Solve360's Integration with Google

Here is what we have on the agenda for you, the Google Apps domain administrator:

• A quick introduction to “Google Apps”
• More about “The Google” and the difference between a regular Google account and a Google Apps account
• Explain how Solve360 integrates with your regular Google Account
• Show how Solve360 integrates with your team's Google Apps accounts

Click on the Next link located in the top-right corner of this page to continue ...

Introduction

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is an online office platform. In Google's own words, it’s a place where you can “get online email, calendar, documents and more working for your organization”.  Now, it's the “more” that really gets us excited.  What does Google mean by “more”?  They are referring to business apps who all come together, resolve their differences and work in harmony, without you doing any work.

It seems impossible to run a business without the use of online business apps these days. They are the brain and nervous systems of your business.  They are inexpensive, easy to setup and they automate a lot of processes that were otherwise done manually -- reducing errors and saving valuable time. Imagine simply turning on the apps you need and having them work together instantly and seamlessly.  This is what Google Apps is all about. Vendors sweat the details of integration and deliver their unique services, packed with useful features, letting you focus on your clients. So are you seeing why we are so excited? Learn more about Google Apps at http://google.com/a

All this wonderfulness is happening - and it's happening now. So let's see how easy it is to integrate your Google services with Solve360's CRM and Project Management features.

But first let's make one quick distinction ...

“The Google”

What's the difference between a regular Google account and a Google Apps account?

Remember how we described Google Apps as "email, calendar, documents and more"?  The “more” (which turned out to be business apps) is the difference between the two.  Google Apps accounts generally have everything that regular Google Accounts have, but they also have business apps. Regular Google accounts offer a variety of Google services (most often referred to as a Gmail account).  Google Apps include a specific suite of hosted services that businesses administer, using Google's servers and their own domain.  Google Apps comes in several free varieties as well as a fee-based Premier Edition.  Think of a Google account as equipment for a home office.  Now think of a Google Apps account as equipment for a central office for an established or growing team.

The best part is that Solve360 and Google are rapidly expanding their solutions and integration points to help you and your office. Here's how it looks today ...

Using Solve360 with Google

How can I make Solve360 work with my regular Google account?

So you've got yourself a Google Account and a Solve360 account.  Let's take a look at how they can work together! There are five main points of integration:

1. Gmail Message synchronization
2. Google Contact synchronization
3. Google Calendar synchronization
4. Google Docs
5. Google Maps

First lets look at Gmail Synchronization. Solve360's Webmail add-on has you reading, sending and managing your Gmail messages right from within Solve360. Think of the Webmail feature working just like a desktop email program, only here it’s integrated with the various Solve360 features.

What Webmail is not, is an email server, like Microsoft Exchange, which actually stores the emails.  In this example, Google is your central email server and Webmail works with it. It does not try to be a better email client than Google's own - the value is in how it seamlessly merges your email database with your client database, which is extremely helpful when plowing through tasks relating to managing client correspondence.

Note that “optional” does not cost extra, it's just that way so you have control over what features are available to your team.

To enable the (free) Webmail feature for your team click Solve360 menu (top right) > Add-ons > Webmail > Enable.  Then for each Solve360 account click Solve360 menu > Webmail > Settings and in the Receiving and Sending tabs click Google as the service type and enter your login information.  For Solve360 to access your Google email account you also need to enable the IMAP feature Google account > Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > Enable IMAP.

Gmail synchronization provides you with useful features to automate management of client interactions:

• When addressing email messages the email addresses are suggested directly from the Solve360 database
• Central list of email templates that can be used by everyone on your team
• “Group recipients” feature to send personalized email messages to a group of contacts
• Integration with Solve360's email workgroup email folder makes it effortless to connect email messages to contact, company and project blog pages (see the featured tutorial on attaching emails as activities)
• One-click to add a contact into Solve360 from an email message
• One-click to add a meeting invitation to your Solve360 calendar and link to the corresponding contact record

Tip If you have many messages in your Gmail account there is a way to speed up the Webmail add-on. Open Gmail > Settings > Labs > enable "Advanced IMAP controls" > Forwarding and POP/IMAP > set “Limit IMAP folders to contain no more than this many messages” = 1000.

Next let's investigate Google contacts Synchronization. Google Contact synchronization means that the contacts saved in your Solve360 account, will be accessible in your Gmail Account and vise-versa.  As changes are made in one system they are automatically updated in the other.  This ability to access the same set of contacts across Solve360 and Google give you a consistent source of information, wherever you happen to be.

Additionally, Google’s own sync feature streamlines synchronization to Outlook, iPhone, Mac and Blackberry, etc. making it a sync “hub”.  Since Solve360 is connected to that hub you can sync some or all of your Solve360 contacts to Google - Google then syncs to your Mac and iPhone automatically - contact utopia!

To enable the (free) Google Contact Sync feature for your team click Solve360 menu > Add-ons > Google Contact Sync > Enable.

 

Then for each Solve360 account click Solve360 menu > Manage Contacts > Data > Synchronize contacts with Google and follow the instructions to grant Solve360 access to your Google contacts and set the sync preferences.

Contact synchronization can be a two-way-street (changes in Solve360 get updated in Gmail and changes in Gmail get updated in Solve360), or it can be a one-way street or a the-other-way street.  You have control, for example your Aunt Gweneth may not have a place in your Solve360 account and Mr. Pensky's (from the Pensky account at work) shouldn't get mixed in with family and friends. It just doesn't feel right! Solve360 allows you to avoid these unwanted situations, so your work life stays at work, and personal life stays at home.

