Google Data

Cross-posted from the AMP Project blog

When the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) team set out to help make mobile experiences great for everybody, the objective wasn’t just to improve a user’s engagement with content. We knew the experience people had with ads was equally important to help publishers fund the great content we all love to read.

The AMP team laid out four core principles that would guide the innovation on the AMP ads roadmap and get us to a world where ads are as fast and engaging as the content we value.

• Faster is better
• ‘Beautiful’ matters
• Security is a must
• We’re better together

There is now a month left before the final submission date for the AdMob Student App Challenge. At this point in the contest, your team should have completed the design of your app, and it should be live on  the Google Play Store. For the remainder of the contest, we recommend that your team focus on the following:

Continue to follow us on AdMob G+ and Twitter for updates on the last month of the Challenge and keep an update on #AdMobSAC16 too, for any last-minute posts.

Posted by Jeff Miner

Companies are getting more connected every day, and if you’re like us, you might store business phone numbers in your Google Contacts to keep in touch with company headquarters, partners you work with, or even your favorite restaurant for delivery.

This launch adds Google Maps as a new source of information to enrich your existing contact data. Now when you store a phone number that matches an official business number in Google Maps, we’ll list the information you’ve saved, supplemented with business information directly from the listing. This can include business name, address, phone number, website, and photo. These fields will never override information you’ve added manually.

This new Google Maps integration is only available in the Google Contacts preview.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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For many marketers, dealing with the technology and scale necessary to tie offline conversions back to the keywords and ads that drive them can be a difficult task. Often, they have to make important decisions based on aggregated data from different sources or no data at all, making it difficult to understand the true value of their AdWords campaigns.

That’s why we’re introducing AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce. AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce measures the value of your offline conversions that result from online AdWords clicks, without the need to reconcile your AdWords and customer relationship management (CRM) data manually.

How it works 

After linking your AdWords and Salesforce accounts, you can pick which important milestones, like 'lead qualification' or 'deal won', you want to track as conversions. When someone clicks your ad and visits your website, your website captures a unique Google click ID that tells your website which ad the visitor clicked on. If that visitor submits a lead form on your website, your website passes along the click ID to Salesforce, where it’s stored with the corresponding lead and any future sales opportunities.

AdWords will regularly check your Salesforce account to see if you’ve recorded any new important milestones in your sales funnel that resulted from ad clicks. If so, AdWords will count those milestones as AdWords conversions.

Peninsula, the UK’s largest team of HR, Employment Law and Health Safety experts says, “With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, we now have the ability to easily see the keywords that drive qualified leads. This has allowed us to concentrate efforts in the right areas and make better use of our budget. Since we started using this feature, we’ve seen an 11% decrease in cost per lead as a result of reallocating budgets and decreasing bids on poorly performing keywords that were sitting in top positions.”

Focus on the clicks that matter 

With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, you’re provided with a more comprehensive view of your sales activities, and the ability to adjust your bids and budgets to be more effective. For example, you can increase your bids on keywords that drive highly qualified leads, or pause ads that result in clicks but no opportunities. This allows you to not only utilize your existing budgets more wisely, but also optimize your ad strategy for better performance.

Learn more 

You can learn more about AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce by visiting the AdWords Help Center. This solution is only available by invitation for the next few months, and will become available to all advertisers later this year. If you'd like to request an invitation before it becomes available to all advertisers, please contact your Google Sales rep or submit your information here.  

Posted by Jon Diorio, Product Manager, AdWords

Last month, we announced plans to no longer support two very old security systems called SSLv3 and RC4 when sending messages with Gmail SMTP, and today, we are announcing that Gmail IMAP/POP will follow suit and no longer support SSLv3 and RC4 connections after June 16, 2016.

Unlike Gmail SMTP, this change will be rolled out as a gradual change, where it may take longer than 30 days for users to be fully restricted from connecting to Gmail from SSLv3 or RC4 connections; however, we recommend updating your clients soon in order to avoid any potential disruption.

Please note: When given the choice, the vast majority of mail clients already favor modern TLS connections over outdated ones, so the majority of users are not affected by this change.


Action for admins still using SSLv3 or RC4 on IMAP or POP clients: 

• Most Google Apps customers have already stopped using IMAP or POP clients that connect to mail servers using SSLv3 and RC4. After June 16, 2016, if users attempt to connect to Gmail from mail clients using SSLv3 or RC4, they may see connection errors for short periods of time.
• If your mail clients only support SSLv3 and RC4, please update them so that they use recommended TLS configurations. See our announcement from last year in the Google Security Blog to see the recommended standards for TLS clients.

