We launched the Chrome Insider blog in 2019 to share tips and best practices with IT admins so they could better deploy, manage, and secure Chrome browser. Since then, the series has covered everything from supporting legacy browsers to protecting enterprise credentials to simplifying deployments. To make it even easier to find and browse the series, we’ve pulled together all the posts to date here so you can read them all in one place or bookmark them for later.

Managing Chrome tips and tricks

• Understanding Policy Precedence for Chrome browser
• Protecting enterprise credentials with Password Alert
• Managing Chrome browser in a controlled environment
• Simplifying Chrome deployments on macOS
• Configuring Chrome browser in your VDI environment
• Know your options for Modern Enterprise Browser Management
• Managing policies and extensions across operating systems in Chrome Browser

Improving extension management and reporting 

• Improving Chrome browser extension management through permissions
• Publishing custom extensions for the enterprise
• Enhanced extension reporting with Chrome Browser’s Takeout API

Ensuring your organization is secure 

• Managing BeyondCorp Enterprise’s threat and data protection capabilities in Chrome
• A primer on enterprise private browsing modes

Increasing your organization’s productivity

• Ready, set, Chrome—Improvements and polices to make Chrome more performant
• Troubleshooting with Chrome Browser
• Preparing your enterprise for Flash deprecation
• Apps from the past? Fear not with legacy browser support in Chrome Enterprise

Although the series is 16 posts strong, there are plenty more Chrome Insider posts to come. You can read these posts and more on our Chrome Enterprise channel.

In the last two decades, BHI, once a small construction company in Vernal, Utah, has expanded its operations to dozens of industries in over 25 states. But while the company grew, its technology trailed behind. File sharing and emails both ran off a single server. Editing a document was a grueling undertaking that required an employee to VPN in, patiently download the file, edit it, then upload it again—all from a job site with a limited internet connection. Acknowledging the need for better technology, BHI adopted Google Workspace and AppSheet and transformed its business to be more innovative, productive, and profitable.

Rebuilding collaboration and productivity

BHI first looked to replace its archaic email and file-sharing systems. They found that Google Workspace—as a proven and popular collaboration solution for remote teams and a familiar, preferred platform that most employees use in their personal lives—was the clear choice. BHI migrated its 500 employees to Google Workspace in less than a week. Productivity immediately soared, since employees could collaborate more easily with Google Workspace’s products and access them from any device, from anywhere—even at the construction sites.

For instance, the contract writing process drastically improved with Google Workspace. Version control had always been a struggle—as employees circulated a draft contract from one computer to the next, versions became unruly and randomized, untracked changes popped up, and files went missing. With Google Workspace, the pre-construction, legal, and finance teams can all edit and track changes of a contract from wherever they work. Version control has become a thing of the past, as everyone is always working on the latest version.

By adopting Google Workspace, BHI decentralized its operations and began collaborating in real time across over 150 job sites. Management and IT gained new insights into challenges that they may never have uncovered nor confronted without a cloud-based productivity tool. The IT team also saw an opportunity to overhaul the methods of their deskless workforce, which accounts for 90% of the company. This deskless majority needed to connect directly to the data that influenced, impacted, and comprised their work. They also required more streamlined processes. AppSheet provided the answer to the workforce’s needs, enabling IT to create applications that simplified key tasks so mobile workers could get their jobs done faster and better.

For example, one BHI client required extensive inspections multiple times a day. Before using AppSheet, a BHI inspector would perform the inspection, return to a computer, record the results from paper to a spreadsheet, copy and paste them into a formatted report in a Google Docs, convert the Doc to a PDF, and email the final inspection report to the customer. This manual process took two hours to complete. Now, using AppSheet, the inspector inputs the results on their mobile device while performing the inspection. As soon as the device connects to the internet, it automatically updates the database with the inspector’s inputs, adds the inspection results to a preformatted report built-in Google Docs, and emails the final report as a PDF to the customer. With AppSheet, BHI shortened this inspection process from two hours to six minutes, saving over $50,000 a month in labor. “With Google Workspace and AppSheet, BHI has turned into a digital company with real-time data allowing for real-time decisions, collaboration, and transparency in a decentralized environment,” says Johnny Hacking, Director of IT.

