Held at the Telford Innovation Campus on 8 May, the event marked 21 years of enterprise success, as part of the University’s anniversary celebrations, 21 and Proud.

Ian Weatherhogg, Refractiv’s Chief Technical Officer said: “As a UK Google Apps™ Premier SMB Reseller, we have a front row seat to watch how Google Apps is transforming the way local businesses in the West Midlands use technology in order to be more competitive, increase productivity and save time. Since we launched our innovative help and advice website gAppsTips.com last year, we now help 30,000 Google Apps for Business users every month, to make the most of Gmail, Calendar, Drive and more.”

Other speakers at the event included representatives from University spin-out businesses Bronze Software Labs and Pebble Learning. The event also featured the unveiling of a specially-commissioned sculpture, followed by a tour of the University’s business innovation facilities.

Photography courtesy of the University of Wolverhampton. 

Ian Weatherhogg, Refractiv’s Chief Technical Officer, guided regional educators and administrators through the benefits of Google Apps Script, during the Google organised event at Halifax Grammar School from 27-28 April. Google Apps Script is a great example of "code in the cloud" which enables automation of Google Apps, and integration with other web services and existing internal IT - without the usual tools, infrastructure and maintenance that normal coding requires.

The Google Education Summit was organised to help educators use Google Apps for Education more effectively in primary, secondary and higher education settings. The event featured sessions by some of the world’s leading Google apps experts including Google staff and Google certified teachers and trainers.

Ian Weatherhogg, Refractiv, said: "I regularly provide customer training on Apps Script, and am in awe of its potential for the future. The session provided a great hands-on introduction to Apps Script and lots of guidance to benefit all those working in the education sector. We’re delighted to have been able to share our experience and to help sponsor this important event." 

Refractiv, one of Yorkshire’s leading IT services providers, celebrated the first anniversary of its innovative Google Apps help website, gAppsTips.com, at the Buy Yorkshire conference last week by giving away a new Nexus 7 tablet. The competition prize was presented by Raja Saggi, Head of SMB Marketing at Google whose talk, 5 easy ways to online success, was a sell-out event on the second day of the conference. gAppsTips.com was launched to provide a one-stop shop for the growing number of Google Apps for Business users to make the most of Gmail, Calendar, Drive and more. A premium reseller of Google Apps, Refractiv counts some of Yorkshire’s top businesses amongst its clients and is developing an increasing profile nationally and internationally.

gAppsTipps now attracts almost 30,000 visitors a month and has grown a strong social media following. Richard Atkinson, COO of Refractiv said: “Through gAppstips, we’re helping businesses to wake up to the versatility of Google Apps, which offers much more than a traditional email service. While we can’t create more hours in the day, we can help people to be more productive, save time, and to make their Google experience more satisfying.”

Refractiv was one of 170 exhibitors at the annual Buy Yorkshire conference in Leeds, held on 24-25 April. The event is the biggest B2B conference in North of England, attracting over 3,000 delegates to network and participate in a variety of workshops, seminars and expert panels. 

HansenGroup realised that sticking with traditional client and server based technologies would result in spiralling hardware and software costs and that their broader business requirements for a more open approach to information access might not be met. The company’s own business systems development programme was already building web-based applications and with users wise to the benefits of the approach, wanted to get the same from their office applications. Google Apps was therefore a natural choice.

Refractiv were chosen as a partner for the project and project planning for the switch was completed using Google Hangout sessions and shared documents and a go-live date was agreed. The company’s mail, contacts and calendar were migrated in a short timeframe and after receiving comprehensive training from Refractiv, all users switched virtually seamlessly from Outlook to Gmail and started using Google Drive. At the same time smart phones and tablets were connected to provide a full and rich Google experience.

The immediate benefits included: improved access to information from any device, location and at any time, substantial cost and time savings, reduction in energy and paper and improved collaboration between employees, customers and suppliers in support of AccentHansen’s ongoing ‘lean process’.

“It is early days, but I’ve been really impressed by the way the whole business has adopted Google and I’m pleased to say that I’m already seeing real business benefits. Refractiv proved to be very responsive and helped make our move to Google Apps a smooth, quick and efficient one ”
Jim Rutledge, General Manager, AccentHansen Ltd 

The company, which has offices in the UK and North America, develops solutions for top Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Contract Research Organisations (CROs) that deliver time and cost savings in every key area of the clinical trial process, from study set-up through to submission.

