do great things. As someone in charge of IT, it’s comforting to know those systems will grow right alongside Quixote Studios as we continue to help make Hollywood’s big ideas come to life. And Scene!

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One-stop shop for help with Google Apps

Posted by Helen Casabona, Google Apps documentation team

Finding information should be as simple as using a great product. That's why we created support.googleapps.com—an easy-to-use website where you and your employees can find everything you need to make the most of Google Apps in your organization. In addition to 24/7 phone support, we now offer a complete collection of documentation, training, and self-help resources available at one convenient location. You can visit the site whether you need to set up a new app, troubleshoot a calendar issue, train your users, or talk to a support rep.

Give your employees tips for the workplace
You and your employees can go to the Using your apps section of the site to find helpful information tailored specifically for using Google Apps in the workplace. Here, you’ll find guides on switching from your old email program to Gmail, calendar tips for administrative assistants, steps for setting up mobile access or a shared inbox, and other essential information for business users.

Get ready for upcoming launches
Visit the What's new? section for a schedule of new Google Apps feature and product launches. You’ll not only learn about important updates like the release of Google Drive or the new Gmail compose experience, but you can get tips and training resources for rolling these changes out to your users.

We believe that good support is a core component of Google Apps and hope that by placing these resources at your fingertips, everyone in your organization can find helpful answers, solve problems, and learn new ways to benefit from Google Apps. Check out the new site now at support.googleapps.com. Enjoy!

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Smarter Cities with City 24/7 and Google Places API

Posted by Tom Touchet, CEO, City 24/7

(Cross-posted on the Google Geo Developers Blog)

Editor's note: Our guest blogger this week is from City 24/7, a non-traditional media company with a mission of providing “what you need to know, when and where it helps you most.” See how the company uses Google Places APIs as a way to give the public access to vital local information.

Imagine you are visiting New York City for the very first time. The lights, sounds and endless city blocks are all pretty amazing – yet a little confusing. That’s where City 24/7 comes in.

To give you an easy (and free) way of learning about your surroundings, we’re installing 250 Smart Screens in retrofitted telephone booths across NYC. City 24/7 Smart Screens are large, interactive touch screens that give you a range of information about local businesses and points of interest. And in the case of an emergency you can also access vital safety information, such as safety tips from the police department or updates from the mayor’s office.

We turned to the Google Places API to help us provide you with accurate, reliable information about events and places in any given neighborhood. The Places API includes location info from Google Maps, content from Google+ Local, Zagat-recommended establishments and (as of last week), Place Summaries - which include curated reviews and ratings.

Cities should be easy to live in and fun to visit. And with access to Google+ Local data, everyone can feel like a local, knowing all the best places to eat, shop, play and hang out. With the help of the Google Places API, we look forward to bringing our Smart Screens to bus shelters, train platforms, and major pedestrian streets in cities all around the world, as well as to launch our mobile application.

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