This is a guest post by Adam Aronoff, owner of Glossy Dev in San Diego, an agency specializing in website development for medium-sized businesses. Adam purchased Google Apps Login premium for one of his clients, and explains here how using Google Apps for their user management completely transformed his project.

My client is a large real estate broker in San Francisco, with over 50 agents. They constantly need to order materials from their printer: business cards, flyers, brochures, etc. This was always a time consuming task because someone in the office had to go back and forth between the agents and the printer, to get all the details right. They decided to commission a ‘Print Portal’, a small site that would allow agents to log on, design and upload material, and then send them to the printer. There were two considerable administrative issues though: how to authenticate a user (so that a random person wouldn’t be able to order materials if they came across the site), and how to make sure all the orders ended up with the right agent. The Google Apps Login plugin solved both issues at once, while also handling an additional issue that was not planned for: how to handle terminated employees.

The plugin installed perfectly, and after setting up permissions within their Google Apps account, worked flawlessly. The webmaster didn’t have to create new accounts, assign new passwords, or even really do anything beyond their normal Google Apps administration. And the agents love it too, as they don’t have to remember an additional login, they have more control of their material, and faster turn around time. Even the print shop benefits, as it lowers their cost of processing orders, and agents are ordering more materials then ever because of how much easier it is. And it saved me all the time of learning how to do a Google Apps integration from scratch, so that I could finish the project on time, and on budget. The printer was so satisfied, they commissioned me to redesign their homepage as well!