Moving from communication to collaboration
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Table of Contents Logging in to Gmail and Reading Messages ...... 4 Common Mail Tasks ...... 6 Composing Email ...... 6 Adding a CC or BCC recipient ...... 6 Checking Spelling ...... 6 Replying and Forwarding ...... 7 Printing Messages and Message Conversations ...... 8 Managing Contacts ...... 9 Creating and Editing Contacts ...... 9 Creating and Editing Groups ...... 9 Advanced Features ...... 10 Customizing Star Categories ...... 10 Advanced Searching ...... 10 Google_Mail_Shortcuts.pdf ...... 11 Themes ...... 11 Vacation Responder (Out of Office Message)...... 11 Making Gmail Work Like Groupwise ...... 11 Turning Off Conversation View ...... 11 Turning On Preview Pane ...... 12 Using the Keyboard ...... 12 Turning On Notifications ...... 12 Installing Google Apps Desktop ...... 12 Using Google Calendar ...... 13 Scheduling Appointments ...... 13 Scheduling Meetings and Viewing Availability ...... 13 Scheduling Recurring Appointments ...... 14 Appointment Reminders ...... 15 Editing Existing Appointments ...... 16
Page 2 Creating and Working with Multiple Calendars ...... 17 Setting Working Hours ...... 17 Using Google Docs ...... 17 Creating Collections ...... 17 Sharing Documents and Collections ...... 18 Hiding Documents in Home ...... 19 Revisions – Viewing and Rolling Back Changes ...... 19 Converting To and From Microsoft Office and PDF ...... 20 Where to Go for More Help ...... 22 Instructional Videos ...... 22 Tutorials and FAQs ...... 22 Call the Help Desk ...... 22
Page 3 Logging in to Gmail and Reading Messages
1. Go to your Google Apps Mail page: https://mail.google.com/a/martinez.k12.ca.us
2. On the Sign In page, enter your existing Martinez Unified user name and password (the same ones that you use to login to your computer), and then click Sign In:
Important: You can also login by going to gmail.com, but if you do so, you must use your entire email address (i.e.; [email protected]) instead of just your username (i.e.; meissler)
3. If this is your first time logging in, follow the on-screen instructions to activate your account.
Your Gmail Inbox appears. For example:
Page 4 To read a message: Click it to open it:
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Common Mail Tasks
Composing Email
To compose a new message: Click Compose mail: Click Compose Mail. Gmail replaces your Inbox with a form for composing your message. Shift-click Compose Mail to author your message in a new browser window (so you can keep an eye on your Inbox at the same time).
Address the message Start typing the first few letters of a recipient’s name. Then select the address you want from the directory or list of recent correspondents that appears.
Adding a CC or BCC recipient
Add CC or BCC If you want to include Carbon Copy recipients click Add CC, for Blind Carbon Copy click Add Bcc.
Checking Spelling
Check spelling after composing Compose your message first. Then click Check Spelling to highlight and correct possible misspellings.
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Replying and Forwarding
Reply to a message in a conversation Open the conversation and expand the message within it that you want to reply to.
Expand the message, first Reply to a message in a conversation by expanding the message and choosing a reply option inside the message. Note that you’re replying only to senders or recipients of that message, not to other participants in the conversation. If a message includes quotes from previous replies, Gmail hides the quotes from view. Click Show quoted text to view all the text to be included with your reply. Click Reply to reply only to the sender. Click Reply to all to include everyone who received this message.
Who sees your reply? Before sending a reply, you can verify the recipients by checking the email addresses in the To: and Cc: fields. If a participant’s address isn’t there, he or she won’t see your response. This example shows that only Quinn Quails and Ryan Rivers will see this reply in their conversation stack.
Forward a message in a conversation
If the message you want to forward is within a conversation, first expand the message. If a message includes quotes from previous replies, Gmail hides the quotes from view. Click Show quoted text to view all the text to be forwarded. Click Forward, inside the message, to send the message to someone who’s not in the current conversation thread.
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Forward an entire conversation You can’t attach email messages to a message in Gmail (as you can in Outlook). But you can send someone all messages in a conversation thread by forwarding the entire conversation. Open the More menu and click Forward all. Recipients of a forwarded conversation receive a single message that contains all replies from the original conversation.
Printing Messages and Message Conversations
The Print icon on the top right of a message will print all emails in a converstation
If you just want to print a single email in the conversation, click the drop-down arrow on the corner of the message and select the print option.
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Managing Contacts
Creating and Editing Contacts
To enter the contacts screen, click the “Contacts” option in the top right corner of the Gmail screen
Click the “New Contact” button and enter the appropriate information
To edit an existing contact, just click on the contact in the list
Creating and Editing Groups
Create a new group by clicking the “Groups” drop down and selecting “Create New”
Enter a name for your email group.