An easier software choice for faster results

BHI also found that building apps with AppSheet is much easier than using other solutions, such as developing with low- or full-code tools or purchasing third-party products. Because AppSheet is a true no-code platform, anyone can learn to build and maintain apps. Since adopting AppSheet, the BHI IT team has become so proficient with the platform that they have eliminated the company’s previous backlog of software needs. Now, when a new site opens up, IT proactively works with the site managers to understand its unique requirements in order to build a custom app. Start to finish, scoping, and building this site-specific app typically takes less than a week—compared to months with traditional development platforms. 

IT team members aren’t the only BHI employees building apps. As Hacking explains, “We have people that aren’t in IT, and when they have an idea we say hey, log into AppSheet, build it out, and then we’ll help out with some final touches on it.” 

Empowering employees outside of IT to build AppSheet apps has benefited teams across the company. For example, one team on a solar farm construction project needed to perform inspections of an array of specialized technical equipment with which IT was not familiar. In this case, the solar team, being the subject matter experts, simply built the app according to their specifications. All IT had to do was jump in at the end to help finalize the app—the final product was completely customized to the solar team’s very specific needs. This highlights the benefits of no-code development: on-the-ground experts build and prototype job-specific apps and IT puts the finishing touches on the functionality, all while keeping guardrails in place.

Using Google Workspace and AppSheet also simplifies BHI’s reliance on third-party software. “Our company divisions are so diverse that they each require different software,” says Hacking. “Plus, if we buy a third-party software, we still have to customize it by getting other software, because they don’t play well together. By replacing this software with AppSheet apps, we save a lot of money. And it’s easy to integrate those apps because on the back end, they’re all connected to Google Sheets.” 

For the few third-party software products that BHI hasn’t been able to replace, they’ve used Apps Scripts to import the software’s data into Google Sheets, so that their data all lives on one platform. Overall, BHI has been able to free up 10% of its total IT spend by replacing third-party software with Google Workspace and AppSheet apps.

Company culture transformed by technology

“Because we’ve used Google Workspace and AppSheet and it’s been so successful, people are very willing to use them,” Hacking says. “And for a construction company to gain so much trust in these platforms in such a short period of time—that’s huge. Now we’re at the point where employees are asking, ‘What else can we do?’”

Adopting Google Workspace and AppSheet has not only made BHI more productive, but also transformed the company culture. Employees feel empowered to be more innovative and are constantly seeking ways to improve. Simplifying employees’ work has led to a direct boost in morale. 

The role of IT has also transformed. As Hacking explains, “In just three years of using these technologies, IT has gone from being support overhead to being proactively brought to the table to take part in the business strategy.” Increased IT visibility and culpability has helped solve business problems and led to increased profitability. 

BHI continues to find new ways to leverage Google Workspace and AppSheet to improve business. In response to COVID, they created a timesheet app that allows employees to clock in without touching a device. Most meetings are now held virtually using Google Meet. Fleet maintenance and repairs are all managed with apps. And, of course, the company has better data and insights than ever. As Hacking puts it, “We’re continuing to stay on the cusp of innovation because of Google Workspace and AppSheet.”

Scaling Virtual Support in the Pandemic Era: The AI Connection

Since the early days of the pandemic, we’ve partnered with government organizations and academic institutions to serve communities at scale with Contact Center Artificial Intelligence (CCAI). I sat down with Bill MacKenzie, IT liaison for the Upper Grand School District in Ontario, and Marco Palermo, director of digital government and modernization, to discuss how they embraced CCAI to introduce scalable service delivery to residents and students alike. I’m sharing more on their stories below, and for the full overview, check out our Google Cloud Public Sector Summit session, Scaling Virtual Support in the Pandemic Era: The AI Connection.

Upper Grand School District: Answering questions with speed and accuracy

Bill MacKenzie described the Upper Grand School District’s struggles at the beginning of the pandemic, particularly helping parents with IT issues. The staff-oriented help desk was not equipped to assist parents trying to securely login for students as young as kindergarten. Without sufficient support for parents, the District was struggling to handle thousands of phone calls a day.

To alleviate the manual strain, they turned to Quantiphi, a Google Cloud partner, to implement Google Cloud Dialogflow. They were fully functional within a few weeks. The new website provided real-time responses as well as clear documentation to help parents get up and running quickly.

“In the first 10 days, we had over 5,000 hits, and the accuracy rate was 92%,” MacKenzie said. 

The district doesn’t know what the future holds, but now that they have been through the process, they are confident they now understand how to create their own bots to meet critical needs.

