It happens all to often.  The web services we’ve come to know and love run into connectivity issues, and we’re left without access to our favorite apps.  This morning some Google users and Google’s App Status Dashboard reported a service disruption with a handful of its top apps, keeping people from accessing email, documents and more.

According to the report, Mail, Drive, Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations are experiencing a service disruption while the Admin control panel/API is experiencing an outage.  Some users are also experiencing issues with  Google Chat via third-party apps and Google Analytics.

No news yet as to what is causing the disruption or the outage and the scope of affected users.

It is not uncommon for service interruptions to occur as something always goes wrong, but what are we to do when a service outage hits us?  We could wait it out, or we could find better ways to weather the storm.

3 Tips for using Google Apps offline

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Use Chrome browser

Though this seems too much to ask for some who aren’t using Chrome, you need Chrome to be able to access Google Apps offline.  The great thing about using Chrome as your browser is that it automatically updates to the latest version, unless you tweak with the setting to prevent this, as this is needed for offline support.

Download the app

Download the Gmail Offline app in the Chrome store, it’s free so don’t sweat it, and you’re good to go.  You can now view messages, create new messages, and once it goes online, outbound messages will automatically be sent.

For Google Drive, if you’re using Chrome OS, you don’t need to do the following steps, as it’s already set up for you.  For Chrome browser users, all you need to do is go to Google Drive, Click on “More” to show other options, click on “Offline.”  A two-step process follows which will ask you to download the Google Drive app in the Chrome store, it’s also free, then click on the “Enable offline” button to access offline features.

Do these before an outage

Remember to do these offline tinkering steps when there’s no outage or service disruption as you will not be able to complete the steps if you can’t access the apps.

With offline features, you will still be able to do your work even if there’s a service outage or disruption.  You won’t lose precious time doing nothing.  You’ll still be productive and I’m sure your boss, and your sanity, will thank you for going the extra mile.