Customize Google Apps Links For Your Domain

Google resolved the Chrome installation issue (inability to make a system-wide installation) with

Google Pack

Google Pack. Administrators are now able to deploy Chrome to all user accounts. Also included in the package are other free Google products like Google Talk, Google Desktop, Picasa, Google Earth, etc. Firefox, Skype, and Adobe Reader are some of the third-party apps bundled. Three applications from Google Apps are also included – GMail, Docs, and Calendar.

After I installed Google Pack and the needed apps, I found out that the Google Apps shortcuts don’t work with Google Apps accounts. GMail opens “mail.google.com“, Google Calendar opens “calendar.google.com” and Docs opens “docs.google.com“. If you have a Google Apps account for your domain, this setup would be useless since the links don’t redirect to your account. However, Google has a workaround for this issue. We just customize the apps shortcuts using Chrome and point them to your Google Apps domain. Right click on the shortcut and select Properties. Replace the Target field with the Chrome path and your Google Apps URL. Here’s what I did on our Apps shortcut:

GMail – “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=”http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com”

Docs – “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=”http://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com”

Calendar – “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” –app=”http://www.google.com/calendar/hosted/yourdomain.com”

Don’t forget to include the quotes.