After June 16, 2016, IMAP and POP clients using SSLv3 or RC4 will gradually no longer be able to connect with Google’s mail servers. As a more general reminder, we plan to deprecate SSLv3 and RC4 across all of Google and any other systems relying on these less secure protocols over time. We suggest proactively updating to the recommended standards for TLS clients as a best practice.

Thank you for helping us keep mail safe for Google Apps users around the world.

Launch Details
Release track: 
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace: 
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 30 days for feature visibility)

Impact: 
Mail clients or business software using SSLv3 or RC4 to connect to IMAP/POP

Action: 
Admin action required for domains using insecure TLS connections on their IMAP/POP mail clients

More Information
Help Center
Disabling SSLv3 and RC4


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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updated: July 2016

Creating a test plan is often a complex undertaking. An ideal test plan is accomplished by applying basic principles of cost-benefit analysis and risk analysis, optimally balancing these software development factors:

• Implementation cost: The time and complexity of implementing testable features and automated tests for specific scenarios will vary, and this affects short-term development cost.
• Maintenance cost: Some tests or test plans may vary from easy to difficult to maintain, and this affects long-term development cost. When manual testing is chosen, this also adds to long-term cost.
• Monetary cost: Some test approaches may require billed resources.
• Benefit: Tests are capable of preventing issues and aiding productivity by varying degrees. Also, the earlier they can catch problems in the development life-cycle, the greater the benefit.
• Risk: The probability of failure scenarios may vary from rare to likely, and their consequences may vary from minor nuisance to catastrophic.

Effectively balancing these factors in a plan depends heavily on project criticality, implementation details, resources available, and team opinions. Many projects can achieve outstanding coverage with high-benefit, low-cost unit tests, but they may need to weigh options for larger tests and complex corner cases. Mission critical projects must minimize risk as much as possible, so they will accept higher costs and invest heavily in rigorous testing at all levels.

This guide puts the onus on the reader to find the right balance for their project. Also, it does not provide a test plan template, because templates are often too generic or too specific and quickly become outdated. Instead, it focuses on selecting the best content when writing a test plan.

Test plan vs. strategy

Content selection

Prerequisites

Risk

Coverage

• What does the test surface look like? Is it a simple library with one method, or a multi-platform client-server stateful system with a combinatorial explosion of use cases? Describe the design and architecture of the system in a way that highlights possible points of failure.
• What platforms are supported? Consider listing supported operating systems, hardware, devices, etc. Also describe how testing will be performed and reported for each platform.
• What are the features? Consider making a summary list of all features and describe how certain categories of features will be tested.
• What will not be tested? No test suite covers every possibility. It’s best to be up-front about this and provide rationale for not testing certain cases. Examples: low risk areas that are a low priority, complex cases that are a low priority, areas covered by other teams, features not ready for testing, etc. 
• What is covered by unit (small), integration (medium), and system (large) tests? Always test as much as possible in smaller tests, leaving fewer cases for larger tests. Describe how certain categories of test cases are best tested by each test size and provide rationale.
• What will be tested manually vs. automated? When feasible and cost-effective, automation is usually best. Many projects can automate all testing. However, there may be good reasons to choose manual testing. Describe the types of cases that will be tested manually and provide rationale.
• How are you covering each test category? Consider:
  • accessibility
  • functional
  • fuzz
  • internationalization and localization
  • performance, load, stress, and endurance (aka soak)
  • privacy
  • security
  • smoke
  • stability
  • usability
• Will you use static and/or dynamic analysis tools? Both static analysis tools and dynamic analysis tools can find problems that are hard to catch in reviews and testing, so consider using them.
• How will system components and dependencies be stubbed, mocked, faked, staged, or used normally during testing? There are good reasons to do each of these, and they each have a unique impact on coverage.
• What builds are your tests running against? Are tests running against a build from HEAD (aka tip), a staged build, and/or a release candidate? If only from HEAD, how will you test release build cherry picks (selection of individual changelists for a release) and system configuration changes not normally seen by builds from HEAD?
• What kind of testing will be done outside of your team? Examples:
  • Dogfooding
  • External crowdsource testing
  • Public alpha/beta versions (how will they be tested before releasing?)
  • External trusted testers
• How are data migrations tested? You may need special testing to compare before and after migration results.
• Do you need to be concerned with backward compatibility? You may own previously distributed clients or there may be other systems that depend on your system’s protocol, configuration, features, and behavior.
• Do you need to test upgrade scenarios for server/client/device software or dependencies/platforms/APIs that the software utilizes?
• Do you have line coverage goals?