Solve360's Google calendar synchronization is the third feature that we'd like to highlight. Unlike traditional calendar feeds this feature will intelligently sync changes between your Solve360 and Google Calendar. Yep, two-way calendar sync!

To enable the (free) Google Calendar Sync feature for your team click Solve360 menu (top right) > Add-ons > Google Calendar Sync > Enable. Then for each Solve360 account click Solve360 menu > Report and Update Activities > Show Calendar events ... > Data > Synchronize events with Google and follow the instructions to set the sync preferences.

Changes made in Solve360 will automatically push out to the corresponding Google calendars in near real-time. Changes made in a Google calendar are pushed to Solve360 by clicking on the "Update Solve360" button in the Google calendar.

Forth, lets discover ways of using Google Docs with Solve360. Google Docs are an amazing way to organize your documents online and collaborate on them with your colleagues. Remember the days when you would email a spreadsheet out to ten people? Each person would make changes, send them to their colleagues who would also make changes then you would wait for all the different versions to make their way back to you (each as unique as the last).  What a mess!  Those days are over.  Google Docs keeps all those spreadsheets, texts, presentations and drawings in a single central place where everyone sees and works on the most up to date version in real-time and only that version.  Here is a cool YouTube video to introduce the concept.

Solve360 was built with team collaboration in mind, so it naturally embraces Google Docs on the Contact and Project Blog pages. To try it out, open a Solve360 contact or project blog page, hover over the "Add an activity" button, select "Add a link to a Google Doc" and follow the steps.  Since there is only one document, there is never any confusion about the versions.  Now you are collaborating a la Google Docs style!

The value of linking your Google documents in Solve is that they will be shown in context with all the other information about the person or project i.e. you're not looking at a folder of files - you're looking at what you are working on - all known information in a single place. You are now more focused on the work and less on managing the information that relates to it.

As you might expect everywhere an address is shown a direct link to Google maps is provided. Clicking on the link will pop-up a Google Map of the location right within the Solve360 workspace.

Using Solve360 with Google Apps

How can I make Solve360 work with my Google Apps account?

We set the stage earlier by writing "Google apps lets you simply turn-on the apps you need and have them work together instantly and seamlessly".  So you've chosen Solve360 as the amazing CRM/Project Management app to complement your Google Apps account, which means you now want to access Solve360 directly inside your Google Apps account.  If you haven't already done so open Solve360’s Google Marketplace page, click "Add it now" and follow the prompts.

There are eight integration features worth checking out. Five of them we just covered in the prior slide "making Solve360 work with my regular Google account" (Gmail Message synchronization, Google Contact synchronization, Google Calendar synchronization, Google Docs and Google Maps) - all of these all apply to Google Apps as well.  The next three are special features that apply to Google Apps accounts only, they are:

• Single-Sign-On
• Automatic Account Creation
• Access Solve360 from within Gmail using the Gmail Gadget (most loved feature)
• One-click access to create contact records in and archive email messages to Solve360

Besides having access to these three additional features, we know Google Apps clients are expecting tight integration so for accounts activated through Google Apps we completed most of the steps needed to enable most of these features. What's remaining is having each user simply set their own personal preferences e.g. choose which contacts sets to sync, etc.

Google Apps Single-Sign-On is pretty intuitively named. Solve360 and Google Apps will generally work in different browser tabs, but once logged into Google you can jump directly into the Solve360 workspace without entering a username and password again.

A few minutes after installing Solve360 in your Google Apps account, you will find a "Solve360 by Norada" option under Google's "More" dropdown (Google calls this their universal navigation).  Clicking on this link will log you into Solve360 automatically. It does so because your Solve360 account "trusts" your Google Apps account.

Now you've got Solve360 "installed" on your Google Apps domain and your own account working, next we need to tend to the other folks on your team.  As the Google Apps domain admin you can go ahead and create an account for them in Google and when they click on the "Solve360 by Norada" link the  Google Apps Automatic Account Creation will ensure they have a corresponding account in Solve360.

Alongside each Gmail message the Solve360 Gmail Gadget shows off a clean, at-a-glance view of everything your team knows about the person behind the message. Before taking further action, you can examine the customer’s previous interactions and special considerations. Advanced customer management is now no more complicated than a few extra clicks inside an email exchange with a client. Reduce multi-tasking, deal with client interactions instantly and leverage team knowledge.

To access your Solve360 account directly from our website or your mobile smartphone you'll need to activate a password. Just have your Solve360 administrator to reset your Solve360 password to activate one, then change it to a secure password yourself.

1. Your Administrator clicks Solve360 menu > Modify User Accounts > selects your account > clicks “Reset password”
2. You click Solve360 menu (top right) > My Account > Password > enter the default password 12345, enter a new secure one, click Save

These are simple yet extremely useful features that reduce the effort to manage the two systems. Some would call that "streamlined", but we call it dedication to making your business better.  This type of integration sets the stage for further integrations. Want to see what's new? Check out http://norada.com/google

Enabling the Google Apps integration for a subset of your team

Say you're part of a larger organization and Solve360 is only needed for a specific group of folks. With a new option announced by Google you can enable Solve360 for only part of the company that need it. Assuming Solve360 has been added to your Google Apps domain already, here are the simple steps your Google Apps domain admin would do:

1. Google Apps > Manage this domain > Organizations & users
2. Add sub-organization button (top right) > Solve360 (as an example)
3. Click on the primary domain to list all of your users > Select the users to move to the new sub-organization > Move to > click "Solve360" (or whatever name you used) > Move to organization
4. Services tab > Solve360 = Off > Save changes
5. Click on the new sub-organization on the left side of the screen > Services tab
6. For Solve360 click "Override this setting" > Solve360 = "On" > Save changes