Google Apps

The University of Waikato is proud to embrace Google services and products. This ensures that you receive our on-going commitment in providing effective and modern tools for higher education that is both user-friendly and up to industry standard.

What Are They?

Google Apps is a set of applications available for students and staff at our University and includes:

Gmail - your University email. All you need is a web browser and internet access, and you'll be tapped into all the features that set Gmail apart from other email services.

Google Calendar - a fully functional appointment calendar that you can share with your co-workers.

Google Drive - an online collaborative environment where you can create documents, share them around and access them from most devices. This environment was previously known as Google Docs. You can have Google Drive on your computer, your mobile device or on the web - see Get Started with Google Drive.

Google Groups - lets you enhance your internal communication within the University. You can participate in online discussions with your co-workers and reach a large number of people at the same time within the campus.

Google Hangouts - You can use Hangouts to send messages, make voice and video calls, and share photos. Hangouts are synced automatically across devices, so you can start a Hangout on your computer and continue on another device, like your phone.

Google Spanning - Is a data backup and recovery system used in conjunction with Google business accounts. It allows for the backup and restore of data from a Google account, including email and Google Drive files

Google Sites - for creating websites. It lets you embed all sorts of rich content like presentations, videos, documents, calendars, or photo slideshows from your other Google projects within a website without the need to know any complicated HTML or CSS.

How Do I Access Them?

When using a Microsoft Windows machine, the Google Chrome web browser offers the best experience. You'll find links when you click on the square of 9 small squares at the top right of the page when you log in to your Gmail account.

Android devices have a dedicated application (which you can download from the Android marketplace) that you can install to access your documents.  You can edit documents and also choose to make them available offline using the Android App.

Apps Status Dashboard

To view the current status of the Google App services check out the Apps Status Dashboard unless otherwise noted, this status information applies to consumer services as well as services for organisations using Google Apps.

Mobile Apps

Android devices have a dedicated application, (see How Do I Access Them above). There are many Mobile Apps available on iTunes and the Android Marketplace. Specific help for Mobile users is available online.

What else do I have access to?

The Google Marketplace allows you third party access to add-ons, apps and extra functionality from third party providers.  If there is an application you want access to, this needs to be whitelisted, please log a Kuhukuhu ticket requesting this.  Google Marketplace can be found at the bottom of your Google Apps link:

Current enabled applications that can be installed directly from the Marketplace are listed below (see full list at the bottom of the page):

List Updated 06-05-2022