Google Apps for Domains Problems for the Enterprise and Business

In my business we are a heavy Google Apps for Domains user with several domains setup, some business and some free. I moved across from hosted Exchange a few years ago and everything has been pretty great until the last few weeks which caused me to question whether Google Apps for Domains was suited to Business in general.

The start of my problem was the in my use of Google Sync for Outlook, a tool that gives almost native desktop integration for the Google mail features. This has worked great and I noticed no problems until about three weeks ago I noticed that my laptop was sucking battery and ran hot all the time that Outlook was open. A little investigation found that the Sync of Notes was always running and syncing despite the fact that I don’t use the Notes feature of Outlook or Google at all (I prefer Evernote). Further checks found that I had a significant amount of Notes that I discovered was actually all of my .txt files that I had stored in Google Docs/Drive (I use Google Drive desktop sync and Insync to sync my main files, something I had added a load of files to about three weeks previously). The penny dropped, that because Google Apps Sync for Outlook syncs all ‘notes’ found in Google Docs to Outlook, all of the many text files (many GB by the way) that I sync were between machines and the cloud using Insync were also being synchronised into my Google Mail and because there were many GBs, it was taking a very long time and killing my laptops in the meantime.

I had to stop the synchronisation of Notes and contacted Google Apps Enterprise support for help (because I could not find anything online about how to do it). Their response was sort of expected and not expected… Google Notes sync is beta and the disabling of the sync was not supported. The last point is the killer for me, and what led me to think that Google has a big problem. They activated without my control a Beta feature (Notes Sync) but don’t provide a single way for me (a Live user) to disable a Beta feature, at least they don’t support it! Not Enterprise friendly and that has to change Google.

Anyway, they did provide some ‘unsupported’ registry settings to disable it in the end, so fine I used the settings but unfortunately it did not work – in fact the modifications were supposed to allow me to disable the sync of one or all features of Google Sync for Outlook but NONE of the changes did anything. I contacted Google again but their response was that they could not provide support on the unsupported registry modifications and I was ON MY OWN! Not friendly at all, they effectively hung me out to dry to a problem caused by their enforcement of the use of a Beta feature AND providing a fix that simply did nothing. Google, you have a problem right there in the use of your services with the Enterprise and you need to fix it right now. Don’t deploy Beta features without the ability to enable/disable them, and don’t leave businesses high and dry without a resolution caused by your own ineptitude otherwise you will LOSE to everyone else. I had to consider stepping back from Google Apps for Domains, back to a traditional hosted Exchange solution before I found the fix (we also considered stepping back from Google Docs/Drive as a smaller step).

Anyway, for those who need the fix I hunted over several nights through multiple Google Groups looking for a solution and finally found it, but that was no thanks to Google. For those who are looking to be able to enable or disable individual syncs in Google Sync for Outlook you need to modify the follow the instructions:

1. Go to http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=1041455 , go to Enable/Disable Import Options.

2. Follow Step 1 to Create the “SyncFlagsEnabled” value with DWORD value set to 1.

3. Skip Step 2 because it is redundant to what you want to do

4. Follow Step 3 for each of the services you wish to control (NotesSync in my instance) but add the following to the registry key for the service:
registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\NotesSync

Modify HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Apps Sync\TasksSync by adding the following DWORD Values:
DWORD Value: UploadEnabled
Modify the DWORD Value as follows:
Set the Value data = 0

DWORD Value: DownloadEnabled
Modify the DWORD Value as follows:
Set the Value data = 0

All I then had to do was remove the almost 3GB of notes from my Notes folder and then compact my PST to get everything back to where it needs to be, and then go an provide a registry import for these settings to provide to all of my users so that they don’t have the same problem of the laptop whizzing about synchronising a whole load of nothing, using processor and bandwidth a plenty. All I need to do now is watch Google for the next Enterprise mess up with Google Sync for Outlook.

