Google Gadgets in the Back Office

by Danny Kolke
published on: 07/05/2007

So in a real-time on-demand world, we had several recent issues that hit the back office where I work (wink). We had some projects that were slipping so using gadgets to post on our support monitors was the fastest way to focus collectively on progress and results.

Gadgets Strike Again

It all happened in a managers meeting when we were talking about some items that weren't getting done fast enough. Using our Etelos CRM for Google Apps, we decided that we could post projects and tasks that needed to be addressed on a daily basis to the monitors in our developer area.  

Google Gadgets on Etelos Support Monitors tracking new projects...

What you are looking at is 2 screens, the one on the right with an iGoogle homepage and Gadgets tracking project status from Etelos CRM for Google Apps.  The solution took less than 10 minutes to implement and now we have visibility into the top priorities that are being addressed.

As our team updates, completes, and makes any changes... its all automatically updated.  We also set up different tabs to display different projects/tasks and misc.issues.

Yeah, we could have built it totally as a separate interface. But this was a simple solution and yet another exercise in how to use both Etelos CRM and Google together.  All of our remote users can see it, as well.

To sum it up, issues talked about in an 8:30 meeting was trackable in this way 30 minutes after the meeting was over. And the lists are starting to get the attention they deserve.  

Plus, I can access the reports on my iPhone... ;)