City of Toronto: Getting critical information to the community

Marco Palermo explained how the city of Toronto was facing a very rapid and fluid situation at the beginning of the pandemic. Getting information to constituents was extremely important, and they needed alternative channels to deliver that information.

Toronto has been committed to workforce equity and inclusivity in order to best represent the diversity of its residents. As a result, solutions had to be accessible to all. The bot handled 25,330 unique users and addressed 20,174 total questions with an 80% accurate response rate in the first four months. It’s been a huge success for the city, with plans to expand its capabilities.

Personalized response to the pandemic challenge

I noted that even before the pandemic, government leaders were asking for a way to provide more flexible personal experiences and better support outside of normal business hours. Around 60% of constituents want more self-service options and 75% would happily interact with digital resources if they could get the answers they needed.

Google Cloud CCAI  addresses these needs with a single core of intelligence that provides a consistently high-quality conversational experience—human or virtual—across all channels and platforms. It can be deployed on legacy infrastructure without upgrades in an average of two weeks.

CCAI operates with a conversational core that centralizes the ability to talk, understand, and interact, orchestrating high-quality conversations at scale. It provides services in three different ways:

• Virtual Agent AI allows natural conversation with customers to identify and address their issues effectively
• Agent Assist AI helps human agents by providing real-time turn-by-turn guidance so they can better serve constituents
• Insight AI determines metrics and trends in real-time to enable faster and more accurate insights

CCAI provides consistency across every application. It can go off-script when answering complex questions, adjusting human conversation with the capacity to handle unexpected stops and starts, odd word choices, or implied meanings. It can also handle multiple use cases for the customer, such as taking payments, updating information, providing information, and more. By allowing agencies to automate routine tasks and reduce the amount of time employees need to dedicate to answering calls, the solution created cost savings for the agency.

Explore more on this session by visiting the Public Sector Summit on-demand video.

For many people, an Ivy League education is a promise of a better future. But Aditya Agarwalla, who studied computer science at Princeton, didn’t want to limit that future to just himself. He wanted to share his good fortune and create a positive social impact in his home country of India.

When Agarwalla discovered that small farmers didn’t have ways to demand fair prices owed to them for their crops, he knew he’d found his mission. His Princeton thesis project was the basis for a solution: Kisan Network, an online marketplace that connects farmers directly to buyers for produce, eliminating middlemen and increasing farmers’ profits.

Taking a leave from Princeton, Agarwalla returned to Delhi and launched Kisan Network with his father in 2015. Agarwalla and his 70 employees—software developers as well as field employees who consult with farmers throughout India—use G Suite to record crop information from farmers, share ideas for improving Kisan Network’s Android app, and recruit new hires.

Bringing technology back to earth

“Switching to G Suite was seamless. Almost everyone is familiar with the functionality and design of it from their own personal Google accounts.” — Aditya Agarwalla, Founder, Kisan Network

Farmers in rural communities struggle to earn a living without access to information and technology. India’s independent farmers often engage in an outdated selling system involving middlemen who help set low prices that only benefit buyers. Agarwalla saw Kisan Network as a way to connect farmers directly to buyers, so that farmers could be paid fairly.

“We connect a farmer in a Northern Indian state to a buyer located in a Southern Indian state—a 1,500-mile spread,” says Agarwalla. Farmers benefit by doing business with a far broader range of produce buyers than they can reach on their own.

Talking to farmers and buyers across India demanded email and other business tools that could be accessed in a remote field, in Kisan Network’s offices just outside of Delhi, or while meeting job candidates in person. When Kisan Network started out with just four employees, Agarwalla used Microsoft Outlook for email.

“When you’re doing sales and marketing, it matters that you’re reaching out from an authorized company email address,” Agarwalla says. “It conveys a sense of professionalism and gives you validity.”

Adding email addresses with the kisannetwork.com wasn’t easy in Outlook, and once Agarwalla created the addresses, he’d still have to set up accounts and buy licenses for other productivity tools like Microsoft Word.

As Agarwalla started hiring more people, he realized that just about all of the candidates had Gmail addresses, which got him thinking about choosing G Suite for email and workplace collaboration. Since most people already knew their way around Gmail, Agarwalla wouldn’t have to teach them how to use the tools; plus, it was easier for him to manage.

“The ease of setup was important,” Agarwalla says. “Once you set up a new email address in Gmail—which only took a few minutes—that person instantly has access to everything you want them to use in G Suite. My employees needed only a single account for everything.”

