Faster access to Google Apps products

Recently, I had one of those “how did you do that?” moments with a tech-savvy client.  This client, like me, set up his domain with Google Apps.  During a meeting, he told me he wanted to show me a spreadsheet he created in Google Docs.  In the web browser, he typed d.(his domain).com and the browser opened his Google Docs login page. Not long after that, as we were scheduling our next meeting, he typed c.(his domain).com in the browser, and his Google Calendar instantly appeared.  I could not help but look with amazement and say “wow, that was fast! – how did you do that?” I love finding faster and more efficient ways of doing things, so I also set up my domain this way for the quickest access to Google Apps.  Like many of Google’s products, I found it was incredibly easy to set up.
  • Go to your Google Apps domain management page and click on settings. Click on the product to the left that you want to change the URL for (Docs is shown below).
  • Click on the “Change URL” link which will take you to the page you see below.  Click on the second button and change the subdomain to whatever you like.  My client prefers the one letter subdomains, for example, “d” for Docs and “c” for Calendar.
  
  • I then had to go to my domain host’s DNS Management page and add a CNAME.  Google has step-by-step instructions for this.
In a prior post, I wrote about how I set up a Gmail address with my domain.  I also have a short URL for my e-mail.  By typing mail.dustinwheelercpa.com, I go straight to my e-mail page.

How to Create and Publish a Dynamic Chart from Google Docs

Today I was experimenting with Google Docs and discovered something really cool that I want to share. I created the chart below titled “Cash Contributed to Partnership” from a simple spreadsheet. The chart is not a static image. The data in the chart is linked to the spreadsheet stored in my Google Docs account. When I change the numbers on the spreadsheet, the chart in this blog post updates automatically.

(disclaimer – the data in the chart is entirely fictional and any similarity to a real-life situtation is purely coincidental – also, this chart may not show in RSS feed readers, so please view this post on my blog website)

This is how I created and published the chart:

1.  I created a new spreadsheet in Google Docs, and entered the data shown below.

2. On the top menu, I clicked on insert, then gadget. In the finance category, I selected the “pile” chart that shows stacks of $100 bills of varying sizes based on the values in the spreadsheet.

3. The box you see below appeared. I selected the data range (which must include both the names and amounts) and entered a gadget title and chart header. Then, I clicked on the little arrow in the top right corner and clicked on Publish Gadget.

4. The box below then appeared with a script code that can be inserted into an HTML page. I copied the code below and pasted it into the top of this blog post.

I noticed that when I changed the values in the spreadsheet, it did not change the chart in my blog post immediately. Sometimes, it took a couple of minutes.

Do you have any questions or ideas to share? Please leave a comment below.