The benefits of going ‘into the cloud’ have been both immediate and widespread for Formedix; the company has dispensed with its hosted Exchange which, coupled with a reduction in infrastructure, represents significant cost savings. Nearly all staff are now working exclusively with Gmail and are enjoying the convenience of an entirely web based mail facility.

The improved collaboration on documents, presentations and spreadsheets has been another major benefit, particularly on complex submissions like tenders and proposals where time sensitive input is required from multiple departments and individuals.

The accessibility of Google Drive has also proved to be a great advantage for the company. With a large proportion of Formedix clients based in the US and the team often travelling nationally and internationally, it was essential that everyone had access to key information at all times and Drive fulfilled this requirement - perfectly.

Internal communication has also improved with the team using Gmail, chat, google+ and hangouts to discuss and share important information and initiatives across the company wherever and whenever required. In fact, even in these early stages, the benefits of choosing Google Apps are already evident across the whole company. 

“Formedix is all about creating time and cost efficiencies for our clients by developing smart, well thought out solutions for other companies. We wanted to replicate these same efficiencies inside our own company, through the way that we work, so the move to Google Apps was a natural and effective choice. We are already benefitting from the change in the way that we communicate and collaborate as a team and have made significant cost savings at the same time.“
Founder and CEO, Mark Wheeldon.

Franck Barlemont, Director of Information Systems at Prisma Media, the second largest magazine publisher in France said:

Prisma Media is a French magazine publisher with approximately 20 titles in subjects such as photography, art and travel. From how to take the best photos to how to properly cook a souffle, our titles, including National Geographic, Female Current and Current Kitchen, have been informing and entertaining readers for years.

As Director of Information Systems at Prisma Media, it's my job to keep a finger on the pulse of how our employees are using technology. Just as the publishing industry has had sweeping changes the past few years, so too has the way our employees use technology. Last year, I discovered a few enterprising employees who were forgoing our hosted corporate email system in favor of Gmail. They had reached the limit of their email storage and needed a way to stay productive.

Traditionally, bringing outside, unsupported technology into the workplace is fraught with concerns around security, lack of manageability and control. Other companies might have quickly revoked access to Gmail for the employees in question and reminded them of the standard company policy when it comes to using unsupported technology at work. Instead, we chose to look at this as an opportunity and reevaluated our technology environment.

We decided to go with Google Apps for Business for a number of reasons. First, Apps requires much less support than our previous solution. Simply by going Google, we cut our IT support calls by approximately 30 percent, which saved us money and freed up our IT department for other tasks. The second reason was cost. By switching to Google we cut our email costs by approximately one-third, which is a lot, especially when you consider we're getting access to a much better, more modern product. Lastly, the switch itself was seamless. By working with Google Apps Reseller GPartner, we were able to continue to manage and run our business without missing a beat, while GPartner handled the switch in approximately 45 days.

Google Apps gives us a more modern, robust and flexible platform at a third of the cost and frees up our tech support resources. It also allows us to do what's most important: focus on our business. The only drawback is I wish we would have made the move sooner.

Story courtesy of Google Enterprise Blog post. 

Mr. Aramaki, Director of Innovation, All Nippon Airways (ANA) Japan said:

As Japan's largest airline, operating around 1,000 flights per day, we know a thing or two about clouds. Today we're delighted to announce that we'll be embarking on a journey to a cloud of a very different kind - with Google's cloud based tools Google Apps for Business - to communicate and collaborate more easily. Starting in April, all our 33,000 staff across 40 company divisions, from pilots and cabin attendants to HR and finance staff, will use Gmail, Google Drive and Google Talk.

As a global business, we have people working all over the world. Now it doesn't matter if our staff are on tarmacs in Tokyo, offices in London, or on-the-go in the streets of Beijing, they'll be able to communicate and collaborate in real time, using Google Docs, Google Sheets and Google Slides from their PCs, smartphones or tablets. As well as removing the barriers of distance, the move to Google Apps will also help us break down language barriers with Google Talk's translation feature.

Google Apps offers us the reliability and scalability we need. We coordinate flights for 2.7 million passengers to 81 local and international destinations every year, so it is critical we have a communication system that we can rely on. With Gmail we'll not only have this reliability and scale, we'll also no longer have to dedicate resources to maintaining and operating our email system as we can rely on Google's infrastructure.