Tooling and Infrastructure

• Do you need new test frameworks? If so, describe these or add design links in the plan.
• Do you need a new test lab setup? If so, describe these or add design links in the plan.
• If your project offers a service to other projects, are you providing test tools to those users? Consider providing mocks, fakes, and/or reliable staged servers for users trying to test their integration with your system.
• For end-to-end testing, how will test infrastructure, systems under test, and other dependencies be managed? How will they be deployed? How will persistence be set-up/torn-down? How will you handle required migrations from one datacenter to another?
• Do you need tools to help debug system or test failures? You may be able to use existing tools, or you may need to develop new ones.

Process

• Are there test schedule requirements? What time commitments have been made, which tests will be in place (or test feedback provided) by what dates? Are some tests important to deliver before others?
• How are builds and tests run continuously? Most small tests will be run by continuous integration tools, but large tests may need a different approach. Alternatively, you may opt for running large tests as-needed. 
• How will build and test results be reported and monitored?
  • Do you have a team rotation to monitor continuous integration?
  • Large tests might require monitoring by someone with expertise.
  • Do you need a dashboard for test results and other project health indicators?
  • Who will get email alerts and how?
  • Will the person monitoring tests simply use verbal communication to the team?
• How are tests used when releasing?
  • Are they run explicitly against the release candidate, or does the release process depend only on continuous test results? 
  • If system components and dependencies are released independently, are tests run for each type of release? 
  • Will a "release blocker" bug stop the release manager(s) from actually releasing? Is there an agreement on what are the release blocking criteria?
  • When performing canary releases (aka % rollouts), how will progress be monitored and tested?
• How will external users report bugs? Consider feedback links or other similar tools to collect and cluster reports.
• How does bug triage work? Consider labels or categories for bugs in order for them to land in a triage bucket. Also make sure the teams responsible for filing and or creating the bug report template are aware of this. Are you using one bug tracker or do you need to setup some automatic or manual import routine?
• Do you have a policy for submitting new tests before closing bugs that could have been caught?
• How are tests used for unsubmitted changes? If anyone can run all tests against any experimental build (a good thing), consider providing a howto.
• How can team members create and/or debug tests? Consider providing a howto.

Utility

• Who are the test plan readers? Some test plans are only read by a few people, while others are read by many. At a minimum, you should consider getting a review from all stakeholders (project managers, tech leads, feature owners). When writing the plan, be sure to understand the expected readers, provide them with enough background to understand the plan, and answer all questions you think they will have - even if your answer is that you don’t have an answer yet. Also consider adding contacts for the test plan, so any reader can get more information.
• How can readers review the actual test cases? Manual cases might be in a test case management tool, in a separate document, or included in the test plan. Consider providing links to directories containing automated test cases.
• Do you need traceability between requirements, features, and tests?
• Do you have any general product health or quality goals and how will you measure success? Consider:
  • Release cadence
  • Number of bugs caught by users in production
  • Number of bugs caught in release testing
  • Number of open bugs over time
  • Code coverage
  • Cost of manual testing
  • Difficulty of creating new tests

We recently launched a set of #AdSense101 videos to help you master AdSense and grow your business. We started with When Will I Get Paid?, and today we continue with a focus on Monetizing for Multi-Screen.

Optimizing your ads for all screens, especially mobile, is a topic we hear about from publishers every day. Watch this short video to learn more about the best-performing mobile ad formats and placements.

Posted by Astri Kimball, Senior Policy Counsel

Energy ministers from around the globe visited the Bay Area this week for their first meeting following the signing of historic climate change agreements in France last year. The Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) is an annual meeting of energy ministers and other high-level delegates from 23 of the world’s largest economies and the EU to discuss collaboration on low-carbon economy solutions. The focus of this year’s CEM was to discuss how to achieve the goals set in the Paris climate change deal as well as learn how innovations coming out of Silicon Valley are tackling the issue head on.

Hosted by U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a number of ministers embarked on a fact finding mission that included Google, where they came to learn first hand about our commitment to clean energy and sustainability.

