Srcasm

When we started looking at Google Apps for our domain there was one thing that stood out that always irked me.  There was very little space for domain wide customization.  Sure, Google is working on making it easier with a new user management tool, widgets, etc but something as simple as quick links to our other services were no where to be found.  After searching high and low, I came up with this solution and I hope it can help you out too.

The very first link we wanted in Google Apps was one to Postini, one of Google's own services for anti-spam.  It's no where to be found in the web interface and yet people need access to it every day.  This is where a bit of hacking came into play.  I popped over to the Apps Marketplace (Google's new playground for third party developers).  I paid the $100 to publish an app and began working on my non-app-app -- I'll explain that in a bit.

Go ahead and login to the marketplace and get over to your Vendor Profile so you can "Create a new listing".  Make sure "My product may be directly installed into Google Apps domain" is checked off.

Choose a category (it doesn't matter which one), fill in a name, a summary and a full overview (again, these don't matter either) and put something into the "Pricing Summary" box.  I typed, "It's free because it's mine" but you can enter anything you want.

Next it where the real process happens.  Copy the code below into the "Manifest" box:

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<ApplicationManifest xmlns="http://schemas.google.com/ApplicationManifest/2009">

  <!-- Support info to show in the marketplace & control panel -->

  <Support>

    <!-- URL for application configuration, accessed from the app settings page in the control panel -->

    <Link rel="manage" href="http://www.example.com/google/admin.php?domain=${DOMAIN_NAME}" />

    <!-- URL explaining how customers get support. -->

    <Link rel="support" href="http://www.example.com/google/support.php" />

    <!-- URL that is displayed to admins during the deletion process, to specify policies such as data retention, how to claim accounts, etc. -->

    <Link rel="deletion-policy" href="http://www.example.com/google/deletion-policy.php" /> 

  </Support>

  <!-- Name and description pulled from message bundles -->

  <Name>Links - LiveMeeting</Name>

  <Description>A simple application for testing the marketplace</Description>

  <!-- Show this link in Google's universal navigation for all users -->

  <Extension id="navLink" type="link">

    <Name> ✮ Some Cool App Here</Name>

    <Url>https://www.somerandomapp.com/someotherdir/</Url>

  </Extension>

  <!-- Declare our OpenID realm so our app is white listed -->

  <Extension id="realm" type="openIdRealm">

    <Url>http://www.example.com</Url>

  </Extension>

</ApplicationManifest>