Google Groups adds features for collaboration and customer support

Just before the closure of Google Reader, Google has rolled out unexpected update for its another service - Google Groups. Yes, this forum / mailing list is still alive and even updating. And this despite that in Google Apps this service competes directly with Google+, which Google offers to use as an internal social network. Well, it's useless to try to understand the logic of Google. But let's get back to the update, which is called Collaborative Inbox. Now, in Google Groups you can create a group that will operate as a support forum / task list. Users will be able to post questions/tasks, administrator can assign task owners and when task is complete - change its status to Closed. In addition, you can assign an email-address for the group (for example, support@mydomain.com) and all customer emails to this address will be automatically converted to topics in this group. And the task owner will be able to post the response via email directly from the Groups interface.

In addition, the update brings new tools for moderation and topic organizing. In particular, administrator can now create tags that users can use to organize discussions/tasks. Also administrator can flexibly assign user roles: group owners, managers and members. Besides, you can create email autoresponders for external customers.

Recall, all these changes apply only to Google Groups in the Google Apps for Business.

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