Google’s Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle told the group that renewable energy is critical for businesses like ours -- from powering our data centers to our products and services. “Having pioneered some of the first corporate renewable power purchasing back in 2010-2011, we’re excited to see that this is becoming business-as-usual for companies everywhere. And at Google we continue to be committed to 100% renewable energy because this makes good business sense and is the right thing to do for the planet and for our users.”

US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz who led the visit to Google was joined by ministers and officials from countries including the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Chile, India, Indonesia, and South Africa.

The CEM group had the opportunity to see at first hand a number of projects aimed at everything from helping people make smart choices about solar power to how we power our data centers with renewable energy.

At Google, we’ve made a long-term commitment to power 100% of our operations with renewable energy. To that end, we’ve purchased more than 2 gigawatts of renewable energy to date, making us the world’s largest non-utility purchaser of renewables.

In an effort to build on this week’s momentum, the CEM launched a campaign that will promote solutions that enable more companies to purchase renewable power. Google is pleased to join this effort by agreeing to host a forum later this year for national governments, renewable energy buyers and suppliers, NGOs, and other interested groups to look for ways to further unlock corporate renewable energy demand in CEM countries.

***UPDATE***
The deadline has been extended to July 17, 2016

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to increase the number of women in technology, we are excited to offer travel grants to the 2016 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference taking place in Houston, Texas from October 19 - 21, 2016. Once again, this year’s conference will offer incredible opportunities for mentoring, networking and career development.

University students and industry professionals in the US and Canada who are excelling in technology and passionate about supporting women in tech can apply for a travel grant to attend the 2016 Grace Hopper conference.

Sponsorship includes:

Please apply here by Sunday, July 17, 2016. The Grace Hopper Travel Sponsorship winners will be announced by July 27th.

The customer journey can be complex. Being able to identify which ads actually influenced someone’s decision can be challenging, but it’s crucial to get right.

In May, we launched the ability to update your attribution model in AdWords. It’s an update that can help you go beyond last-click measurement, the default in AdWords, and understand your customer’s journey on a much deeper level. As of today, this change has been rolled out to all AdWords accounts.

We’ve published a new guide to help you understand attribution and make the right decisions for your account. This resource offers best practices about what you need to do to go beyond last-click, covering topics such as:

• Determining if going beyond the last-click is something that you need to do 
• Choosing a model that fits with your needs 
• Acting on attribution 
• Evolving your approach to attribution as measurement gets better 

By going beyond last-click attribution for your Search ads in AdWords, you can understand your customer journey and make changes to improve your campaigns. Users take a while to make decisions; by changing your approach to attribution you can identify how your advertising affects people across all of their crucial, decision-making moments.

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.  

Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

(Cross-posted on Google for Work Blog)

Posted by Rahul Sood, Managing Director, Apps and Search for Work

For six years, the Google Apps Marketplace has helped businesses do more by being the number one source to find third-party apps and integrations that extend what's possible with Google Apps. But with hundreds of popular apps to choose from, it’s sometimes hard for customers to discover the newest and most innovative ones.

Enter New & Notable, a new section in the Google Apps Marketplace that surfaces the latest and best third-party apps and integrations for Google Apps, and the developers behind them.

Here’s a preview of some of the products highlighted this month:

• Asana Dashboard: The new Asana Dashboard integrates with Google Sheets, allowing users to export task completion and performance information for wider tracking across teams. Read more here. 
• Hubspot CRM: With the new HubSpot CRM app, users can now log emails sent from Gmail into HubSpot with one click, and automatically sync meetings between Google Calendar and HubSpot, no matter which system they came from. Read more here. 
• Xero: With their latest integration, Xero — a provider of online accounting software for small businesses — lets users view Gmail messages alongside Xero transaction and activity details. Users can also save emails in Xero for reference, start a quote or invoice from within a Gmail message. Read more here. 
• Zendesk: With their latest integration, Zendesk automates the Google Apps admin tasks of forwarding support e-mails into Zendesk and listing Google users within Zendesk. Read more here. 
• Zoho People: Zoho People is a new HR management app for small businesses that lets users manage their HR portal directly from their Google Apps account, as well as add users directly to Zoho People, saving them from having to manually re-enter employee information. Read more here. 

Find these apps and many more (like AppSheet, GQueues, ZipBooks, Any.Do, Infogram, and LogoMix) in New & Notable. If you’re on the hunt for killer apps that help you get more done with Google Apps, it’s the best place to start.

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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