For over 60 years ANA has flown passengers around the world in comfort and safety. As we launch into our next decade were looking forward to smooth sailing into the cloud with Google Apps for Business and creating a more innovative, flexible and productive style of work.

Story courtesy of Google Enterprise Blog post. 

Google Slides, the new name for Google Presentations, is now available offline. Chrome users will be able to create, edit comment and run presentations without an internet connection. As with Google Docs offline, any changes made will be automatically synced once an internet connection is detected.

This new offline feature makes Google Slides a complete solution for presenting, removing the need for an offline backup - in the shape of Microsoft Powerpoint - to guard against unreliable internet connections.

If you already have offline editing for Docs enabled, you don’t have to change anything to work with Slides offline. If not, you can turn it on for Slides (and Docs) through your Drive menu. Google also dropped a hint that Google spreadsheets offline is coming soon, watch this space.

Martijn Nykerk, Senior Consultant Group IT said:

"HR is fundamentally about people. That may seem obvious, but in our firm that takes unusual dimensions. Randstad is one of the biggest staffing companies in the world and has some 29,000 employees working from more than 4,500 branches in 40 countries around the world. We help companies and candidates connect in industries such as engineering, finance and accounting, healthcare, human resources, managed services, pharma and technology. To give you an idea, we place on average well over 500.000 people per day. We’ve grown to become quite large since we began as a small company started in a student dorm room in 1960 and our business has changed quite a bit in that time. But at its core, we’re still the same. We’re all about people.

"With so many employees in locations across the world, we had several different email and collaboration systems in place and were looking to standardise. A majority of employees around the world were using Microsoft Outlook for email and Lotus Notes for collaboration, but we ran into several problems. For one, both Outlook and Lotus Notes weren't seamlessly integrated with other systems, requiring our employees to find workarounds and solve formatting issues on their own. This wasted valuable time on the part of both the employee and IT department. In addition, both Outlook and Lotus Notes are primarily hosted solutions, which makes it difficult to collaborate across our many locations.

"Our decision making process involved several companies, but ultimately we decided on Google for a few different reasons. We have a workforce of younger, web-savvy employees and we heard the feedback that they are quite familiar with Google tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and Google+ Hangouts in their personal lives, and on a variety of devices, and that they'd like to use them at work too. Also, because the Google tools are all integrated, we wouldn't run into the problem of having employees across offices and countries having to work with several different pieces of technology that don’t work well together.  Our rollout will eventually include all 29,000 Randstad employees, 5,000 of whom are located in the Netherlands. Our employees in France, Japan and India, approximately 8,000, are already on Google."

We’re right in the middle of our rollout, but early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. We can simply do things that weren't possible before. For example, it has become much easier search and access mail, calendar and documents when on the road, or for an employee in France to schedule a video chat with an employee in The Netherlands in a Hangout. It’s a conference call, but it’s so much more - it’s a conference call that’s based around people, not technology. For an HR company, that’s exactly what we’re looking for in a technology partner.

Story courtesy of Google Enterprise Blog post. 

Conversion of Microsoft Office documents to Google documents has been steadily improving over the last few months. We didn't have any details from Google on this, just a noticeable improvement. The latest Google Enterprise Blog has now confirmed what we had suspected - the acquisition of Quickoffice, a world leader in office productivity,  has started to have a positive impact.

Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management, Google Drive said: "Since the Quickoffice team joined Google a few months ago, we've been working to make it easier for you to work with your legacy Microsoft Office files - both by converting them to Google documents and by editing them directly in Quickoffice.

"You’ve always had the option to convert documents from popular formats into Google Docs, where you can share and work together in real-time. In the past few months, we’ve incorporated Quickoffice conversion technology into this process so your Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files look even better when you convert them to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, respectively."

Editing Microsoft Office documents on iPad

Google have also announced a new iPad app, exclusively for Google Apps for Business customers, allowing users to easily open and edit any Office files stored in Google Drive right from an iPad. We've tried the app out for the past few days and have to say it is very good. Document editing is impressive and version handling is automatically managed, as it is when using Google Drive for Windows/Mac.

Converting documents to Google format is the easiest way to work in Google Apps, but It's not always convenient, so this new iPad app is an essential download - and Google have promised an iPhone and Android app is on the way.