Agarwalla liked the ease of creating Kisannetwork.com addresses with G Suite. Another deciding factor was that G Suite could easily integrate with other systems he and his employees used for software development and supply chain management. G Suite was also more affordable than Microsoft Office 365, finalizing Agarwalla’s decision to go with G Suite.

“Switching to G Suite was seamless,” says Agarwalla. “Almost everyone is familiar with the functionality and design of it from their own personal Google accounts.”

Filling the hiring pipeline

Agarwalla had big plans to reform the produce buying process—but he needed more people to make that vision a reality. Right out of the gate, G Suite helped streamline Kisan Network’s hiring process with secure, paper-free tools.

Every job candidate fills out a Google Form, which everyone in the hiring process can access online during interviews. Once candidates are hired, Kisan Network’s hiring team then creates email addresses for new employees through the G Suite admin console—a process that only takes a few minutes.

New hires can browse orientation materials that are shared in Docs and Sheets. The shared online documents help Kisan Network hire people quickly and get new workers up to speed on their roles.

Shrinking the distance between farms

“G Suite seamlessly flows into our everyday work, whether it’s sending emails, setting up meetings, or creating shared documents and presentations.” — Aditya Agarwalla, Founder, Kisan Network

Kisen employees travel all over India to meet with farmers, covering roughly 175,000 miles to date. “We have field presence in many rural regions,” says Agarwalla. “The employees are collecting information like land assessments when they meet farmers and explore new crops.”

Field supervisors log their deployment and destination details into Sheets for quick reference, and use Forms to record the data they collect, including photos of crops and their conditions. In rural India, home internet access is not as common as in cities, so the field supervisors access G Suite apps on their phones.

“They’re constantly working in very remote areas,” Agarwalla says. “Using G Suite on mobile devices is the only way they can do what they do.”

When field supervisors need to speak to colleagues in New Delhi about farmers and their crops, they use Hangouts Meet or Hangouts Chat. “Hangouts is a much better option than Skype for Business, as it works in a browser and can be set up directly from a Calendar event,” Agarwalla says.

Today, Kisan Network employees work across seven Indian states and more than 2,500 villages. The 30,000-plus farmers in the Kisan Network control their entire crop-selling processes through online marketing, earning at least 10 percent more profits than before.

“G Suite seamlessly flows into our everyday work,” says Agarwalla. “Whether it’s sending emails, setting up meetings, or creating shared documents and presentations, we heavily depend on G Suite for everything we do.”

Ocado is the world’s largest online-only grocery store. But Ocado isn’t your typical corner grocery store. For one thing, there’s no corner as we’re an online-only grocery retailer reaching British households, and now with a fast-growing non-food business alongside. Our customers shop online using our award-winning webshop or mobile apps and then their orders are picked and packed in one of our huge automated warehouses, the largest of their kind in the world; hours later, our vans deliver to their kitchens in one-hour delivery slots.

Google Workspace allows us to do things our way, wherever and whenever we want. Our staff use Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Drive to stay on top of their day to day work, and Google+ is helping our teams stay in touch, share information and build local communities. Ultimately, all of these tools help to make sure our customers get the groceries they order, on time and in the best possible condition.

But we didn’t stop there. We looked at other ways we could use Google’s technology to help us run our business and started using Google App Engine for building internal applications. For example, we used App Engine to create a new version of our “Where’s My Order” application, which our customers will soon be using to find out where their orders are within our production cycle. Once their order is on the road, the integration with Google Maps allows them to see exactly where their delivery van is. So we’re taking what used to be a chore, grocery shopping, and making it a simple experience that you can do from the convenience of your own home, or wherever you may be.

Our most recent project was on Google Compute Engine. Within our warehouses there are certain tasks that are repetitive and arduous for humans to do, like picking heavy six packs of bottled water into customer orders. So our robotics team is developing solutions that use robots to automate these sorts of tasks and thus release staff for other more important work. But these robots need sophisticated 3D vision systems to enable them to see what they are doing. These are very computationally intensive applications and by providing the instantly flexible and scalable computing power to crunch all those numbers, Compute Engine provided the perfect solution. And, we are already using the cloud to store and process some of the huge volumes of data that our business spits out every minute.

But with an eye to future growth and international expansion, we have plans to use Compute Engine and Cloud Storage to move other parts of our production systems to the cloud. So walk into an Ocado warehouse in the future and you might run into a robot if you’re not careful. Like I said, we’re not your typical corner grocery store.

*Google Workspace was formerly known as G Suite