This Week in Google Apps – 3/16

Take at a look at this week’s biggest stories in the Google Apps Ecosystem:

1. This week, Google rolled out Docs integration with Google+ Hangouts to all users. In preview for a year, the integration, which is now available to all users, adds another layer on top of the many useful collaboration features included in Hangouts already. Google+ is quickly becoming the enterprise social network of choice and with this week’s latest feature, it’s not hard to see why.

To test out the new feature, select the “Docs” button while you’re ‘Hanging out’ and get collaborating!

2. Google also gave users the ability to star and label mail in Gmail before sending. This new feature is sure to help you organize your Inbox and prevent you from forgetting to follow up on all those important emails!

Google is also giving G+ users the ability to hide their G+ circle while in the Gmail interface. This feature is set to roll out over the next few days.

3. It was another big week for cloud computing in the venture capital realm. Appirio, a cloud service consulting company that works with Google Apps, Workday and Salesforce, announced a $60 million funding round Thursday. The company states it’s seeing more and more organizations start IT services in the cloud first, bypassing any and all legacies systems (that’s true here at BetterCloud too). The funding news comes on the heels of last week’s CloudSherpas – GlobalOne Merger. Appirio says it will use the VC to develop its technology and enhance Cloudspokes, the company’s crowdsourced cloud app development service.

4. Dito, another cloud service consulting company (started out of a Virgina kitchen), was named a Premier Enterprise Reseller and a Premier SMB Reseller by Google this Wednesday. The company, with less than 25 employees, is one of only 6 organizations to earn the coveted premier reseller status for both enterprise and SMB.

5. Lastly, we leave you with some words of advice from Pardot Founder and CEO, David Cummings. In Cummings’ recent blog post, he gives tips for reaching that ultimate nirvana, ‘Inbox Zero!’ He lays out several tips and tricks for managing your email, but first and foremost he recommends choosing Gmail as your primary mail service. Cummings’ tips include installing:

• ‘Send and Archive’ Gmail Labs
• ‘Auto-advance’ Gmail Labs
• ‘Hide Unread Counts’ Gmail Labs

Check out the full post here.

Pardot is an Atlanta based marketing automation service.