Backups on a different level

With the cost of computer hardware today and the availability of file and folder sync solutions, it makes great sense to always have a second backup laptop available to you at all times such you can alternate or switch between them based on the emergency (machine is dead) to the having a larger presentation laptop and a smaller travel laptop. The sync solutions that work well for me are Microsoft Live Mesh and the Insync solution with Google Docs. Both of these solutions allow you to setup sub folders of your Documents folder as a complete file store that is synchronised to the other machine(s). In the past I have used the sync solutions to provide full files/folder backup and recovery for moving to a new laptop, but with the large amount of data I now sync that has sometimes taken me up to a week to get back and in operation. I see it now as a much better solution to always have two machines on the go simultaneously.

Live Mesh is more flexible in allowing you to have multiple folders all over your machine that you set to sync across all machines, but it does not offer much cloud storage (5GB but you can peer to peer sync without going to this storage) and there are mild rumours that with the coming Windows 8 that it will be ceased. This has proven very reliable for my situation where I have been syncing 80-120GB across three machines but I am not sure I will be sticking with it.

Insync is a much more interesting tool that allows you to use the universal storage nature of Google Docs to sync all your machines to Google Docs, and due to the low cost of Google’s storage ( free for 1GB, $5 for 20GB, $20 for 80GB, $4,096 for 16TB! per annum) you have ultimately unlimited storage. This service also allows you to share individual files and folders using the sharing functionality of Google Docs, and your remote and mobile access is via standard Google Docs on whatever device. I can see me transitioning to Insync only in the coming months.

Email is just a matter of using a webmail solution or one that offers full sync or IMAP to a PC client such as hosted Exchange solutions (Office365) or ,my favourite at the moment, Google Mail for Apps. Both of those solutions offer a complete storage solution for all your email, contacts and calendaring needs. Google offers more capabilities in being able to share calendars with people outside of your organisation and having access to some very interesting Google Apps platforms solutions such as CRM. Microsoft is definitely more behind in that side of things, and way more costly.

On top of that, using Google Chrome with full browser sync also makes sure that every bookmark and extension is synchronised to every machine I use. The final piece of the puzzle is the use of Lastpass to ensure that I have secure access to every password that I need.

So you have no excuse but to have access to a laptop with all of your data, all of the time, and even have access to your data in the cloud.

Apple and Android–what is a Post PC device

Last March, when the iPad 2 was released, Steve Jobs described it as a Post PC device. Rather scathingly I could not agree to that as under iOS4 you still needed to activate it using iTunes and a PC of Windows or OSX flavours. The promise was that once iOS5 was available, this would be solved and the iPad would be standalone and be truly a Post PC device.

Well iOS5 came along and it is true that you can activate the device without a PC and make use of iCloud to backup your content and do most things without a PC, but if you do not have a PC then you have lost much functionality for managing your content. Primarily the iPad (or iPhone for that matter) needs to connect to a PC over WiFi to sync content, particularly Podcast audio or video content, where you have to go and get it rather than have it delivered. Since last March, I have moved on Android devices to get that standalone device, and I can say I have pretty much achieved it as I have phone and tablet devices which auto subscribe to audio and video feeds, and give me direct access to home content via DLNA and access to files via online file stores such as Dropbox or Box. So Android of any sort above 2.3 gives you that PC-less experience that was so pushed last March by Apple and they have not yet succeeded in delivering.

I also have to say, I don’t think this sort of device is Post PC in the truest sense of the term – PC stands for Personal Computer. It has become a way of describing a device with a keyboard, a screen and a central processing box. I think the term has to be taken back to its original meaning - a personal computer. In that context, my Smartphone is a PC device… my Tablet is a PC device… my Laptop is a PC device. Post PC devices are actually PC devices where PC stands for a personal computer device and they are all PCs.

Voice Communication with your Device

The recent iPhone 4S launch was a very evolutionary device launch, with key performance improvements being a major delivery point, but along with that has come Siri. Siri is a full on voice controlled assistant making use of cloud processing to give the small device the ability to rapidly process your voice commands. There is a degree of excitement about part of the Apple delivery, but I believe that this is of academic use and in many ways just like 3D technology for TVs – nice, clever but overall not a major feature or use case.

Think of it this way, you are walking around an airport and suddenly you need to send a text message to say your flight is going to be delayed. Do you:

a) Get your phone out and say ‘Siri, send message to Joe Bloggs, my plane is delayed by at least 60 minutes, send.’

b) Use finger and touch SMS icon, and quickly type ‘My plane is delayed by at least 60 minutes, send.’

