Home, small, medium, and big businesses have been using Google's cloud-based office suite for years now. The Heaven's Disciples network of websites is no exception! This is a review of its features and how you can use them to upgrade your independent music venture.

While cloud computing is not a new concept, Google Apps has enhanced the technology so that businesses online can take advantage of its speed, accessibility, and storage. The Google Apps suite includes popular Google products and services, such as GMail, Google Contacts, Chat, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Groups. These solutions can create a more fluid workflow within your team and can provide better interaction with clients, customers, and audience.

GMail As An Email Solution For Your Business

All the websites within the Heaven's Disciples network use GMail accounts as an email solution. For the record label's social networking, I use networking@heavensdisciples.com (by logging in at http://mail.heavensdisciples.com), which is a GMail account, despite the use of our own domain name! For marketing the Music Business and Marketing social network, this website, I use marketing@musicbusinessandmarketing.com (by logging in at http://mail.musicbusinessandmarketing.com).

The benefits to your music venture become quickly obvious-- you can use Google's technology and still maintain the usage of your domain name, which is your brand. You can create email accounts for yourself, your company, and your team. Google Chat and Contacts are also included with GMail, allowing your to chat live with anyone who has a GMail account.

Syncing Meetings and Events through Google Calendar

Scheduling meetings and appointments can get frustrating. Your team needs to send you their times of availability, and everyone has to juggle their time in order to prevent slip-ups and missed meetings. With Google Calendar, your team members or employees can post events on a single calendar that the entire company can access and edit. Additionally, each individual can have multiple calendars and share their work schedule with their teammates or fellow employees. These calendars can be color-coded for easier viewing, especially when changes to events are made. Administrators can also set up permissions to calendars, so that only certain individuals or groups can see or edit the items.

Google Docs for Document Collaboration and Project Management

Google Docs has a Google documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and drawings.

Google documents is an online word processor that lets you create and format text documents, and collaborate with other people in real time. You can convert most file types into the Google Docs format. You can also download Google Docs to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF, HTML or zip files.

Google spreadsheets is an online spreadsheet application that lets you create and format spreadsheets, charts, and gadgets, and simultaneously work with other people. You can import and convert .xls, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data. You can also export .xls, .csv, .txt and .ods formatted data and PDF and HTML files.

Google presentations is an online presentations editor that allows you to show off your work in a visual way. You can import and convert existing presentations in .pptx and .pps (Power Point) file types. Download your presentations can be done as a PDF, a PPT (Power Point), or a .txt file.

Google drawings is an online drawings editor that lets you create anything from a scribble to a flow chart while working collaboratively with other people. You can download your presentations as a PNG, JPEG, SVG, or PDF file.

How to Set Up Google Apps For Your Music Business

Google Apps has a free version and a paid version. The Heaven's Disciples network of sites uses the free version of Google Apps, which works just fine for us!

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