Page 9 After you create a group, you can select multiple contacts by checking the box next to their name, then add them to the group by clicking the “Groups” drop down and marking the checkbox next to the appropriate group.
Advanced Features
Customizing Star Categories You can mark a message with a colored star, exclamation point, or other symbol.
Go to Mail settings to choose which symbols you want to use (on the General tab, scroll down to Stars). Click a message’s star repeatedly to cycle through the symbols you chose.
Advanced Searching • Search by sender or for a date range • Search for labels and keywords • Search for other message attributes Keyword searches Start by searching for keywords that appear anywhere in the message, including the subject, body, and sender name. A few search terms are usually all you need.
Targeted searches Use search options to narrow your search’s focus. Click Show search options to view the Search Options window This example searches for messages with attachments sent by Ryan between February 20 and April 20 of the current year.
Search shortcuts Use search operators to perform focused searches by typing. Here, the search from:ryan after:2008/ 12/10 returns all messages Ryan sent after
Page 10 December 10, 2008. Learn all shortcuts at http:// deployment.googleapps.com/Home/resourcesuser- adoption/quick-reference/
Google_Mail_Shortcuts.pdf
Themes You can change the background color, fonts and styles in your Gmail by going to https://mail.google.com/mail/#settings/themes
Vacation Responder (Out of Office Message) Vacation Responder Specify a single reply to send while on vacation. Optionally narrow the scope of who receives it. Click Gmail Settings (General tab) and scroll down to Vacation Responder.
Compose your automatic reply and specify a time range for when to send it. Optionally send it only to people in your organization or personal Contacts. Don’t worry about sending too many responses to people who email you frequently. Gmail sends your reply to any given recipient only once every 4 days.
Making Gmail Work Like Groupwise
Turning Off Conversation View You can turn off conversation view so that Gmail defaults to showing a single message at a time (instead of all messages in a conversation) through the settings:
Click the Gear icon on the top right and select mail settings, find the “Conversation View” section and select “Conversation View Off”
Page 11 Turning On Preview Pane Before you can turn on the Preview Pane feature you must enable it in Gmail labs. Gmail Labs are pre- release features you can enable to add even more functionality to your Inbox. Labs let you recall a message you just sent, enter a precomposed response, and much more. To see available Labs and enable any you want to use, open your Mail settings and go to the Labs tab. In the search box, type “Preview Pane”, and then “Enable” the preview pane lab.
After enabling the preview pane lab a new icon will show above your mail list. Click the down arrow and select “Vertical Split” or “Horizontal Split”
Using the Keyboard Save time while reading and managing your mail by using keyboard shortcuts. These let you perform common tasks without moving your hands from the keyboard. For example, type “j” and “k” to navigate up and down your Inbox, “o” to open messages, “r” to reply, “c” to compose, “s” to add or remove a star, “e” to archive, and much more.
Note: you must first enable Keyboard shortcuts by clicking the gear icon and “Mail Settings” then clicking “Keyboard Shortcuts On”
While working in Gmail or Google Calendar, type “?” at any time to display a complete list of keyboard shortcuts (keyboard shortcuts must be enabled). Print a copy of keyboard shortcuts from http://deployment.googleapps.com/Home/resources-user-adoption/quick- reference/Google_Mail_Shortcuts.pdf Turning On Notifications The desktop notifications require the Google Chrome web-browser be installed on your computer. For assistance installing Google Chrome, contact the help desk.
Turn on notifications in Chrome by clicking the gear icon and “Mail Settings” then clicking “New Mail Notifications On”
Installing Google Apps Desktop Google Apps desktop give you one-click access to Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Apps. Before installing Google Apps Desktop, you must have the Google Chrome web browser installed. Download this program at
Page 12 http://dl.google.com/tag/s/ap=martinez.k12.ca.us/googlewebapps/en/googleappsstandalonesetupt agged.exe
Using Google Calendar
Scheduling Appointments
The easiest way to schedule an appointment is to open your calendar to the proper day and click a spot on your calendar to create a 1-hour event, or click and drag to create an event of more than 1 hour. Then type the event title in the box.
To change the amount of time or to add other details such as location, click “Edit Event Details”, or just click the “Create Event” button to save as is.
Scheduling Meetings and Viewing Availability A meeting is simply an appointment with multiple persons. To schedule a meeting, start by scheduling an appointment as described above, and click “Edit Event Details”.
Click the Find a time tab
On the Find a time tab, click Guests, and then enter the first few letters of an attendee's full name to look up the address in the address book. Select the attendee to add the attendee to your Guests list.
Page 13 To make an attendee optional After you’ve invited attendees, click the “Make some attendees optional” link and click the icon to the left of each attendee whom you want to make optional.
