Get driving directions on Google maps.

My friends visited us at Bhubaneswar yesterday and since my son-in-law is away on tour I had to take them to Lingaraj Temple in Bhubaneswar by car. I thought why not take Google's help to get driving directions. So I clicked on Maps link on iGoogle then clicked on Get Directions which opened two boxes. I typed "Ramji Tower, Bhubaneswar" in 'A' box (this is our present home address) and "Lingaraj Temple, Bhubaneswar" in 'B' box and clicked on Get Directions and I got the precise map.

View Larger Map
I could Zoom in and get the details near the temple area:

View Larger Map
We faced only one problem near the temple on the road by the side of the lake "Bindu Sagar". Construction work was going on the road but we could reach the temple.

Preview of Google Sites templates.

Google Sites has recently opened the templates gallery and creating professional looking web sites has become so much easier. You can view some of the templates on this page, however, there are many more templates.

To see other available templates you have to login to your Google Sites account, click on create site, Browse the gallery for more, select a template and click on Preview Template link.

I am putting links to some templates below:
Professional Site Template
Internal Profile Template
Contractor site template
NGO site template
Neighbourhood site template
Project work site
Document Library and sharing
Team work site template
Training

Autosorting Task List using Google Spreadsheet.

One Google Docs user had asked a question on the Forum regarding auto-sorting a Task List when there is change in status of a Task. I thought that as a user I may also face this problem sometimes.

I created a Spreadsheet with List of Tasks in Column A and the Status of the Task in Column B. Initially I sorted the Data by Column B but when I changed the status of any Task it was not getting sorted automatically.

Then I read the description of SORT command and wrote the following command in cell C2:
=SORT(A2:B21, 2, TRUE)

This created a sorted list in Column C and D. Now If I change the status of any Task in Column B the sorted list got changed automatically.

I have shared this Template on Google Templates Gallery and you can use it too.
 

Long Survey questionnaires on Google Forms.

Google released a new feature to add page break to create multiple pages on Forms. Now in a long survey questionnaire the respondent could be sent to a particular page depending upon Yes/No or other options in multiple choice question.

Earlier when we created long survey questionnaires it was made only on single page and the respondent was getting nervous looking at it. Moreover, logic branching was not possible depending upon the answers. With this feature one can show limited number of questions on first page and depending upon the answer to a question (which may be placed anywhere on the page) the respondent is sent to a page which is relevant to his/her response. On next page also same type of question may be asked.

Although the respondent is not completing all the pages it is possible to write mandatory questions on any and all pages because the questions are mandatory only for the respondent for whom the page opens depending upon his previous response.

Suppose the respondent has made the earlier choice by mistake and realises this on subsequent page he/she can press the back button to go to the previous pages and change the response.

You can read about this on Google Docs Blog. The instructions to use the new feature  are here.

How I changed the Form while it was getting responses.

We made a Consumer Survey which was getting responses since Sep 4. Meanwhile, there was a workshop in which there were suggestions to alter the sequence of options in some questions and the sequence of questions itself. There were 19 questions.

I did it as follows.

I opened the Form for editing and disconnected from net to prevent auto-saves.

I made all the changes.

I came online and saved the form. Before clicking on save I unchecked "Accepting responses" and checked it again after saving.

How to embed Forms on Google Sites.

When you create a Spreadsheet Form you get a long URL like https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX..

It is better to embed the URL on your blog or site or Google Site. Embeding on Google Sites is very easy. You just create a page on Google Site and insert the Spreadsheet Form.

While inserting you need to give the required height and width of the form which you can get by clicking Form/Embed_form_in_a_webpage on spreadsheet. e.g.:
iframe src="https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX" width="760" height="3744" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0">Loading.../iframe

Just take the width and height from the embed link and put it while inserting on Google Sites.

If you want to embed on any other site or blog you need the whole link with iframe command.

Configuring Pidgin to connect to Google Talk for my domain.

Being Linux user I have been using Pidgin for Google Talk on my gmail account. After becoming the Administrator of my domain and putting up Google Talk Badge on public Google sites I was using the service through gmail account @my_domain.