The Leicester based dealership had been using an ageing in house mail server which, coupled with poor broadband connectivity, meant that the email system was exceptionally slow and unreliable. Without the need to download messages to simply view them, Gmail instantly improved the speed and accessibility for users and revolutionised email across the company.

The shared Calendar has also paid organisational dividends by co-ordinating individuals and teams in a much more effective way and the Management hope to continue the Google Apps roll out by storing and collaborating on key business documents using Google Drive in the near future.

As a result of the poor bandwidth, Refractiv undertook the migration of user Outlook pst files off site and set up 40 new gmail accounts before returning to Hinckley to complete the implementation to and deliver onsite training to the dealership staff.

“We contacted Google directly and they referred us to Refractiv who proved to be an efficient and exceptionally helpful bunch. Gmail has revolutionised our email set up which has had a really positive impact on the business overall and the instant messaging is also proving to be a useful tool across our six acre site. “
Charles Harlock, Sales Manager.

UK based company NetDespatch provide web-based booking, tracking and label printing solutions for global postal and express parcels organisations. This allows customers to manage their collections, print despatch labels and use innovative integration tools to streamline the end-to-end delivery process.

Google Apps delivered what their old Microsoft Business Server 2003 could not - a flexible, comprehensive and integrated solution across the whole business. Gmail and the shared Calendar improved the organisation’s communication and streamlined scheduling and Google Drive meant that collaboration for users became much easier overnight. The seamless fit of Google Vault made it a natural additional choice and allowed the company to meet its eDiscovery and compliance needs.

The integration of the Salesforce CRM improved the sales teams’ effectiveness and together with the use of other 3rd Party Cloud Apps including Liquid Planner, Lucid Chart and Run My Process meant that Refractiv could deliver a coherent and totally connected solution for NetDespatch.

A comprehensive migration was followed by onsite training and is underpinned by Refractiv’s full supported service.

“NetDespatch offers web based applications to our customers so it was a natural and short step for us to embrace the same technology in our own company. Google Apps has transformed a number of separate areas in our business, but in a totally integrated way, which is a powerful and increasingly important concept in today’s tough commercial environment. “
Daniel Crossley - Head of Operations. 

The prestigious cloud and technology event, held in partnership with Google, Cisco, Birmingham City University and the Science Park, was aimed at informing executives and decision makers about the Cloud, current trends and technologies and the impact on business. In keynote speeches Brad Kilshaw, Google’s Enterprise Channel Manager and Wendy Carstairs, Cisco’s Head of Technical Strategy for Borderless Networks, shared their organisations’ latest thinking with an enthusiastic audience.

With over 300 people in attendance it proved to be a lively and successful day, particularly for two lucky delegates, who are now experiencing the benefit of Cloud technology first hand after winning Chromebooks donated by Refractiv. 

Photos from the event can be seen on our Google+ page.

The Google Apps for Education European Summit focused on getting the most from Google Apps for Education in both Primary/Secondary schools and Higher Education environments. Refractiv CTO Ian Weatherhogg contributed a session on Google Apps Script to a packed house and with presentations led by some of the world’s leading Google Apps experts including Google staff and Google Certified Teachers and Trainers, it proved to be an informative and truly European exchange of ideas.

Refractiv will be at the UK Education Summit planned for April 2013 in Halifax - a place more famous for wool than beer, but which still promises to be a useful and enlightening event whatever your connection with education. We’ll keep you posted.

Google have announced an increase to the number of people allowed in a Hangout, from the current limit of 10 to a new limit of 15. So, if you haven't yet tried a Hangout from your Google Apps or Google+ account, now is a great time to try it out. Google Hangouts let you hold face-to-face meetings with others from any device with a camera and an internet connection. To hold a Hangout either start one directly from your Gmail account, schedule a meeting and include a Hangout or open your Google+ account and start one from there.

The new feature will be rolling out to Apps for Business, Education and Government customers over the next few days.

Finding the right words can be difficult, especially across languages, and once you choose them, finding a way to type them can be even harder. Try emailing family in Germany, chatting with friends in China or adding a Russian business partner's name to your contacts and you may find yourself limited by the language of your keyboard.

Gmail already has an inbuilt translation tool, and now Google have added more than 100 virtual keyboards, transliteration and IMEs - collectively called input tools - in Gmail. These tools enable users to type in the language and keyboard layout for a selected language, and switch between languages with one click.

