The Google Apps hosted communication and collaboration suite, which contains e-mail, calendar, office applications and a Web site builder, among other applications, is gaining a new component: discussion forums with mailing lists.
As has been the case with its other components, Apps is fetching this latest application from Google's consumer services,and giving it the necessary support to make it suitable for a workplace setting, like IT administration controls.
The Groups application, which will go live on Wednesday, allows for the creation of mailing lists for group members, but also lets users embed other Apps components into the forums, including calendars, word-processing documents, presentations, videos and spreadsheets. Content posted to the forums is indexed in full text and searchable.
Groups is available in the Education and Premier editions of Apps, but not in the Standard edition. Apps administrators need to activate Groups for their domain, at which point end-users can create forums without IT intervention. The IT department can establish policies and access rights for groups. Group owners also can manage certain settings for their forums and lists.
Looks like a good addition to us, wonder when Wave will join in?