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.