Today I discovered how to set up Pidgin for my domain and there is no need to login to gmail account @my_domain to chat with the visitors to the sites.

This is how I did it:

Basic Tab
Username: admin (this is my username@my_domain)
Domain: my_domain.com
Local alias: Web Administrator

 Advanced Tab
Connect server: talk.google.com

Now whenever, the visitor at my domain site clicks on "Chat with Web Administrator" badge I get a message on Pidgin "Accept chat invitation?" and after clicking on Accept the Conversation window opens.

If the visitor to this site clicks on "Chat with Kamalakar Agashe" badge on right side bar I get same message on Pidgin but when I see my userid in the conversation window I understand that this is a visitor to my blog and not the site @my_domain

Putting long Questionnaire on Google Sites using Spreadsheet Forms.

In the project we are handling on our Intranet there are long Questionnaires (about 50 questions) to be put up on Google Sites for MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises). We tried to design the questions with possible answers included but answers to many questions was descriptive. The Questionnaires were prepared in Google Spreadsheet Forms and embeded on public Google Site on our domain.

When we tested the Questionnaires it was found that the respondents may need lot of assistance. Accordingly the site was designed as follows:

Home Page with Description regarding the Questionnaire and click-able links to the embeded Questionaires and support pages.
Pages with Questionnaires on Spreadsheet Forms embeded
Page with detailed Instructions for filling up the Questionnaires (Main Support Page)
Chat page with Google Talk Badge of Support Person.
Contact Us page with brief Support Spreadsheet Form
Downloads page with PDFs of Instructions and Questionnaires.
Sidebar with the links to pages in proper order.

For me this is going to be a very exciting project.

Some tips for using Google Forms.

Tip No 1: Formats of Data
Although the Forms accepts the data as Text the Spreadsheet interprets it as text, number, currency, %, Date etc. Therefore, you need to format those fields correctly in the spreadsheet. If you are seeking a Date in the form you should ask in the format MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY/MM/DD etc depending upon how it is formatted in the spreadsheet. Suppose a numerical input in the form is  starting with a leading zero the leading zero gets eliminated unless you format the column as text. For formating the columns in the spreadsheet you have to use the 123 button.

Tip No 2: How to delete the Summary Responses
Suppose you want to delete the summary responses and start fresh it is not sufficient to delete the data in the spreadsheet since the data used for showing the responses is stored on Google's servers. You need to proceed as follows:
Open the spreadsheet
Click on Form/Edit_form
Keeping the form open on the popped up window click on Form/Delete_form in the spreadsheet.
Click to edit any field in the form, don't change anything and click on Done button.
Save the form.

Tip No 3: How to get Notifications when a form is filled.
Click on Tools/Notification_rules in the spreadsheet.
Put a check-mark in the box A_user_submits_a_form
Put a check-mark in the E-mail-daily_digest or right_away.
Click on save.

Tip No 4: How to make a Form from an existing spreadsheet
You can make a Form from an existing spreadsheet. The Data Fields should be present in the first row. Click on Form/Create_form and a Form is created using the fields. All Question become  "Text" type by default and you need to edit the questions to make them Multiple choice, Checkboxes etc. as required. After you save the form an additional column Timestamp gets inserted as first column in the spreadsheet.

Tip No 5: How to make another form from an existing form
If you want to make some modifications to an existing form and use it you can do this by clicking on File/Make_a_copy in existing spreadsheet, give a name to the spreadsheet, then click on Form/Edit_Form in the new spreadsheet.

First visitor to this blog from search engine.

I get average 60 visitors per day to my linux blog. This blog being less than one month old was not getting any visitor from search engine.

Finally, I got a visitor searching for "gantt chart archlinux" and landed on my site since the blog appeared at fourth place on first page.

This blog has a page with title "Using Gantt Chart Template" but the page has nothing to do with his additional term "archlinux". Even then the visitor was satisfied with the information on the page since he spent 3 minutes on the site. I am also happy that he was a linux user. I use Ubuntu but experiment with other linux distributions as well and my linux blog tells all about it.

Needless to say my thanks go to Google Analytics which gets me the visitor's information.

How to increase Google Sites storage from 100 MB to 10 GB?

