Public
Update 04/05/2019
GSuite G+ is to the Quick and the Dead
Staying +Alive by Staying Ahead
Hello fellow Plussers who used GSuite to survive the Consumer Pluspocalypse! Glad to make your acquaintance. Here we are, in the wastelands left behind for those who don't use this network for purely Internal Org stuff.
This is likely to be a temporary Oasis, an Eye in the Storm, but as long as we are here, I've been noodling some tips for having the best chance of getting the most use of this place for as long as possible.
The Name of the Game right now is, after all and above all else, staying ahead of Google's Product Roadmap for GSuite Google+. A few pieces of advice may make the difference between a brief and unenjoyable experience, or perhaps a reprieve from the Pluspocalypse for possibly years to come.
1) Know Your Org Rules and Expectations - Unless you own your GSuite yourself, you will have rules and expectations governing use of a GSuite account, which may be very liberal or very restrictive, very casual or very formal. Know these and honor them.
2) Join This Community Right Now!!! - People Left Behind on G+ - https://plus.google.com/communities/117457415418811355875
This is where we are gathering together right now for strength in numbers. From here we can connect, reconnect, share tips, tricks, solutions to technical issues, and plot and strategize how best to go forward individually and collectively on this network.
3) Follow Folks Quick - We don't know how long Google+ will enjoy Discovery features to help us Connect, such as Communities or Public Profile Search. Don't bother putting them in a Circle, Circles are going away (see #5 below), and don't depend on just following their Collection(s) because those are going away, too (see #4 below).
Following many people will help ensure that you have content in your Stream, and may even help with Discovery of other active users should other tools for this go away in the future, e.g. by Following someone who comments on a mutual connections' Posts.
Special Note - The Following/Followed By lists in your People section are very slow to update, as ard the Follow buttons on Profile Pages. It does not mean you have not been Followed or started Following someone. One way to be sure if you are Following someone, that has worked for me, is to open G+ in a desktop web browser, hover your mouse over their name text or Profile image to bring up their G+ Hover Card, and then click Follow on that card/check and see if it says Following (depending on which you are doing).
4) Create Some Public Communities Now and Fast
Google plans to sunset the ability to create Public cross-domain GSuite Communities, but has not yet announced any intention to close existing ones. Be reasonable, create no more than 5 or 10 Communities. If individual users go overboard with this, it risks bringing down the ire of Google.
+Michael J. Coffey is circulating a Google Form for GSuite Owned Communities (https://plus.google.com/u/1/+MichaelJCoffey/posts/8KJwUEZPbJm). This will help us find the active Communities likely to survive in the near term, and identify where there may be unmet demand for particular Community types. Even if you don't plan to manage any Communities yourself, you can always gift them to others to Name, Promote, & Moderate. You can even transfer Ownership.
Special Note - Try to ensure your Community has more than one Owner, in case something happens to one or more of the Owner accounts (e.g. they start a new job and lose their old GSuite G+ account; h/t +Brian Holt Hawthorne).
It's possible that some paying GSuite Orgs may have active Public Communities for which Google might keep these Communities open for years. There is no guarantee here, though, so remember #1.
5) Don't Use or Follow Collections - These are being sunsetted. If you follow someone's Collection but not Profile, you may lose connection to them when their Collections get deleted.
6) Don't Use Circles (for Anything) - Circles are also being sunsetted. Keep anyone you follow in Following, and don't send messages to Circles, or have any of your GSuite G+ Settings configured to Circles.
7) Make Sure You're Open to the Public - Your GSuite account likely comes with some default Settings that can inhibit interaction with other users on different domains. In many cases, you can easily solve this yourself.
First, go to your Settings --> General and make sure that Who can comment on your public posts? is set to Anyone. Without this, other domain users will not be able to Comment on your Public G+ Posts.
Then, for Who can send you notifications? (right above the previous Setting), again select Anyone, which will make it easier to see if someone has, for example, +Mentioned you. By Default, my Org set this to Extended Circles, so I almost missed a user +Mentioning me when it was sent to Other Updates instead of my Main Notifications because we weren't Following each other (yet).
I also recommend setting Who can see your "+1's on Posts activity? to Only You so your Followers (and others in your Org, if this is a concern) won't see your +1's. I used to leave this on for my consumer account, but be very sparing in using the +1 Button, but it seems best just to hide it now.
Your Org may restrict these Settings in different ways (see #1 above), so your mileage may vary from mine. It may also be possible to ask for some Settings to be unrestricted, but I leave that to you and your Org Admins to decide.
8) Turn Off Suggested Posts From Your Org - To stop seeing any Suggested Posts from people in your Organization (if there are any), go into Settings --> Amount of Suggested posts to show in stream --> and choose None from the drop-down.
