Google Apps

Google Apps is a service from Google providing independently customizable versions of several Google products under a custom domain name. UNC Charlotte has Google Apps for Education which  integrated with Active Directory.

Google Apps features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including Gmail, Google Groups, Google Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sites.

Web-based Productivity Suite

The primary innovation of Google Apps is that they provide web-based applications for word-processing, spreadsheets and presentations that are similar to Microsoft Office’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  One of the distinguishing features of Google Apps is “real-time collaboration.”  This means that multiple users can edit the same document at the same time and each will see the other’s edits as they occur.

Google Apps also has granular access control that allows users to specify who can view, comment on or edit any give document, spreadsheet or presentation.

Case Studies

Google Drive is used widely at UNC Charlotte for a variety of purposes.   Below are some examples.

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Administration

The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences (CLAS) Dean’s office uses Google Drive for many of their administrative documents.  Various committees have Google Drive folders within the CLAS Administration folder for storing their agendas, meeting notes and documents for review.  Links to these files are published on the CLAS Administration site.

Google Drive is also used extensively for documentation of CLAS administrative guidelines and procedures, see: Inside CLAS