Google Apps is a great service that Google provides to organizations and businesses, large and small.
But some times Google Apps can be very frustrating, just like any software. Besides bugs and "occasional odd design choices", the fact that things often change under the hood, albeit (or especially?) in small ways, some times make it more difficult to find effective support in the large user community.
Here is one thing I am doing for my daughter's high school FIRST Robotics Competition team: put a form on the team's website for T-shirt orders. I have been coaching the small web team to build the website using Google Sites and other services. So naturally a Google Docs spreadsheet form is my first choice for this job.
I designed the form and inserted it into a page as a gadget. Then I got this message on the page telling me that I don't have permission to access this item, regardless if I am logged in or not. As a matter of fact, I do have permission to access the form and the spreadsheet.
Googling the problem led me to Richard Nichols' blog entry about the exact issue. But I have in effect, although not in words, the exact same setting as he wrote in the blog: Essentially users must be allowed to share documents outside the domain. I have even tried to share the spreadsheet associated with the form to the public, but even that did not change the situation.
The trick posted in a Google Docs help forum does not work either. I have tried both embedding the form from the spreadsheet and inserting it as gadget in Google Sites' page editing function. So far nothing has allowed me to see the form on the site.
I guess one thing I could try is to implement the form outside the domain, using a generic Google account. But it really should not be that frustrating!
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