The available web space for Google Sites under individual Google accounts is 100 MB whereas it is 10 GB under Google Applications account.

If you run out of space on Google Sites you can register a domain and apply for standard edition of Google Applications for free.

After getting the Google Applications account invite the Google Applications account as owner to your Google Site and log out.

Then sign-in to your Google Site with Google Applications account. Use More_actions/Manage_site/General/Copy_site and complete the form.

This will copy the entire site to your Google Applications Domain where the new storage capacity is 10 GB.

You can also set the www CNAME record of the domain to ghs.google.com and map the site to www.yourdomain

Uploading custom Presentation Template for use on Google Docs.

The members of our domain were using a particular background on Office presentations. I made a blank slide using that background, saved it as ppt, uploaded it to Google Docs and opened it for editing. It was just a background for slides without any text boxes. First I tried to insert a text box but it needed to be resized on the slide.

Then I clicked to insert a new slide and it asked me to chose the slide layout. After choosing the layout the text boxes appeared with the text "Click to add title" and "Click to add subtitle". I added one more slide with the next layout and it had the text boxes with "Click to add title" and "Click to add content". I deleted the blank slide and saved the file as "Standard_Template".

I shared the file with all the members of the domain and told them to copy the file for their use and leave the template file as empty.

Now they are motivated to use Google Presentation.

Project Website on Company Intranet

We created a new site on Google Sites with the name of the project and choosing a good theme. On Home Page I inserted a Table with one row and two columns. On left side column I entered the Project Code, Project Duration and the name of the Client and on right side column the names of Project Team Members.

Below the table I copied the Objectives.

Then we created following pages under Home:

Name of the Page	Template used
Announcements	Announcements
Discussion Board	Announcements
Feedback Room	Web Page
File Cabinet	File cabinet
News	Announcements
Planner	Web Page
Task Monitor	Web Page
Time Sheet	Web Page
Travel Expense Record	Web Page

In the Planner page we inserted the Project Calendar made in Google Calendar. In File Cabinet we uploaded the project related file. In Task Monitor a Task List was created for various Project Members. In Time Sheet and Travel Expenses Record we inserted Google Spreadsheet Forms. On Discussion Board, Feedback Room pages instructions were written about how to use those features. In Feedback Room sub-pages were made i.e. one each for a member of the Project Team.

Then the Project Manager wrote a brief about the launch of the site on Announcement page.

I inserted 'Recent Posts' Gadget on the Home Page for Announcement and same Gadget on News page for Discussion Board. I also added Recent Site Activity in the Left Side Bar.

Finally the Project Manager sent the invitation to all Project Members as Collaborators and some other company personnel as Viewers.

Two members of the Project Team were outside the company's domain. Instructions were sent to them about how to access the site through their Google Accounts.

When the users began using the site we found that the timestamps on their post did not indicate our time. After searching on Google Sites Help Forums I found that users have to set their time-zone in their Google Sites account through 'My sites/User_settings. 

Using Gantt Chart Template.

Yesterday I received an enquiry about how Google Spreadsheets could be used to prepare Gantt Chart for a project.

I searched for 'gantt' on Google Docs Templates Gallery and found 3 templates. I decided to use the simplest one:


On clicking 'Use this template' a copy was saved on my Google Docs and it opened before me. There were 15 activities on the Template which I modified for my project. Since there were more than 15 I inserted more rows and put all the activities. I maintained the format of the template and used 2.00, 3.00 etc. in WBS column for main activities and 2.11, 2.12 for sub-activities of 2.0 and so on.

After finishing with activity sheet I clicked on the second sheet to see the Gantt Chart. The chart was having 15 activities only whereas I had 26 on the activity sheet. Then I clicked on 'Edit Settings' tab on the chart and changed the range to 'A1:G27' and applied. The Gantt chart started showing all 26 activities.

Working with Google Sites.

I had already set-up 'www' CNAME record to point to ghs.google.com in GoDaddy account the next step was to put something on Google Sites.

My son-in-law had prepared a presentation in Microsoft Power Point regarding the new company. I decided to use the presentation.

I uploaded the presentation to Google Docs, then created a site and inserted the presentation, so simple.

