RRLC uses Google Apps for Nonprofits for. Calendar Groups (listservs) Drive (file sharing) Google+ Analytics (web statistics) YouTube

Transcription

1 RRLC uses Google Apps for Nonprofits for Calendar Groups (listservs) Drive (file sharing) Google+ Analytics (web statistics) YouTube Is Google for Nonprofits right for my organization? First, determine if your organization is eligible for the Nonprofit version. If not, you may be eligible for the Education version, or could always pay for a subscription to the Google for Work version. All the apps are pretty much the same. Check out the overview for some ideas on how you might use Google Apps. Think about what apps you want to use what parts of your current infrastructure do you want to replace? RRLC started with , Calendar, and Groups, and then branched out to other apps. Review the Getting Started guide for Apps for Nonprofits before you decide to make the switch. View the video tutorials on the Google for Nonprofits YouTube channel. 1 P a g e

2 How do I enroll? You will need a Google account to request access to the Nonprofit version. If you want to use this for your organization, sign up for a Google account using your work address. Once you have this, request to join Google for Nonprofits. Here s what the form looks like: Some libraries do not technically have a 501(c)(3) designation, but may still end up qualifying for the Nonprofit version. If you don t have a 501(c)(3) certificate, you can still fill out this form and check off that you have one. What s important to get right is your institution s Employer ID (EIN). The IRS keeps a database of charitable organizations that you can search. Some libraries are on this list, some are not. It s worth sending in your request, even if you don t think you qualify. 2 P a g e

3 Your request will either be approved or rejected. You can reapply after you ve been rejected, or you can choose to apply for a different version of Google Apps, or choose to pay a subscription for Google for Work. Admin console dashboard Log in to your Google Apps dashboard. This is what it looks like: Users Create and manage users for your organization. Everyone will have an address with the URL of your organization, for example rrlc@rrlc.org. Set administrative roles for users, update passwords and manage account security. Company profile Add information about your institution, upload your logo, and set your communication preferences. Billing If you qualify for a free version of Google Apps, you ll see that reflected here. If you re using the Work version, you can update your subscription and billing preferences, and payment method. Apps Manage your apps and settings. Turn Apps on or off for users, dive deep into settings for individual apps. The Apps settings can be quite extensive, especially 3 P a g e

4 for Gmail. If you re using the Google services and something isn t working the way you think it should, this is the place where you might find a setting that needs to be changed. Groups If you re using the Groups app, you will see this icon. Create new groups and add users, manage group settings, and mailing lists (listservs). Admin roles Another way to assign administrative roles for your Users. There is always one Super Admin who has access to absolutely everything. You may want to be the Super Admin, or you might want to create a general account for the Super Admin. Security Set password policies, set up 2-step verification, and manage other authentication features. Support Start here whenever you have a question or need to contact customer service. If you need to call Google, you have to go here to get a PIN number to use when you call. Device management If you have users logging into their Google Apps from tablets and phones, you ll see that information here. Reports This is a somewhat new section of the dashboard and contains a huge amount of information about how your users are using the apps. Kind of like Google Analytics for your Apps usage. Migration Use this tool to import your into Gmail. If your is hosted at your institution, you may need to consult with your IT department in order to complete this. In some cases, it might be easier to import your manually. Setting up your apps Open the Setup Wizard to help you get everything set up properly. Log in to your dashboard > click on the three dots in the upper left > Setup Here s what the wizard looks like: 4 P a g e

5 If you follow each step in the wizard, you ll be pretty much set up to use Google Apps. How you set up your apps will vary depending on how you want everything to function. Gmail Setting up your takes some time, but there are clear set up directions to follow within the setup wizard. Here is a screenshot of the initial setup screen for Gmail: There are only two real issues to deal with in migrating to Gmail: Migrating your current messages Routing mail to the Google servers 5 P a g e

6 Migrating current You will have to decide if you want to migrate your current messages from your provider. You don t necessarily have to migrate all of everyone s old mail. If you don t migrate, you ll start off with a clean Gmail account, and new messages will begin coming in once you route the to the Google servers. If you do want to migrate your , there are various ways to accomplish it. If your organization hosts their own on a server within the org, then you may need IT support to migrate from the server. If your is hosted online by a third party, you may be able to use tools to migrate. One easy way to do this is to migrate from MS Outlook to Gmail with Google s migration tool. RRLC used this method to migrate most of our existing into Gmail. If you don t currently use MS Outlook but want to use the migration tool, you may be able to set up Outlook to receive your current , and then use the migration tool afterward. Watch this tutorial for more info on migration and deciding the best way to migrate your mail. You should migrate your current before you reroute to the Google servers. Rerouting mail to the Google servers When you are ready to start using Gmail for your new incoming mail, you ll need to reroute your mail servers to point to Google. There is information on this step within the Gmail section of the setup wizard. You may need to work with your organization s IT staff to reroute the . You will need access to your organization s mail server router, which is usually a part of your organization s domain name services. For example, RRLC uses Network Solutions to manage our domain name ( Our domain name points to a certain location for our hosted website, and to another location for our hosted (Google). The records that control your routing are called Mail Servers or MX Records: 6 P a g e

7 To route our to the Google servers, I simply replaced our old mail server information with the new mail servers that Google provided (that information is available within the Gmail setup instructions or by contacting Google support). You should try to update the MX Records at the end of the day, hopefully over the weekend. There may be slight disruption in your service, and it s easier to do this when you don t need to access your for a little while. 7 P a g e

