Update to yesterday’s post.
I called Google yesterday morning for a status update. “It has been forwarded to a specialist and they are looking into it. Hang tight.”
Later I received a call from fellow ACS user and CITRT member Matt Irvine from FBC Belton who wanted to help. It appears I was unclear in my previous post. We use Google’s multiple domain feature and have two separate domains managed by the same admin panel. Not just a domain alias. Thanks for trying Matt.
Around 4:00 p.m. I called Google again. So far all of my calls seemed to end up in England based on the accent. This one was either Irish or Scottish, but the line was bad so he transferred me to someone stateside. It appeared he was still unsure of what was happening. Fortunately, I was able to send him to my previous post with the video. That changed everything. Less than an hour later I received this email:
Hello Jeff,
I’ve spoken to my colleague Ben and watched the video you posted online.
Our team has identified the issue you reported and are working towards a fix. I’ll update you shortly with some additional information, but I wanted you to know ASAP that we are on it.
Sincerely,
John
Enterprise Support
Fourty-five minutes later I received this email:
Hello Jeff,
To give you some additional context, our team has pinpointed that the issue has been cause by a particular Gmail Lab – Google Calendar gadget. I’d suggest having the affected users try disabling this particular lab within their Google Apps Email account settings. You can also disable Gmail Labs domain wide by changing your Email settings within the Control Panel. Finally, you can also temporarily disable Gmail Labs by appending “?labs=0″ to the URL. To carry this out, your users can login to their secondary domain just as they did in the video that you recorded, and then replace the URL with:
http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomaingoeshere/?labs=0
By logging in with labs disabled, I was able to go into that user’s settings, turn off the Google Calendar Gadget, log out and log back in normally. Those users effected will have to turn off this gadget. Google will update me when it is corrected. Because it is a “Labs” feature, it is “not officially supported”, but I imagine they will get it taken care of quickly.
My takeaways:
- Follow-up. Messages seem to get lost in translation. Even among English speakers.
- Don’t assume that since you aren’t writing a check, you aren’t paying for this service and therefore you have less right to contact support and should wait for them to respond. NO! Inaccessible email is inaccessible email no matter how you slice it. In my mind we are paying dearly for Google’s services by giving them access to the data within our email.
- First thing to try when you can’t log in is to disable labs by appending the login URL with “/?labs=0″
- A picture is worth a thousand words, but a screencast is worth dozens of emails and phone calls. Especially if it is on a URL that is easy to find.
Feel free to contact me via the comment section or email if you have any questions.
Related posts:
Thanks for posting this to remind us that problem resolution is dependent not only on the service provider, but also on the user. The more information that the user can provide regarding the situation, the more quickly the situation is resolved.
Everybody take note!
Excellent point, Greg. Thanks!