Google Apps for FIRST?
 

While our team has developed a website for our FRC® team we want to expand the capabilities to meet the needs of the FIRST® program (FLL® and FRC®). We need a web based solution for communication, documentation, collaboration, web site, and source code management and it seems that Google Apps would fit the bill nicely.

Furthermore many FIRST® Robotics teams would benefit greatly by using Google Apps but there are barriers.
Google Apps for Education is used by many school districts but its use is restricted to administration, faculty, and students.
Google Apps for Non-Profits is restricted to use by 501(c)(3) organizations.

Many of the FRC teams are school sponsored (not 501(c)(3)) and in addition to students and faculty, team members include parents, mentors, and business people from multiple sponsors. As a result FRC teams fall in between the two app groups Google has established.

How can we propose the establishment of Google Apps for FIRST® ?
Contacting a human at Google is extremely difficult due to their communication process. My attempts to contact Google have met with silence. When I requested that the FIRST® National organization contact Google they came up empty as well.

Does someone have a way to send email to Dr. Eric Schmidt (Google CEO and member of the FIRST® board)?
Can a FIRST® mentor who works at Google and contact someone in Google's Corporate Responsibility organization?

Google Apps for FIRST® could provide huge benefits to FLL® and FRC® teams.

Does this make sense to others?

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

My team was able to get Google Apps for Education enabled for our site with no trouble, just took a few days after submitting the form. Our high school was already approved for Google Apps, if that makes a difference.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

Hmm. Makes me wonder how to do this.
Our district has Google Apps for Education (fairport.org) but it is a closed environment open only to students, faculty, and administration (i.e. not accessible by parents or mentors).

Team 578 would like to use Google Apps for Education for our domain fairportfirst.com and manage it separately from the district. It seemed that the form to fill out wanted school district information that was not applicable to the FRC team.

Maybe I'll try it using the team's domain name and see what happens.

Thanks for the info.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

How are these google apps different from the google applications available to students/mentors right now?

- Sunny G.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

This is what we do. I don't recall exactly how I filled out the form, but I'm sure I used our domain and included the name of the high school that had already been approved for Google Apps.

Not sure what you're referring to. To clarify, Google Apps for Education is a service that lets organizations use Google accounts and all associated services with their own domain name. It adds a host of management and configuration tools for domain administrators.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

IMO Google Apps for Education is more than gmail and docs. It allows you to build and manage a community specific to a domain.
http://www.google.com/enterprise/app.../products.html

Our team has been using a hosted service with Joomla and some plugins to manage a users, mailing lists, documents, and website but it has been clumsy at best.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

We are currently using the free edition of Google apps that allows for up to ten users. This service is no longer offered for new Google apps users. I really want to be able to add more users and sign up for the educational version as a FIRST Robotics team (that is not a 501c3). If anyone has found a way to do this, I would love to know!

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

If you're associated with a school that is approved for Google Apps for Education, then you should be eligible to use it on your team's domain, as we were.

I use the now-discontinued free Google Apps on my personal domain and I absolutely love it (I got in early when you got 50 accounts :))

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

I got the TechnoKats set up with the "Google Apps For Your Domain" product early on. We somehow were granted an extended user limit, and there have been more than 50 users at various times. It used to be a lot easier to administer, but recently there have been some security-related changes that keep me from setting up email forwarding for the users. The limited functionality of domain "groups" is also a source of mild irritation for me.

I started to look into the "For Education" variety a few years ago, but got held up by not being a member of the school faculty.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

I think everyone who got in before December of 2012 (If my memory serves), is grandfathered in to the original with no restrictions

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

Definitely still possible to use email forwarding with the grandfathered free Google Apps accounts (or at least I currently have it set up w/ that on my personal domain)

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

I didn't mean to imply that forwarding was not possible. The users can certainly do it individually. I just can't do it for them.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

Our team uses a "secret" Facebook group for major communications. We upload files, pictures, cad screenshots, test videos and have design discussions through our page. Since practically everyone is on Facebook anyway, and all the infrastructure is already in place (apps, push notifications, convenience) it is a good way for our team to connect outside of meetings (though our phones blow up in the weekend of kickoff).

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

Thanks for all the feedback.
Some additional digging on Google Apps uncovered this page: Qualifications for Google Apps for Education so I will continue seeking an alternative.

Re: Google Apps for FIRST?
 

It's been a couple of years, just wondering if anyone else has solved this riddle?