Next step was to map the site to www.yourdomain.com again very simple. I set the sharing permission to 'Anyone in the world may view this site'.

The presentation was available to the public on www.yourdomain.com

Now I am setting up a site for the first project awarded to the new company.

Importing contacts from gmail account, setting up mail URL to mail.yourdomain.com

Importing Contacts from gmail account

The first lesson I sent to the users was "How to import contacts from gmail account".

Click on contacts Tab in gmail account
Select the contacts you would like to export
Click on Groups and select New Group
Name the group mydomain
Click on Export tab (in right hand corner)
In who do you want to export select the group mydomain
Select Google CSV Format
Click on Export
Save the file on your PC.

In your domain mail account
Click on Contacts Tab
Click on import
Click on browse and select the file from your PC
Click on import

Setting up mail URL to mail.yourdomain.com

I had sent the URL for login to the mail account which was mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com For setting up simple URL mail.yourdomain.com I had to change the CNAME record of 'mail' to point to 'ghs.google.com' in our Godaddy account. At the same time I created CNAME records for 'calender' 'sites' 'www' and set them to point to 'ghs.google.com'

Then I logged in to my administrator Dashboard for Google Applications for the domain and changed the URL to mail.yourdomain.com sites.yourdomain.com etc.

Simplify your life with Google Forms.

Suppose you want to collect the data regarding the Birthdays of your friends and relatives. One option is to collect the data and enter it into spreadsheet.

Wait! Google has simplified this matter. Click on New/Form in Google Docs and create fields for last name, first name and date of birth, save the form and click on "email this form" and chose contacts from your gmail account and send. Your friends will fill the data themselves and it gets collected in the spreadsheet on your Google Docs account as soon as they fill it.

If you don't want to create a form yourself you can use my template:


If you are not logged into your Google Account you may have to create one or login to an existing account.

The form will open in front of you and it will be automatically saved in your Google Docs. You can click on 'Save' button on top right corner if its status is not showing as 'saved'.

You can edit the form if you wish like adding more fields or you can click on 'Theme Pink Flowers' and select another theme e.g. "Birthday Baloons". For changing theme you have to click on 'Apply' button.

After editing the form and/or changing theme if necessary you can click on "Email this form'. If you have a gmail account and a contact list in it you can click on 'choose from contacts' otherwise, you can enter the email addresses of your friends and relatives in the 'to' box and click on send.

You can click on 'More actions/Edit confirmations' and see what the responders are going to see after they fill up the form and click on 'Submit' button.

The responses get collected automatically in a spreadsheet 'Copy of Birthday' in your Google Docs and you can view them any time by opening it.

You can edit the form from the spreadsheet by Form/Edit_Form. You can input the Data yourself by clicking on Form/Go_To_Live_Form.

First Post on a new Blog.

I am blogger since July 2005 starting with My Tryst with Linux I am starting this new blog since the experience with Google Applications does not relate to Linux except Google Applications are also free to use and may be open source to some extent.

I learned about gmail in 2005 and managed an invitation when all users were given 100 invitations in Sep 2005. I learnt about Google Docs soon after its launch in Oct 2006 and loved the convenience of creating/uploading the Docs online. I have been using it for online Doc storage and sharing.

In last 3 years gmail has grown immensely and almost everyone is having a gmail account therefore when you talk about Google Applications for the organisations no training is required for using the mail account.

Till last month I did not know that for small groups of people using Google Applications is free if you have registered a domain. In fact I learnt about it when I saw an email address user@archlinux.us and the user told me that he got it free. Suddenly I was interested since this was like Ubuntu for Human Beings free with all meanings of the word 'free'.

I digged a little more on Google and found that you can buy the domain through Google which is registered at Godaddy or eNom If you go through Google then your account at the Domain Registrar is configured automatically to use Google Applications and if you register it you have to configure it yourself but lot of help is available.

Meanwhile my son-in-law launched a private limited company in July 2009 and was looking for low cost email and document sharing solution. He was thrilled to know that he could use gmail @his_domain

His business associate registered the domain of their choice on GoDaddy and signed up for Google Applications and I made the gmail available for 5 people in his company in less than one hour, thanks to GoDaddy.