14 DAY TRIAL // Google Apps, the company's enterprise solution offering, has been updated and has received some social networking features. The biggest change is that users can now browse and interact with other Apps Profiles, a feature that Google says was requested by its enterprise customers. And to allow others to interact with the profile data Apps, developers are also releasing a set of API tools.
"For starters, we've launched a new API that, when combined with the existing shared contacts API, gives administrators the ability to maintain an updated and detailed global address list in Google Apps," Florian Niemann, a Google Engineer in the Apps team, wrote on the Google Enterprise Blog. "We've also updated the Contacts interface throughout the Google Apps suite – particularly in Gmail – making it easier for employees to find and start collaborating with all other users on their company domain."
The move towards a more social network feel comes from the change in what profiles are available to other users. Previously, Google Apps treated contacts like email one with users only allowed to view the profiles of those with whom they had communicated previously or added manually. Now, users can search through all of the Apps Profiles from the entire company.
The contacts interface has also seen some tweaks and improvements and now changes made by administrators in the company like a user's job title, department, etc. will show up on the profiles, making it easier for employees to stay in touch.
A couple of new GData APIs for the administrators of the product come with the update. The User profiles API lets admins extract or update the profile data for all users in the company to allow for better communication. The second API, Shared contacts, is similar to the previous one but adds the possibility to interact with the data from users in the company who may not have Google Apps Profiles set up. The two APIs are only available in the Google Apps Premier Edition.