Which of these two approaches is going to make you look like an absolute madman? Which is the least private? Which is the least error prone with all the noise going on around you?

Think of this another way, you are sat in your open plan office with the low level murmur that all open plan offices have from people on telephones or having short corridor discussions, and all of a sudden you need to search your address book for a contact and make a call to them. Do you:

a) Get your phone up and say ‘Siri, Call Joe Bloggs, Mobile’

b) Get your phone up and type a search for Joe into the Contacts app and select the correct number and press call’

Which of these two approaches is going to annoy the hell out of the person next to you? Which is the least private? Which is the least error prone with the general office noise of the standard open plan office?

You might notice that I am not a believer in voice control of devices in the business. I think that the entire interaction with a device through voice is just incompatible with group working as well as too error prone for the working environments we are in. As for full interaction through voice with a desktop device, I also believe that the speed of interaction of voice is simply too slow compared to the very highly optimised keyboard and pointer/mouse interaction (and even QWERTY is optimised compared to voice). I do see the introduction of touch to the interactions with devices, but not the wholesale interaction pushed by many touch PCs – touch is something that is added to the peripherals in front of you and augmented (but not replaced) by the use of touch on displays, particularly the larger whiteboard level displays that are common in schools but not in offices.

Voice though, is definitely not something that is a fit to people and the environments in which they work. Or to put it another way, “I am sorry Dave, you need to go back to the keyboard.”

Backup everything

One of great things about Google Android mobile phones combined with Google Apps or MS Exchange, is that you do full sync your email, contacts and calendar between your mobile devices and your ‘cloud’, so it is available everywhere. I can heartily recommend any independent or small firm to utilise Google Apps if their employees have a smartphone (Android or iPhone or both!).

However, this sync solution does not cover everything on your smartphone, as it leaves out the SMS/MMS and call records, so if you have a crash like I did a couple of weeks ago that leaves your Android phone clean of any data (I was hacking my phone so I do deserve the loss) then you end up losing your SMS and call record history. What I found though is that there are a number of Android apps that are available that backup your SMS and call records, and one in particular stuck out because of the way that it stores your backup in your Google Mail account. Others tend to store the data on your microSD card or in an archive on a server.

The app I settled on is SMS Backup+ from Jan Berkel, which I have been testing for a couple of weeks and I have found it works – that is it, it works reliably. This software backs up on a schedule (which you can define to manage battery life) using IMAP into your Google Mail account, saving your SMS/MMS under the tag SMS (you can change it to something you want to define) and saving your Call Logs under the ‘Call Logs’ tag (again you can change it to whatever you want). You can also choose from a number of options for the format of the From address (I picked Name+phone number).

This in itself is brilliant and an excellent way of ensuring that you always have copies of messages sent to your phone and the details about all the calls made and received. However this app goes one better that maybe is for the OCD amongst us (me!), in that these Call Logs can be set to populate your Gmail calendar. This gives a fantastic visualisation of all your calls made and received alongside your appointments, and I find this an incredible feature that will prove useful in understanding what has been done when, and with who. It does not record the calls though… that is the wrong side of creepy .

I have not found something similar for the iPhone as yet but then I am not now using the iPhone everyday as I am a full-on Android convert. I can really recommend you to look at this solution if you are an Android user, particularly if you are a consultant/knowledge worker. Even if you don’t use the calendar integration, this really fills a gap in making sure all of your mobile data is safe, and hooks into your Cloud sync solution.

Travelling … service resuming

Things have been a little quiet on the site for a while, mainly because I have been involved in a pretty intense period of project work which has required me to do a multi-country commute for almost six months now. During this time, I have really appreciated the smallness of my netbook main machine and gained a (poor) appreciation of hotel provided WiFi, as well as just how far ahead of the game the UK is in Mobile Broadband (particularly in terms of PAYG tariffs). I have also experienced a sea change in my phone experiences also as I have moved from Windows Mobile to the Apple iPhone. One thing I can really push is that the iPhone has proven a worthy secondary device to go with the MSI Wind netbook – not a replacement, just a secondary device. With the release of the v3.0 software, the Apple iPhone has become a great business device for the mobile worker, particularly one that travels to multiple countries. The applications and the iTunes App store are THE killer aspect for the phone. So much in fact, I had to get two – one for the UK and one for the remote country . I guess an iPhone with support for two SIMs is still too much of a specialised requirement.