To try it out, go to mail settings and, under Language, click on Show all language options and check the box next to Enable input tools, this will bring up a settings box (see image) where you can select a set of languages you commonly use.

Once you have saved your settings, you’ll see the Input Tools icon (a keyboard) next to the Settings (cog) button, and you can turn on and off any language keyboard from there.

With these new virtual keyboards, Gmail supports typing in 75 languages. 

In the last 3 months, the Google Apps administration panel has gained a number of new features, including the ability to search email logs, manage mobile devices more easily, and manage email delivery. This latest feature builds on the existing ability to introduce user groups - known as organisations - by allowing email settings to be edited for each group.

Examples of these email settings include: allowing delegation, IMAP & POP access to Gmail, offline access, email forwarding, email footers and many more. 

Applying email management settings to user groups helps Google Apps administrators tailor the use of Gmail within their organisation. It’s especially beneficial for organisations that have user segments with different compliance or security needs, such as allowing offline access to a specific group of users.

Like all the features that Google Apps delivers, administrators just need to refresh their browser to get access to these updates.

Google have successfully completed a new SSAE 16 / ISAE 3402 SOC 2 Type II audit that covers the following products: 

• Google Apps 
• Google Apps Vault 
• Google Apps Script 
• Google App Engine
• Google Cloud Storage

Formerly SAS 70,  and known internationally as ISAE 3402, SSAE 16 is recognised worldwide as a standard of quality for service organisations. The audit was conducted by Ernst & Young, a leading independent auditor. For Google Apps and Cloud Platform customers, this audit helps verify the data protection technologies and processes Google have in place and demonstrates its commitment to protecting users’ data. The audit builds on the SSAE 16 audit completed last year and the ISO 27001 certification for Google Apps received in May. This year, Google Apps Vault was added to the audit, and Ernst & Young performed a SOC 2, Type II audit that's more detailed and comprehensive than last year’s SOC 1 audit. The SOC 2 audit uses a standard set of controls including security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality of the data that is stored in Google's services.

Security is very important to Google Apps users and Google have invested many millions of dollars to help keep its users safe online. Google provides transparency and visibility to those protections through a Google Apps Security Whitepaper and a data center video tour.

For Apps and Cloud Platform customers, Google provides transparency and visibility to those protections through our Google Apps Security Whitepaper and our data center video tour.

Gautam Godhwani at Simply Hired said:

"As the world’s most comprehensive job site, our goal at Simply Hired is to help people find a job they love. Our 75 employees work with 30M+ job seekers each month as well as thousands of global employers to provide free access to job openings and an efficient way to reach qualified candidates.

"Maintaining a database of more than eight million job listings, working with thousands of employers and managing a remote sales team requires a lot of internal organization. In 2011, we started running into issues with our in-house technology implementation. Employees were wasting valuable time dealing with spam and at the same time, storing and saving company information on a single internal drive was limiting mobility and collaboration for the team. We were also concerned about disaster recovery if our system suffered an outage. All of these factors made it clear that another solution was needed.

"With Google Apps, our information is now available in the cloud. Thanks to Gmail, Google calendar, Google Docs, and more recently, Google Drive, important documents and calendar information is now always up-to-date and accessible to all employees – no matter where they are located or which Web device they are using. When our sales team is on the road, they can now easily access presentations and product information from our internal Google site and send it to potential customers. Accessing data and files without being in the office or connected to a local network has helped us provide a better experience for our customers. And, Google Chat makes it easy to quickly reach a colleague while out of the office or on the road. In addition, moving our data to the cloud helps us save resource allocation toward and disaster recovery procedures.

"In addition to accessibility and reliability, sharing information as a team has never been easier. Rather than emailing large attachments, we can easily upload large files to Google Docs or Drive. For example, our marketing team is constantly creating new presentations and collateral which include images and video, resulting in large file sizes. In the past, we’d have to email large files, which created numerous issues including slow upload time and unreliable deliverability. Sometimes, the files would be too large to even send. Now, we can upload materials easily to Docs or Drive and simply click the “Share” button.

With Google Apps there’s a new level of transparency and collaboration among teams at Simply Hired. We’ve also seen a reduction in expenses as fewer resources are needed to manage a cloud-based solution. We look forward to seeing ongoing enhancements from the Google Apps team to further improve productivity across our organization."