9) Use the Mobile Web App The Android and iOS mobile apps, depending on your Org Settings, may by default pop up a warning message any time you try to Comment on a Public Post from outside your Org and domain, requiring you to tap it away over and over. Instead, try the Mobile Web App. While it does display the same message, you don't have to click or tap it away, and it sits beneath the Post out of your way and easily ignored. You can even Add/Install the web app right to your Home Screen from the browser app, and enable browser based push Notifications.
10) Keep an Eye on Feature Removals - Google regularly makes announcements about their GSuite G+ Product Roadmap, including feature removals (e.g. https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229693?hl=en). Knowing that a feature you depend upon will be removed could give you time and chance to replace it. If you've been using/Following Collections, for example, you can stop doing that; stop using Circles; create Public Communities before too late; etc...
11) Keep an Eye on Feature Additions - The flip side to the above, GSuite G+ will continue to gain new features (e.g. see this apk teardown: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/06/04/google-v10-7-prepares-add-dedicated-post-titles-drive-attachments-automatic-previews-apk-teardown/ ; and see this announcement: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/new-enterprise-grade-features-in-googleplus-help-businesses-drive-collaboration). Some of these may help not only better your G+ experience, but mitigate issues with feature shutdowns. For example, tagging and custom streams may, depending on how they function, help offset the loss of Collections, or even a potential loss of Public Communities.
12) Don't Call Down Bad Attention on Yourself (or Us) - I previously suggested that users make no more than 5-to-10 Public Communities per user, lest an enormous glut of such Communities bring ire down on us from Google itself, who may not want us ballooning this place while they're narrowing it. The same general advice goes across-the-board: don't do anything likely to cause Google to in any way retaliate against former Plussers trying to hold on here. In general, this simply means not trying to do anything on an enormous scale, like creating hundreds of placeholder Public Communities under a single account; not putting potentially illegal or moderation-worthy stuff out there (and moderating such in your own Posts and Communities), of suchlike.
I will update this as I think of more. I am Disabling Reshares, but will Reshare it myself to Communities and my Stream, just to prevent any outdated versions of this from circulating around (since outdated information could harm users who follow it). I will Pin this original to my Profile.
Here's to as many months or years as we can manage!
#GSuiteTips #Survivor #Survivors #SignalFlare
Staying +Alive by Staying Ahead
Hello fellow Plussers who used GSuite to survive the Consumer Pluspocalypse! Glad to make your acquaintance. Here we are, in the wastelands left behind for those who don't use this network for purely Internal Org stuff.
This is likely to be a temporary Oasis, an Eye in the Storm, but as long as we are here, I've been noodling some tips for having the best chance of getting the most use of this place for as long as possible.
The Name of the Game right now is, after all and above all else, staying ahead of Google's Product Roadmap for GSuite Google+. A few pieces of advice may make the difference between a brief and unenjoyable experience, or perhaps a reprieve from the Pluspocalypse for possibly years to come.
1) Know Your Org Rules and Expectations - Unless you own your GSuite yourself, you will have rules and expectations governing use of a GSuite account, which may be very liberal or very restrictive, very casual or very formal. Know these and honor them.
2) Join This Community Right Now!!! - People Left Behind on G+ - https://plus.google.com/communities/117457415418811355875
This is where we are gathering together right now for strength in numbers. From here we can connect, reconnect, share tips, tricks, solutions to technical issues, and plot and strategize how best to go forward individually and collectively on this network.
3) Follow Folks Quick - We don't know how long Google+ will enjoy Discovery features to help us Connect, such as Communities or Public Profile Search. Don't bother putting them in a Circle, Circles are going away (see #5 below), and don't depend on just following their Collection(s) because those are going away, too (see #4 below).
Following many people will help ensure that you have content in your Stream, and may even help with Discovery of other active users should other tools for this go away in the future, e.g. by Following someone who comments on a mutual connections' Posts.
Special Note - The Following/Followed By lists in your People section are very slow to update, as ard the Follow buttons on Profile Pages. It does not mean you have not been Followed or started Following someone. One way to be sure if you are Following someone, that has worked for me, is to open G+ in a desktop web browser, hover your mouse over their name text or Profile image to bring up their G+ Hover Card, and then click Follow on that card/check and see if it says Following (depending on which you are doing).
4) Create Some Public Communities Now and Fast
Google plans to sunset the ability to create Public cross-domain GSuite Communities, but has not yet announced any intention to close existing ones. Be reasonable, create no more than 5 or 10 Communities. If individual users go overboard with this, it risks bringing down the ire of Google.
+Michael J. Coffey is circulating a Google Form for GSuite Owned Communities (https://plus.google.com/u/1/+MichaelJCoffey/posts/8KJwUEZPbJm). This will help us find the active Communities likely to survive in the near term, and identify where there may be unmet demand for particular Community types. Even if you don't plan to manage any Communities yourself, you can always gift them to others to Name, Promote, & Moderate. You can even transfer Ownership.
