Although the Google Apps for Education project has ended, that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop sharing tips and best practices so you can make the most of your email, calendar, and other collaborative tools. Here are a few more helpful tips!

Add the Simmons logo to your signature
During training sessions, many staff members asked us how they could add the Simmons logo to their email signature. We’ve put together a brief guide to show you how to accomplish this with just a few clicks.

Use Templates in Google Drive
If you’re using Google Drive to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, but you’d rather not create everything from scratch, check out the Google Docs Template Gallery. Here, you’ll find templates for everything from business letters to budgets, and resumes to syllabi. These templates have been submitted by people around the world, vetted by Google, and rated by other Google Apps users.

Collaborate using Hangouts
Lastly, we’re excited to announce that Google Hangouts are now available to everyone at Simmons. Hangouts are video calls (much like Skype) that allow you to collaborate with colleagues and friends at Simmons. To start a Hangout, just click the video camera in the chat section on the left side of the screen in your Simmons Gmail. Then, you can add other people to the Hangout and begin chatting and working immediately.

The Data Stewards Committee is a group of 29 individuals from across all academic and administrative areas of the college with day-to-day responsibility for managing data for their respective departments. The purpose of this committee is to provide a regular forum to share data management best practices, ensure data integrity and accuracy, troubleshoot data management issues and to serve as a working group for delivering various data-related, campus-wide projects.

Recently, the Data Stewards have been hard at work on a number of focused projects that were determined to be priorities by the committee members.

Some of the 2013 projects include:

• defining and locating sensitive data for compliance with Massachusetts law
• addressing obstacles to requesting reports
• organizing AARC training
• creating a calendar of each department’s time-sensitive data needs
• producing a Data Standards Manual to map the flow of data in and out of systems, define various data fields, set up protocols to avoid creating duplicate records, determine how to resolve duplicate records that already exist, and define standard for data to improve consistency and integrity

To learn more, contribute to a project, or bring up a new data issue, feel free to reach out to Data Stewards Committee co-chairs Heather Roscoe, Director of Institutional Research, at [email protected], or Deborah Wahlen, Director of the Project Management Office in Technology, at [email protected].

Data Stewards Committee Members

• Lauren Bailey
• John Campoli
• Barbara Carter
• Anna Cottrell
• Izabel DeAraujo
• Louise Deraney
• Diane Dewar
• Jess Faulk
• Patricia Flaherty
• Susan Hacker
• Susan Keller
• Paula Malady
• Joan Martinez Cuerva
• Suzanne Mullarkey
• Sandra Northrup
• Victoria Nye
• Heather Roscoe (Co-chair)
• Brian Shetler
• Gretchen Syverud
• Roslyn Taylor
• Richard Thompson
• Sarah Tyrrell
• Deb (Bernstein) Wahlen (Co-chair)
• Jeanne Wallace-Buckley
• Nicole White
• Christine Williams
• Kelly Williams
• Jason Wood
• Kevin Wright

We are very happy to announce that the Google Apps for Education migration for faculty and staff is now complete. We’d like to thank everyone at Simmons for your patience and cooperation as we worked to ensure that your email was migrated correctly and that you were provided with the individual attention you needed.

In conjunction with the end of this project, we will be transitioning from project-based training to a sustainable, long-term training structure. We will announce training dates and times as soon as the schedule is finalized. In the meantime, you can get answers to almost any Google Apps question from several sources:

Built-in Google Apps Training – when logged in to Google Apps, click “More” on the black bar at the top of the screen, then click “Google Apps Training.” This will take you to detailed, searchable instructions on almost any Google Apps function.

Google Apps Project Site – You can find instructions here for quickly setting up your mobile devices, as well as guides to advanced functions for administrative assistants, information for new employees, and much more.

lynda.com – Our partnership with lynda.com provides dozens of instructional videos about Google’s products, including Google Apps.

Service Desk – Remember that you can always contact the Service Desk for assistance with Google Apps by calling 617-521-2222 or visitingservicedesk.simmons.edu.

Throughout the summer, we’ll continue providing Google Apps tips in our newsletter to help improve your experience and increase your knowledge of Gmail, Calendar, and all of the other apps.