Story courtesy of Google Enterprise Blog post. 

Google have released a new update to Google Drive making it possible to create and edit documents on iOS devices. Other improvements to the iOS Drive app include the ability to view Google presentations, including speaker notes, full-screen mode and swipe between slides. You can also create new folders, move files into folders and upload from your device directly in the Drive app.

On Android devices, users can now add comments, reply to existing comments and view tables in Google documents. Check out the video below for the full changes.

This week Google launched some excellent new Google+ features specially designed for business. Available to Google Apps for Business users as a preview, until full release next year, these new features are designed to help employees engage and connect with each other.

Private sharing for your organisation
Google Apps users now have more control over the content they post to Google+. When you create a post you can mark it as restricted. Restricted posts are private to your organisation and can never be re-shared with anyone outside. At the same time, when you create a post, you have the flexibility to share it with specific partners or colleagues outside the organisation as well if you choose.

Video meetings integrated with Gmail, Calendar and Docs
When you’re on Google Apps, holding a face-to-face meeting with colleagues or clients doesn’t require expensive video conferencing technology. All you need is a device with a camera and an internet connection. Hangouts in Google+ lets up to 10 people join a video meeting from their laptop, phone or tablet. Users can now join a multi-way video chat, powered by Hangouts, directly from Gmail, or directly from a Calendar event or invite. They can also open a Google doc in a hangout meeting, making it easy for colleagues to write or edit a document together from anywhere.

Administrative Controls
To help make sure users are sharing only with the people they intend, administrators can now set company-wide defaults for post restrictions. They can also enable restricted Hangouts to facilitate private meetings within the company.

Just the Beginning
These latest business features for Google+, which will be rolling out throughout the day, are just a start. We have a lot more planned for the coming months, including a mobile version of Google+ for enterprise users and more administrative controls.

So why not try Google+ for your organisation today.

The basic comment feature, which will be familiar to Microsoft Excel users, already available in Google Spreadsheets has been updated to behave exactly like comments in a Google Doc. If a cell has a comment in it, you'll see an orange triangle in the upper right corner and when you hover over the cell you'll see the full discussion.

The total number of comments are also tallied up at the bottom of the screen on the sheet tab, and hovering over the comment icon shows all the comments on that sheet.

And just like you’re used to with comments elsewhere, you can +mention someone to automatically include them in a discussion and send them a notification via email – and they can even reply to the comment without leaving their inbox.

Any comments that were created in spreadsheets before today are still available and saved as “Notes”. These are shown in your spreadsheet using a black triangle in the corner of the cell to differentiate them from the new discussion-style comments. You can also create new notes from the “Insert” menu if you need to leave a quick annotation on a cell.

The new comments feature will be rolling out to Google Apps accounts soon.  

Mobile Monday™ is a mobile web meetup for anyone interested in the mobile industry to showcase their games and mobile applications, learn from industry veterans and network with other companies in the mobile scene. The Mobile Monday Birmingham event took place at Birmingham Science Park, Aston on the 3rd September 2012. 

Refractiv was there to demonstrate Google Apps, in particular the seamless way it lends itself to mobile working. Our team also talked to visitors about the growing potential of HTML5 app development in mobile platforms.

The stand was very well received, with lots of visitors wanting to discuss Google Apps. Some had already invested in Google Apps directly with Google but were interested to see the full potential of Google Apps and understand the benefits of working with a local reseller. Thanks to everyone at Birmingham Science Park for a great event!

The ability for colleagues to share your Google Spreadsheet and work on the same file together at once is a wonderful feature of Google Spreadsheets - but how do you make sure that collaborators don't edit a cell you don't won't them to? New to Google Spreadsheets is the ability to set permissions for a single cell or a range of cells, and share access with collaborators, exactly like sharing file access.

To get started with Protected Ranges in a shared spreadsheet, highlight the cells you’d like to protect, right-click, and choose Name and protect range from the menu.

Once you have protected your cells, any collaborators on the document will see the cell data but will be unable to edit the cell.

This new designation from Google enables customers to more easily assess a reseller’s expertise advising on and deploying Google products. Refractiv has moved from an Authorised to a Premier Reseller based on their expertise and success in helping customers deploy and use Google Apps.

Refractiv has wide experience of helping organisations deploy key business processes to the web. The company offers a full range of services, including: deployment and integration; email and document migration; user training; cloud application development and a comprehensive support service.

