Miscellaneous

Clio Announces Google Apps Integration

By Robert Ambrogi

In a post two weeks ago about Clio, the cloud-based law practice management application, I said the company had a major enhancement in the works. Well, here it is. Today, Clio and Google announced Clio’s integration with Google Apps, Google’s cloud-based suite of office tools for businesses that includes Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs. Also, beginning today, Clio will also be added to the Google Apps Marketplace, a collection of third-party apps that integrate with Google Apps.

For Clio customers who use Google Apps, the integration offers three benefits:

• Your Clio calendar and contacts will now synchronize with your Google calendar and contacts. The sync is bi-directional, so it keeps both sets of calendars and contacts synchronized.
• Clio’s e-mail integration feature fully integrates with Gmail.
• The same sign-on you use to access Google Apps will also allow you to access Clio. When you sign-in to Google Apps, Clio will show up in your Apps navigation bar.

A side benefit of the integration is that it offers an extra-degree of redundancy to your calendar and contact information, insofar as the data will now be synchronized on both Google Apps and Clio.

Jack Newton, Clio’s president, gave me a Web demonstration of the integration in advance of today’s announcement. The connection between Google and Clio is made using the OAuth protocol, which allows access without sharing passwords or other private information. That means you don’t have to worry about someone at Google getting access to your practice-management data in Clio. To make the connection, just click the button within Clio labeled “Connect with Google.” Google then asks you to verify that you want to allow the connection between Clio and your Google account. Once you confirm,  you’re done. If you have multiple calendars in Google, you can select which ones to sync.

If you are not familiar with Google Apps, you should give it a look. It is Google’s enterprise-level version of its free Gmail and Calendar apps, similar in operation to Microsoft Exchange. It costs $50 per user per year and is equally well suited to a small office or a large organization.

Clio is owned by Themis Solutions, a company based in Vancouver, B.C.

Read more about this at the Clio blog and the Google Enterprise Blog.

Full post as published by Lawsites on October 12, 2010 (boomark / email).