Google Collections are a great way to organise and manage the sharing of your Google Docs.

Google collections give you the option to assign sharing permissions to a folder of Google Docs rather than the docs themselves. This means documents just have to be dropped in the correct folder and Google does the rest!

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Google forms can be used to make vote or survey. However, it can not prevent multiple submission. Here is a Google Apps Script “voTer” to solve this problem. For each submission, the script will compare the “username” with previous recorded usernames. If the username is existed, then the new submission will be deleted. At the same time, an email will be sent to that person for notification. Please do tailor the highlighted part in the script to fit your situation.

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The only thing you cant do with Google Apps that you can do with Office is mail merge, right?

WRONG!

Here is how….

1. Create a spreadsheet and organize your data in columns that include one row per individual that you want to create a personalized document for.  Make sure each column has a header. Individualized data might also be fed by a Google form.
2. Go to Tools->Script Editor and delete the existing code, pasting in the script from the attachment below.
3. Save the script with a name.  I like to call it the “autoCrat”;)
4. Use the small dropdown in the scripts editor to Run the “onOpen” function.   This will prompt you to authorize the script.
5. In order for the script to work, you will need to create a Document to use as a template for the merge.
   1. Create a new collection for your templates.  I like to create a collection called “Merge Templates”
   2. Include double bracketed tags for any personalized data you want to populate from the spreadsheet.  Ex) <<First Name>> .  It doesn’t matter what you call the fields, because you will map them to your spreadsheet headers in a few steps.
6. Refresh your spreadsheet in your browser.  Wait a few seconds and you should see a new menu item to the right of “Help”, called “Document Merge.”  If you don’t see it, try running the onOpen function from the script editor again.
7. In the “Document Merge” menu, select “Settings” and complete the settings.  If you don’t have a collection that contains a template file with <<Merge tags>> in it, go back to step 5 and come back to this.
8. Now you will see a new “Document Merge” dropdown item, “Set Field Mappings.”  Map each <<Merge tag>> to the spreadsheet column you want to use to populate it.  Save the mappings.
9. Another new “Document Merge” dropdown item will appear: “Test/Run Merge”.  Select it and decide what type of merge you want to try…there are a number of combos and cool possibilities.  Look to the bottom of the panel for a clue as to the $variableNames that are available for any of the fields you want to populate dynamically per row.
10. Here are some basic options to play with.  Checkbox allows you to test on first-row only if you like.
    1. ONLY saving merged Docs to a collection, either as PDF or Doc format.
    2. Saving to a collection AND emailing PDF as attachment.
    3. Saving to a collection AND emailing recipient a link to individually shared Docs as View-only
    4. Saving to a collection AND emailing recipient a link to individually shared Doc as Editor
11. Note that as of Version 1.1.0, Date formatting can now be handled. You must use the Format->Number menu from the spreadsheet to format any dates.  Currently only three formats are supported:   “M/d/yyyy”, “MMMM d, yyyy”, and “M/d/yyyy H:mm:ss” … i.e. 1/30/2012…January 30, 2012, and 1/30/2012 9:32:34.
12. Note: As of Vertion 1.2.0, the document Header and Footer can now contain merge tags.
13. 1.2.1 fixes a silly bug that occurred when the document didn’t contain a header or a footer.
14. We also recently discovered that non-alpha merge tags don’t work.  Eg <<90>> will not work.  Needs to be <<ninety>>.  So avoid using anything in your merge tags that’s not a letter.

Thanks to the folks at http://www.youpd.org/home for this great script.

Here is the text files with the script – autocrat_1.2.1

When dealing with large numbers of emails it can become frustrating to be redirected back to your inbox everytime an email is replied to, deleted, or moved. Luckily, Google has a nifty feature called ‘Auto-advance’ that will solve this.

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Another nice feature of Google apps is the ability to create default email footers/signatures for each group within the organisation. This can be very useful for identifying staff and students within your school.

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Flubaroo is a great free tool that helps you quickly grade multiple-choice assignments. Take a look at the video below to see it in action.

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I tried to log on to our realsmartcloud site from my iphone last week only to be returned to a non logged in home page.  This was strange as I log in all of the time from my iphone.

After a bit of a search on the web I found that cookies had been disabled by default for safari on the iphone4s.

Access the settings screen on your iOS device;

Go to the “Safari” setting page

Enable cookies by selecting “accept cookies from visited”;

And that’s it!

I have always thought it was a shame I couldn’t access our shared calendars on my iphone.  There must be a solution?

Here it is;

Log in to your Google account then follow this link to choose the calendars you would like to sync to your iOS device.

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

Easy eh?

N.B I needed to delete my gmail account from the phone as I had configured this before the new gmail setup option was available.  This was really easy.

You need Google Chrome Frame!

Google Chrome Frame is an open source plug-in that seamlessly brings Google Chrome’s open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to Internet Explorer. With Google Chrome Frame, you can:

• Start using open web technologies—such as the HTML5 canvas tag—right away, even technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, or 9.
• Take advantage of JavaScript performance improvements to make your apps faster and more responsive.

Click here to download

Network managers don’t depair – you can even download and MSI from here

Google can support you with any aspect of the Googe Apps for Education.  Please note that only school Google Apps administrators can request this support.

To access the support control panel log in to realsmart and navigate to your email page.  From the email page select the mail cog and choose manage this domain.

Here you will be logged in to the Google Apps control panel.  From here select the “support” menu.  In the support menu there are a range of different support options from FAQ’s, forums, email support system and a contact telephone number.