“The Google Apps Reseller program has been a critical component of our business," said Richard Atkinson, Chief Operating Officer at Refractiv. "We’re pleased to be recognised as a Premier Reseller, and we look forward to continuing our work helping businesses take advantage of Google Apps.”

Google Apps brings simple, powerful communication and collaboration tools to organisations of any size – all hosted by Google to streamline setup, minimise maintenance, and reduce IT costs. With Gmail (including Google email security, powered by Postini), Google Calendar, and integrated IM, users can stay connected and work together with ease. And, using Google Docs and Google Sites, which include word processing, spreadsheet, presentation and website creation tools, they can share files and collaborate in real-time, keeping versions organised and available wherever and whenever users work. 

The Google Apps Reseller program includes companies globally that sell, service and customise Google Apps for Business for their customers. As a part of the Apps Reseller program, Refractiv receives training, support and deployment tools from Google, as well as access to APIs for integrating Google Apps into their customers' business operations.

MDM Publishing, a fire protection and firefighting magazine publisher based in Yeovil, Somerset was experiencing problems with an outdated Microsoft setup that had started to cause problems daily.

With the support of Refractiv, a leading UK Google Apps Authorised Reseller, MDM Publishing transitioned to Google Apps for Business and Capsule, a cloud CRM system. Refractiv provided initial advice and guidance on the best strategy, migrated legacy data with minimal disruption, and managed the transition from technical and change management perspectives.

MDM staff are now confidently using Gmail instead of Microsoft Outlook. Google Drive has introduced a welcome change to the way MDM manage company information. Documents are now stored in the cloud to be collaborated on and shared with customers - email attachments are a thing of the past. The sales and operational processes have been streamlined and the team have more time to sell.

The PCs that used to freeze almost daily are now running perfectly, and the old IT support contract has been torn up, to be replaced by a much smaller one.

Dave Staddon, Director said: "There can be no doubt that Google Apps and Gmail make our sales force a more potent and effective group than we were before. Add to that a seamless migration of our contacts from BCM to Capsule and we are now far more streamlined and effective in dealing with our customers than we have ever been. Best of all, we now have no reliance on our server which was forever giving us headaches and costing a substantial sum in maintenance contracts and down time."

Read the full case study

Among a number of announcements from Google yesterday was the news that Google documents can now be edited offline using the Google Chrome browser. With offline editing, users can create and edit Google documents and leave comments. Any changes made will be automatically synced when the user is back online.

Offline editing for spreadsheets and presentations is "coming soon".

In a busy week for news, due to the Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced that Google Apps is now used by over 5 million businesses and Gmail has 425 million users. There's also great news if you are an iOS user, Google has launched Google Drive and Chrome for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

The official Google Enterprise Blog has more details on all this news.

Google Apps users will see a change to the Google bar over the next few days. The most significant change is the removal of the top cog, which was used to access Settings, plus the move of the user email address and image to the search bar. This all makes the top bar cleaner and there is now just one cog with Display Density; Settings; Themes; and more - which is a lot more user friendly.

Google has used this extra space to show more apps, both on the bar and under the "More" dropdown. Finally, when working in Google Docs and Sites the bar will disappear to free up a little more screen space.

Refractiv, a leading Cloud Solutions provider and Google Apps Authorised Reseller, has relocated its head office to Leeds.

The business has ambitious expansion plans in the next 2-3 years. The new office facilities will support an increase in staff numbers as well as provide great transport links and fast internet access.

Richard Atkinson, Chief Operating Officer (image left) said: "We are delighted to have moved to the Round Foundry and this underpins our plans for growth. Leeds is the epicentre of business in this region and an ideal location for our head office.”

Ian Weatherhogg, Chief Technical Officer (image right) said: "The move reflects our profile as a leading player in the Cloud Solutions and Google Apps for Business market. We see the new office at the Round Foundry as a perfect location for our growing business and expansion plans."

About Refractiv

Refractiv is a Cloud Solutions Provider and a Google Apps Authorised Reseller.

We provide a range of cloud computing services in support of your online business needs, including the design, development and support of advanced websites and web applications.

Our people are experienced, creative and practical. We use the best technology to deliver elegant and affordable solutions.

We create engaging, professional websites, e-commerce solutions and portals, ensuring strong security and the best possible user experience.