On the Find a time tab, Google shows the free/busy information for any employee whom has been converted to Gmail:
Click Save. Google Calendar asks you whether you want to send invitations to the attendees. Your attendees can respond to the meeting invitation and leave comments.
Scheduling Recurring Appointments You can make any appointment a recurring appointment, even if you have invited multiple employees. Simply create the appointment using the steps above, then click the “Repeat” box at the top of the Event Details window:
You’ll be given a dialogue box which allows you to select the day(s) of the week that you want the appointment to occur on, the number of times you want it to occur, a start date, and optionally an end date:
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Appointment Reminders By default, when you create an appointment, Google will send you a reminder by email before the appoinmemnt. If you are using Google Chrome as your web-browser, Google can also provide a “pop- up” reminder which will appear on a small window in your desktop. Google Chrome can be downloaded at http://ww.google.com/chrome.
You can enable and or disable email and pop-up reminders for every calendar in your view. Simply click the Gear icon on the top right corner and select “Calendar Settings”
Next click the “Calendars” tab
For each calendar that you want to change notification options, click the “Notifications” link:
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If you don’t want to receive an email reminder, click “Remove” next to that reminder. If you want to add reminders, click “Add a reminder”
Click “Save”
Editing Existing Appointments To change the details of an existing appointment, simply find the appointment in your calendar and click the double line at the bottom of the item, then click “Edit Event”.
Page 16 Creating and Working with Multiple Calendars Multiple calendars allow you to show key events and reminders to a consistent group of individuals. Use multiple calendars when you want the same group of people to see certain events, but don’t need them to be able to accept or refuse an appointment or automatically receive appointment reminders.
To create a shared calendar, in the My calendars box on the left, click Add.
In the Create New Calendar window, enter a name for the calendar. Under “Share with specific people” enter the names of the individuals that you want to share with and select whether you want them to just see the calendar, see and edit, or see, edit and be able to share. When you're finished setting up the calendar, click Create Calendar. Setting Working Hours Setting working hours allows you to block out the times that you are not at work. Others will then see you as “unavailable” when trying to schedule appointments with you during that time. Simply click the Gear icon on the top right corner and select “Calendar Settings”
Under working hours, click the “Show a warning…” box and mark the days and hours that you normally work:
Using Google Docs
Creating Collections Collections are the way you organize Google Docs. Adding documents to collections allows you to find and share them in a structured manner.
Page 17 To create a new collection simply click the “Create New” button and select collection, then give the collection a name. If the collection is going to be shared, we recommend starting the name with the word “Shared”, and then listing the people you will be sharing with. I.e.; “Shared – All LJE Teachers”
Sharing Documents and Collections While you can share documents directly, it’s usually better to create a shared collection, then move the document into that collection. That way, if the group membership changes (a new teacher joins or a teacher leaves) you only need to change the sharing settings on the collection, and it will be updated for all documents within that collection.
To share a collection, create it as described above, then find the newly created collection in the list. Click on the collection, then click on the down arrow at the side of the collection, select “Share…” from the list and “Share…” again:
Add the individuals that you want to share with and select whether you want them to be able to view the documents or view and edit.
Page 18 Hiding Documents in Home All new documents that you create or are shared with you show up in your “Home” view. Without a little maintenance, this window can become crowded and difficult to navigate. It is recommended that you hide documents after you’ve placed them in a folder or no longer need to use them.
Simply check the box for all the documents you want to hide, then click “Actions” and “Don’t show in home…”
Revisions – Viewing and Rolling Back Changes It is not necessary to make multiple copies of a document in Google Docs because Google saves versions of the document after each person changes it.
To see previous versions, open the document and click “File” and “See Revision History”
Page 19 A list of all previous versions appears. Click on any revision to open that version of the document. If you find a previous revision that you want to keep, click “Revert to this Version”. Note: if you want both the old and the new version, you should make a copy of the document first.
Converting To and From Microsoft Office and PDF You can take any standard Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint document, as well as any PDF document, and convert it to Google Docs format so that it can be edited collaboratively.
To convert to Google Docs format:
Click the “Upload” button and “Files”, find the document you want to convert and click “Open”
Page 20 Make sure the option to “Convert Documents” is checked and click “Start Upload”
To convert from Google Docs format:
Open the document in Google Docs and select “File” and “Download As”, then select the file format you want to convert to.
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Where to Go for More Help
Instructional Videos Instructional videos can be found online at http://deployment.googleapps.com/Home/resources-user- adoption/elearning-videos
Tutorials and FAQs Tutorials and FAQs may be found online at http://deployment.googleapps.com/Home/resources-user- adoption/documentation-templates
Call the Help Desk When in doubt, call the help desk at 925-335-5941
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