Hangouts enrich apps everywhere with video meetings

Posted by Stephen Cho, Head of Google Apps and Hangouts Technology Partnerships

Today, technology allows us to work across devices, at all hours, around the world. But, sometimes working face-to-face is most effective.

That's why we recently launched a Hangout start button that can be embedded in any app or website. Whether you’re a sales rep working in a CRM app or an engineer in a project management tool, it only takes one click to launch a Hangout and your team will automatically be invited. You can even improve customer service with the ability to quickly launch into a video Hangout with a client to resolve an issue.

With this new Hangouts button, apps everywhere will let colleagues, partners, and customers meet face-to-face anytime, anywhere, and work more effectively together with just one click. A number of our early partners have already enriched their applications with Hangouts:

• Collaboration and Project Management: Team members collaborating on a project are now able to easily start a video Hangout from Smartsheet. Developers on a project team can enjoy the same experience with Insightly.
• Shared Documents: Lucidchart enables team members working on a complex diagram to view and video chat while collaborating on the diagram
• Sales and Marketing: Sales reps working in Salesforce.com can automatically kick off a Hangout with their account team through Esna; in myERP, a sales rep can start a video meeting with any customer prospect
• Customer Support: Zendesk helps support agents start a Hangout to consult with other agents and internal staff, while Freshdesk lets a customer service agent Hangout with a customer to quickly resolve support issues
• Social: Zoho Connect’s social app facilitates both 1:1 and group Hangouts initiated by anyone in a given group
• Human Resources: With Zoho Recruit, an interviewer can automatically kick off a Hangout with a candidate

And this is only the beginning. We invite developers to get started here to make it easier for users to work face-to-face.