8 Calendar For RRLC, one of the most useful parts of the apps suite is the Calendar. Each user within the RRLC domain has their own personal calendar, plus we have three shared calendars: CE (continuing education) Meetings Staff calendar Because we schedule lots of training events, it made sense to put training events on one calendar. We record all on- and off-site meetings on the Meetings calendar, and then staff-specific events (like vacation or medical appointments) on the Staff calendar. One nice thing about using Google Calendar is that you can also pull in other calendars if you have rights to edit them. For example, if you have a personal Gmail account and use Google Calendar, you can share your calendar with your work and then see all your personal events and work events in the same place. 8 P a g e

9 Groups RRLC uses Google Groups in place of listservs. Groups offers you the option to create: lists Web forums Q&A forums Collaborative inbox You can create and administrate Groups from within the administrative dashboard, or from within the Groups app: RRLC only uses Groups to maintain listservs. Example of group creation page: 9 P a g e

10 If you plan to use a Group as an listserv, meaning that you will have group members who are not a part of your Google apps organization, then there is a specific setting that you need to change from within the administrative dashboard. First, create the Group as above, and then go to your Administrative dashboard. Click on Groups > click the group you want to edit > click Manage access settings for this group > Permissions > Basic permissions > click Allow new users not in xxx.org (your domain name) Now you are able to add people outside of your domain name. The easiest way to add people to a listserv is from the Group page. Go to your list of Groups, find the Group you want to edit, and click Manage. Under the Members tab, click Direct add members. 10 P a g e

11 Enter addresses separated by commas. Create a Welcome message in the box something like Welcome to the XXXXXX listserv. To post messages to this listserv, send an to xxx@xxx.org. You can choose which way the group members receive message from the listserv. RRLC chooses to send All as it arrives, but you may prefer a Digest option if you expect a large volume of messages every day. Drive (file sharing) RRLC recently put all our electronic files into Google Drive and decommissioned our inhouse file server. The nonprofit apps account comes with 30GB of storage, but you may need more for your organization s files. We upgraded to 1TB of storage for $9.99/month. Now we have access to all our files wherever we have an internet connection. How does file sharing work in Drive? There are two ways you can use Drive to share and store files. 11 P a g e

12 Use Drive online for storage and sharing Each user account has its own Drive area a place to store, create and share files. Once you log into Google with your account, you have access to Drive online. You are able to upload any type of file (such as MS Word docs or PDFs). You cannot edit non- Google file formats within Drive. However, upon upload, you can choose to convert certain formats into a Google file (docs, sheets, forms, slides, drawings). You might choose to convert your files to Google format if you plan to share and edit them online. You can create Google format files directly within Drive. You can share files with others (using their address) and give them certain permissions (view or edit). The online Drive features work well for storing files, as well as for collaborating with others when you need to have multiple people from different organizations contributing to the same file or document. 12 P a g e

13 Use the desktop version of Drive RRLC uses the desktop Drive app for file storage and sharing within our organization replacing our in-house file server. Setting this up requires a little planning, but overall is very easy. We have an administrative user account (rrlc@rrlc.org) that we all have access to. We chose to upload all of our server files into the Google Drive for that account. In order to make these files available to everyone in the office, we use the Drive app on each person s laptop to connect to the administrative account and store a local copy of files (on each laptop). Most employees don t need access to all the files for an organization. The desktop Drive app gives you the option to only sync certain folders to your computer: 13 P a g e

14 Most of RRLC s employees only have certain folders synced, while some of us have all of them. The downside to this approach is that you do end up using storage on your computer hard drive because each person has a local copy of whatever files they are syncing. If hard drive storage is an issue for your organization, or you have a huge amount of files that people need access to all the time, this approach might not work best for you. The most convenient part of this approach, for RRLC, is that we can store our files online without converting them to Google format, and have access to them wherever we want. Using the desktop app mimics a local file server, so you can edit your MS Office or proprietary formats locally on your computer, and then once you save and close the file, the new version is synced up to Drive, replacing the old version. Google+ Use Google+ to share information and images about yourself and your organization. Each user on your Google account has a Google+ page in addition to your organization s page. 14 P a g e

15 Example of a personal Google+ profile: Example of an organization s Google+ page: 15 P a g e

16 Google Analytics Analytics is sufficiently complicated as to require its own class, so we won t be talking about specifics today. However, you can get started with analytics very easily all you need is access to your organization s web site. You can add analytics to your site it various ways. RRLC uses WordPress for our site, and Analytics integrates easily into WordPress. Other content management systems integrate Analytics in different ways. Another way to use Analytics on your site is to put some coding (generated by Analytics) into specific files on your site such as a header or footer file that runs on each page. There are specific directions depending on which method you want to use. Here is an example of what you might see on your site Analytics summary page: YouTube Use YouTube to upload and share videos for your organization. For example, RRLC uses YouTube each year to share our Library of the Year videos. Creating the video is the hard part uploading it to YouTube is easy. If you d like to upload videos that are longer than 15 minutes, you need to verify your account first. 16 P a g e

17 One note of caution your organization should have only one channel on YouTube a designated place where all of your organization s videos will be available. Choose one user account to host the channel. For RRLC, we use the rrlc@rrlc.org account to host our channel. Other ways you might choose to use Google Apps Wallet Sites Google AdWords Classroom Hangouts 17 P a g e