How to Enable Google Plus (G+) for Google Apps. Finally!

It always struck me as somewhat of a spectacular own goal that when Google launched Google Plus (G+) in late June 2011, that it wasn’t available for the 4 million businesses coughing up real money for Google Apps, let alone those using them for free.

After the debacle when the big G prematurely launched Buzz to much criticism, this was the opposite end of the spectrum. Lock out the most engaged Google users, and those guaranteed to get the most from a new service. As you’d expect there was a fair bit of forum-based grumbling.

In order to get things working Google needed to roll-out profiles for Google Apps, which was announced matter-of-factly on their blog a couple of days ago. Considering the company’s focus on being more social it’s surprising they haven’t made more of a song and dance about it…yet.

So, if like me, you’d been waiting to get your mitts on this and have a proper look-see without having to constantly login and logout of a personal Gmail account, here’s a quick guide to setting it up (you can find the official Google guide here).

Setting up Google Plus (G+) for Google Apps Administrators

Step 1: Enable Google Profiles for Your Organisation

Login to to your domain’s management console. If you use to access this from the link in the top right-hand corner of your Gmail account, you’ll probably notice the link has disappeared. You can access the control panel directly using a URL.

The format is: http://www.google.com/a/domain.name

Next, select the Organization & users tab from the main menu then choose the Services option.

Scroll down to find the switch for Google+ at the bottom of the list of Google-branded services, see the screenshot below for an example.

Next up, there’s a warning screen that essentially spells out, that by turning on Google+, you’re letting your organisation’s users control their profiles and get up to all sorts of mischief if they so wish. Probably a good time to check the company’s social media policy.

Note the Turn Google+ on link is the text link, not the button.

Step 2: Individual Users Turn on Google+

So far, so good. Google+ is now turned on at the organisation level, but individual users need to enable their own account so they can use it. Just direct them to the main Google+ homepage at http://plus.google.com.

As long as they are signed in to their Google Apps account, they’ll be prompted to create a profile and get cracking with Google+, it looks like this:

Et voila! Job done, your organisation’s users will get access to all the Google+ goodies including: Profiles, Circles, Streams, Hangouts, Picasa Web Albums and Google+ mobile access.

For admins, Google provides a handy email template to let users know how to enable Google+ and learn more about its features. You’ll find my profile here.

Photo (cc) keso s.