More on that another time, but I would like to return to the ‘secondary’ device comment. Walking around, the iPhone is a great emailer and mobile work business helper but it simply cannot replace a PC for working email and documents. You do need a PC to get the job done, and netbooks are really a good package for that, particularly when you have a large screen and keyboard installation in your semi-permanent working locations. Working with the MSI Wind though has really punched my buttons with regard to battery life – my MSI Wind is simply too short lived at 4 hours, although good for many I am now looking at the latest batch of machines that give 8+ hours. However I am torn between waiting for Windows 7 based machines or getting an XP based machine now. I will have to see how long I can tough that one out. You can sense an update coming…

How about your experiences with iPhone? Netbook? Recommendations for a long life battery netbook? Feel free to comment.

Carrying and Reading Information

Kindle DX

Amazon has unveiled a new version of its Kindle e-reader, aimed at reading newspapers, magazines and documents.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Amazon announces Kindle DX

So the original Kindle was interesting if a little badly designed and ugly. The second generation kindle was ugly but without some of the more awful design flaws. Now we have the DX, which looks to be starting to become the sort of eBook reader that the roaming professional needs. However there is a lack of information right now primarily about when it will come out of the US, be implemented in Europe, allow full download in whatever European country you are in, and also to what level the PDF support is functional because by far the most popular format for technical reference eBooks is that format. The other thing that is not clear is the price…

The luck and loneliness of the long-distance worker

Sometimes when browsing the Internet, you come across some things that are old but still quite good. This article puts across the need to engage people who telecommute or work in a geographically distributed environment, to spend some facetime with each other.

In the traditional office, workers are much like the individual members in a symphony orchestra. They rely on a broad range of verbal and non-verbal interactions to coordinate their efforts. Much as string players watch each other to synchronize bow strokes, workers adjust their pace so that it is compatible with fellow workers. Meanwhile, the boss acts something like the conductor, keeping the entire office together and prompting workers when needed.

The luck and loneliness of the long-distance worker.

Backup Strategies

Being discussed on Friendfeed now, backup strategies – from a post by Robert Scoble. What is your strategy? Mine is in the discussion .

Document Workflow

We all have to deal with paper. Not everything comes into the email inbox, so we work out workflows of how to deal with all that paper… moving from envelope tray to inbox, to work-in-progress, to completed and for file. However there is the new way of dealing with this that many larger/medium size companies have been using for several years using relatively expensive hardware/software combinations for scanning on entry and then using expensive groupware/workflow software to move around to required processor. Now however this can be done cheaply and on a budget with the right process.

How complex you make it depends on scale, as the single person operation can get away with a looser workflow than the 20+ person operation. The most important piece is getting the paperwork scanned into the machine and this can now be done using a simple all-in-one printer/scanner or standalone scanner available for less than £50. HP (and I am sure many others) offer the F4272 Printer/Scanner/Copier which comes with their own Solution Center software which can be simply configured to scan multi-page documents into PDF/Searchable PDF files, for less than £40. This is a quick and effective solution for the very small office, or you can go up a gear and obtain a device with an autosheet feeder such as the HP Officejet 5610 Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax for £54. Once you have the document in PDF form, then the whole document handling and filing process becomes oh so much simpler.

After the hardware/software solution, all that is really required is the central document storage location and/or email distribution tied to a simple filing system (how about Year Folder/Month Folder) and a fixed file naming convention (such as YYYY-MM-DD Subject Matter.pdf).

I have found this a very effective method of dealing with incoming paperwork for many years, although I have not had the benefit of the low cost of entry that today we have. So what is the mobile aspect of this? Having access to all of your company documents online in PDF form from wherever you happen to be, and with the use of the modern USB powered Scanner such as those from Canon, you can make use of the same ingest process ending up with PDF files of all your documents wherever you are, as those scanners are really small and light.

Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Category Archives: Office Computing