Collaborate and Subvert Your IS Department with Google Apps Team Edition
Web Workers often face a dilemma when trying to collaborate with co-workers, that is having access to the electronic tools to access and collaborate with team members. Sometimes we’re given great collaboration tools like Microsoft SharePoint or similar enterprise collaboration tools. However these present hurdles, namely working with a corporate IS department who may not be as responsive as we web workers would like them to be.
This is why Google launched Google Apps Team Edition. Google Apps for Your Domain has been around for quite some time, but this set of tools requires someone from your IS department to administer it. Groups inside companies can easily subvert IS involvement by just entering your corporate email address and clicking on a link inside the resulting sign-up email.
That’s right, with no permission or approval forms*, you can do the following with your co-workers:
- generate and share documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with Google Docs
- easily schedule appointments with Google Calendar
- IM and conduct VoIP calls with Google Talk
- share a combined start page with a common iGoogle start page
Additionally, Google Apps Team Edition shows you others in your organization who have also signed up for Google Apps, enabling you to conduct the above mentioned activities with ease.
This is indeed an underhanded way to get Google Apps inside the enterprise. We at Web Worker Daily think Google Apps is a great way to collaboration on documents. The old school way of interfacing on documents centered around sending documents, spreadsheets, and presentations through email. The enterprise standard Microsoft 
Office Word has a “Track Changes” option which generally works well. However, what happens if not everyone on your team has Microsoft Office or worse yet: different versions of Microsoft Office? Being able to use Google Docs to generate the document and “Share” it with your colleagues is an attractive option.
On the other hand, having documents behind the firewall on centralized file servers has its advantages as well. Enterprises expend resources to ensure sensitive information stays in front of the proper audience. Having documents that may contain intellectual property is not a welcome thought to many companies. Additionally, having IM conversations that are unencrypted or archived may present legal, intellectual property, and human resource issues.
Google Apps Team Edition presents a fantastic option for lightweight collaboration among those who share documents. Also, being able to chat instantly and share calendars can present an attractive option for teammates. However, if intellectual property is a concern in any way, your organization should look at SharePoint, Jive’s ClearSpace or other offerings they have access to.
Which collaboration tools are your team working with? What tips would you have with working with the IS department?
* Disclaimer: This article is not meant to encourage you to go around any policies or guidelines your company has on electronic communication and collaboration. Before using Google Apps (or any other hosted collaboration tool), I suggest you consult your organization’s policies on such sites and services.
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Has anyone checked out 03Spaces? It takes a bit to set it up, but once running you can have up to 10 users for free. Paid versions start beyond that. It has plugins to integrate with openoffice and MS office too. Simialr to Clearspace, just more users for free – and don’t we all love free?
I agree this would be helpful for lightweight collaboration, especially with people outside an organization. A few things to note: 1> I have yet to meet a sharepoint user who considers the software a strong collaboration tool, and 2> many corporate network admins block IM/chat so Google Talk is a non-starter.
Jason, Thanks for encouraging insecure practices and making the enterprise less secure. Even though this is something that is pretty widely known we don’t need people encouraging it and especially entitling your article as you did. This is VERY irresponsible on your part and the part of WWD to allow you to post this. You can share news such as this w/o openly encouraging users to “subvert” the IT dept. You could at least encourage users to talk to their IT dept and to look into what company policy says. Not only are you encouraging them to make things less secure you are encouraging them to do things that may get them fired.
Andy, I appreciate your concern. However, I think Jason was clear that this was an “underhanded” way of getting Google Apps inside the enterprise, and the title wasn’t meant to be taken literally as advice. We did believe it was common sense that one should be careful and check company policies, but in case that wasn’t clear thanks for making the point explicitly.
Andy beat me to it. Jason, what were you thinking when you wrote that? Encourage users to send enterprise data to Google?! Yeah… let’s see how well this pans out and how many heads are going to start rolling once users start taking avdise like this to heart.
Besides, SharePoint 2003 wasn’t a silver bullet, but MOSS 2007 sure is.
Oh Please, this is for the small business like me that can’t afford an IT department, or the large business that needs a kick in the pants because the IT department is costing a fortune. Read the 4 hour work week, outsourcing is something small businesses have to think about and apps like this are wonderful for us. Outsource the IT department, sounds good to me.
Victor/Andy:
I see your concern about securing data in the enterprise.
I added a disclaimer to make encourage potential users to look into their companies policies.
For those who have not used Wetpaint (www.wetpaint.com) should have a look at it immediately. Setting up projects is a breeze with the private Wiki feature. It allows collaborative authoring, file sharing, calendar, To-do and messaging features.
It beats google docs any day in terms of simplicity and features. Although it doesn’t have spreadsheet functionality as yet but it can be replicated by using tables in the document. Above all its FREE and new features are being added everyday.
Great post. One thing I think you accurately identified is the traditional form of collaboration is document centric. Working on documents collaboratively is definitely important. However, discussion-based collaboration can be even more effective as it can occur as people are working. If people share best practices, answer questions, brainstorm ideas while working, it is more effective than expecting them to login to any application to document their knowledge.
GroupSwim provides a great solution that is complementary with Google Docs. Since it is also hosted outside the firewall yet secure, it also has the advantage of circumventing IT if that is something you want to do.