Matt Schmandt

Recently, I started hearing many people talk about Google Apps for your domain . I even heard about a 200 employee company consider switching to it. Well, I decided to try it out and found it’s really amazing. I am surprised that Google is able to offer all the included services for free. Google Apps includes 6 main things at this point: mail, calendar, chat, docs and spreadsheets, launch page and site builder. I set it up for a domain last week to try it out.

The mail is basically a full Gmail account just with your own domain on it. You still get the 2 gigs of storage per mailbox and a great spam filter. (Did I mention they bought Postini.) You also get the ability to link up each mailbox with other email addresses from other domains. Plus, you can configure it to pull in mail from up to 5 other accounts via POP. All of these features are standard for a gmail account, it is just nice to setup your own domain with all those features but without the headaches of management. The only thing I noticed different from a standard Gmail account is that it automatically adds all users on that domain into your contacts.

I really had not spent any time with Docs and Spreadsheets until I played with Google Apps. It is really pretty nice for standard word processing and small basic spreadsheets. Both apps seems a little slow compared to a it’s desktop application equivalent but still very usable. They built many ways to import your docs into the system and many export options. I noticed in the Docs and Spreadsheets section there are different access level settings for people inside your domain and outside your domain. I believe all the rest of the main sections are the same as with normal Google accounts just with some extra integration added in for your domain.

I have not spent any considerable amount on time with the calendar, chat, launch page or site builder. The only thing that I really feel is missing is a spot for some non-public content. I would call it something like an Intranet. A place for all employees to post information about their business without making it public to the world. It is possible that Google already provides this service but I couldn’t find it.

Now all these features do come at a price. The price is ads and your privacy. Google has a stated policy that they keep all pieces of information about you so they can improve their services. I know they stated they run all search data through an anonymizer after 18 months to 2 years. So they are collecting lots of information about you, especially as you use them for more and more services. It really comes down to the fact that the more they know about you, the better ads they can serve.

They also have an enterprise version which gives you some extra features. You get 10 gigs of storage and resources reservation for calendaring. It costs $50 per user per year. I believe if small businesses are looking for an easy solution, this should really consider one of the Google Apps offerings as an option.

I have been asked by many people how to check your voicemail from out of the office. Normally this is an easy process, however if you don’t have an auto attendant, it doesn’t seem so easy. I researched the voicemail command and found it is quite easy. Here is the output of a “show application voicemail”.

-= Info about application ‘VoiceMail’ =-

[Synopsis]
Leave a Voicemail message

[Description]
VoiceMail(mailbox[@context][&mailbox[@context]][...][|options]): This
application allows the calling party to leave a message for the specified
list of mailboxes. When multiple mailboxes are specified, the greeting will
be taken from the first mailbox specified. Dialplan execution will stop if the
specified mailbox does not exist.
The Voicemail application will exit if any of the following DTMF digits are
received:1*CLI>
0 - Jump to the ‘o’ extension in the current dialplan context.
* - Jump to the ‘a’ extension in the current dialplan context.
This application will set the following channel variable upon completion:
VMSTATUS - This indicates the status of the execution of the VoiceMail
application. The possible values are:
SUCCESS | USEREXIT | FAILED

Options:
b - Play the ‘busy’ greeting to the calling party.
g(#) - Use the specified amount of gain when recording the voicemail
message. The units are whole-number decibels (dB).
s - Skip the playback of instructions for leaving a message to the
calling party.
u - Play the ‘unavailable’ greeting.
j - Jump to priority n+101 if the mailbox is not found or some other
error occurs.

The interesting part is “* - Jump to the ‘a’ extension in the current dialplan context.” This means if a line is added in the same context as the the voicemail(…) line, it will jump to the “a” extension if the user pushes the “*” button during the greeting playback.

Here is an example. If extension 100 that rings and then rolls to voicemail, the code might look like the following.
exten => 100,1,Dial(SIP/100,15)
exten => 100,n,Voicemail(100@default)

By adding a third line of code, the user can push “*” and jump to the VoicemailMain application.
exten => 100,1,Dial(SIP/100,15)
exten => 100,n,Voicemail(100@default)
exten => a,1,VoicemailMain(100@default)

There is a known issue with Avaya IP phone’s Message Waiting Indicator(MWI) with Asterisk 1.2 and 1.4. If you have the phone configured with a mailbox line in the sip.conf, the light will never come on. Worse after about 24 hours, the phone with freeze and need to be restarted.

After lots of work testing many different configurations, I finally found a way to get the Message Waiting Indicator working. I am using Avaya 4610sw phones with the latest SIP firmware from Avaya which is the March 07 release. The version of Asterisk is the current Trunk version.

There was some major work done on the Message Waiting Indicator code and SIP subscriptions in the Trunk and I believe that is what fixed it. All the new code should go into the future 1.6 release. I have heard it rumored that we should expect 1.6 around the end of 07.

I started using Google’s experimental 411 service a few weeks ago and it has been working out very well. The number is call is 800-GOO-G411 or 800-466-6411. I don’t have any experience with any other 411 services so I can’t compare the features but Google’s service is a 800 number and there are no fees.

The whole system works with voice recognition. The first thing it asks you is what city and state you are looking for information about. Next, it asks you for the name of the business. It will then list the top 8 results. It will iterate through them stating the business name and address. You can choose the business you want by saying “number 1″ or “number 2.” From there you can just wait and it will connect you or you can say details and it will give you even more information about that result. At any time you can say “go back” or “start over.”

The only issue I have had with the service was when I didn’t know which city or suburb the business was in.  I think this is a great service and I look forward to using it more.