Google Apps Better Administration Proposal

Google Apps Effective Administration

Google really does great work providing more services and better administration of users for Google Apps for Education. These are very useful new options:

1. To define organization structure in Google Apps and assign users to appropriate units;
2. Assign to users tools they really need;
3. Create through domains and make possible for users from different domains to communicate and share their documents.

But, at the same time, if you will try to implement all of these options in the large organization, it undoubtedly will increase the workload of administrator and his responsibility. So, as a solution for large organization Google Apps Manager has to assign several persons who can administer the system. Since, each of them has the same access to all users’ and services’ settings, the probability of mistake which can affect whole system is quite high. At the same time, if organization has moved to Google Apps it’s vitally important for them to guarantee uninterrupted operation of all services. So, organization needs to be safe from any kind of interruption due to mistakes or carelessness.

I believe, it would be greatly appreciated by administrators’ community if Google provides us in the nearest future with new options that makes possible to define several administrators and grant them access to different units, to different services with different accessibility.

Any feedbacks from administrator’s community on this issue would be greatly appreciated…

Dr. Abzetdin Adamov
CIO at Qafqaz University

Qafqaz University has gone Google Apps for Education

Google Apps implementation in Qafqaz University

This Summer Qafqaz University has started campus-wide project of migration Google Apps for Education for all faculty, staff and students.

In 2006 we decided to create common collaboration and communication framework for faculty and students through implementation of the Campus Mail System. But because of high cost of the maintenance this initiative was converted to the hosting email solution assigned for faculty and staff, but unfortunately not for students. At the same time we have noticed that our students knew Google tools and already used them to meet common needs. From the end of 2008 we started to observe the possibility of adoption of the Google Apps in Qafqaz University.

This summer, our Computing & Information Services team was in the process of migrating everyone to our new Google Apps – Qafqaz University system. The positive experience of other Universities as well as experience our faculty have had using the Apps suite helped us decide that the change would bring significant benefits and cost savings to the university as a whole. In fact, we predict this change could save us considerable amount of money could be invested to meet other needs.

Many academicians as well as students widely use regular Gmail for communication needs. But what most of them don’t know is that Gmail can be configured so that they can use Google Apps through custom university domain. For instance, if my university domain is qu.edu.az, I can set up accounts for all my faculty and even for students, so they get Gmail, Celendar, Sites, Docs, and chat all with usernames like name1@qu.edu.az, name2@qu.edu.az, … My users log in to a Google hosted control panel (which is customized with a Qafqaz University logo, look at http://qmail.qu.edu.az), and all their email would get sent with their custom domain email as the From, as well as they receive email to the same email boxes.

In such a way Qafqaz University has enhanced its communication and collaboration infrastucture. Now Google Apps at @qu.edu.az has opened to any QU faculty, staff and student who would like to move. With just a Qafqaz ID and password, a Qafqaz University’s student can instantly use the full set of Google Applications for Education:

Qafqaz University has gone Google Apps for Education

• Qafqaz Mail (Gmail): communicating with on- and off-campus correspondents (http://qmail.qu.edu.az);
• Qafqaz Docs (Google Docs): creating and sharing documents (formatted text, spreadsheets, presentations) (http://docs.qu.edu.az);
• Qafqaz Sites (Google Sites): creating and sharing Web pages (http://sites.qu.edu.az);
• Qafqaz Calendar (Google Calendar): creating custom schedules and campus-wide events and activities (http://calendar.qu.edu.az).

Dr. Abzetdin Adamov
Cheif Information Oficcer
Qafqaz University