Special Note - Try to ensure your Community has more than one Owner, in case something happens to one or more of the Owner accounts (e.g. they start a new job and lose their old GSuite G+ account; h/t +Brian Holt Hawthorne).
It's possible that some paying GSuite Orgs may have active Public Communities for which Google might keep these Communities open for years. There is no guarantee here, though, so remember #1.
5) Don't Use or Follow Collections - These are being sunsetted. If you follow someone's Collection but not Profile, you may lose connection to them when their Collections get deleted.
6) Don't Use Circles (for Anything) - Circles are also being sunsetted. Keep anyone you follow in Following, and don't send messages to Circles, or have any of your GSuite G+ Settings configured to Circles.
7) Make Sure You're Open to the Public - Your GSuite account likely comes with some default Settings that can inhibit interaction with other users on different domains. In many cases, you can easily solve this yourself.
First, go to your Settings --> General and make sure that Who can comment on your public posts? is set to Anyone. Without this, other domain users will not be able to Comment on your Public G+ Posts.
Then, for Who can send you notifications? (right above the previous Setting), again select Anyone, which will make it easier to see if someone has, for example, +Mentioned you. By Default, my Org set this to Extended Circles, so I almost missed a user +Mentioning me when it was sent to Other Updates instead of my Main Notifications because we weren't Following each other (yet).
I also recommend setting Who can see your "+1's on Posts activity? to Only You so your Followers (and others in your Org, if this is a concern) won't see your +1's. I used to leave this on for my consumer account, but be very sparing in using the +1 Button, but it seems best just to hide it now.
Your Org may restrict these Settings in different ways (see #1 above), so your mileage may vary from mine. It may also be possible to ask for some Settings to be unrestricted, but I leave that to you and your Org Admins to decide.
8) Turn Off Suggested Posts From Your Org - To stop seeing any Suggested Posts from people in your Organization (if there are any), go into Settings --> Amount of Suggested posts to show in stream --> and choose None from the drop-down.
9) Use the Mobile Web App The Android and iOS mobile apps, depending on your Org Settings, may by default pop up a warning message any time you try to Comment on a Public Post from outside your Org and domain, requiring you to tap it away over and over. Instead, try the Mobile Web App. While it does display the same message, you don't have to click or tap it away, and it sits beneath the Post out of your way and easily ignored. You can even Add/Install the web app right to your Home Screen from the browser app, and enable browser based push Notifications.
10) Keep an Eye on Feature Removals - Google regularly makes announcements about their GSuite G+ Product Roadmap, including feature removals (e.g. https://support.google.com/a/answer/9229693?hl=en). Knowing that a feature you depend upon will be removed could give you time and chance to replace it. If you've been using/Following Collections, for example, you can stop doing that; stop using Circles; create Public Communities before too late; etc...
11) Keep an Eye on Feature Additions - The flip side to the above, GSuite G+ will continue to gain new features (e.g. see this apk teardown: https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/06/04/google-v10-7-prepares-add-dedicated-post-titles-drive-attachments-automatic-previews-apk-teardown/ ; and see this announcement: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/new-enterprise-grade-features-in-googleplus-help-businesses-drive-collaboration). Some of these may help not only better your G+ experience, but mitigate issues with feature shutdowns. For example, tagging and custom streams may, depending on how they function, help offset the loss of Collections, or even a potential loss of Public Communities.
12) Don't Call Down Bad Attention on Yourself (or Us) - I previously suggested that users make no more than 5-to-10 Public Communities per user, lest an enormous glut of such Communities bring ire down on us from Google itself, who may not want us ballooning this place while they're narrowing it. The same general advice goes across-the-board: don't do anything likely to cause Google to in any way retaliate against former Plussers trying to hold on here. In general, this simply means not trying to do anything on an enormous scale, like creating hundreds of placeholder Public Communities under a single account; not putting potentially illegal or moderation-worthy stuff out there (and moderating such in your own Posts and Communities), of suchlike.
I will update this as I think of more. I am Disabling Reshares, but will Reshare it myself to Communities and my Stream, just to prevent any outdated versions of this from circulating around (since outdated information could harm users who follow it). I will Pin this original to my Profile.
Here's to as many months or years as we can manage!
#GSuiteTips #Survivor #Survivors #SignalFlare
I wonder if this blog post can / will update?
ReplyDeleteI hope so. I'll check back to see if there is an update every so often. Eli is not a guest author on this blog, so it will be up to me to keep my eyes open. None of us "ghosts" are certain how long we'll be able to communicate on what remains of the G+ platform.
Delete