gmail apps - The future for small to medium business

[Adrian]

Firstly if you find this hint any help then please do sign our guestbook here
http://www.emc-ltd.net/control_panel/viewforum.php?f=8

It has been about 4 days now since I set up a test domain for our business using google apps. I have to say that this system really does ring all the bells when it comes to helping small business to collaborate and communicate. I have set up a single test domain and made the jump by migrating my .pst outlook file over to the new gmail apps account. This does not mean that you have to do things in a certain sequence and as we know everything isn't plug and play in this world.

Google apps provides me with 25gb of mail storage. For the maniac cad user with huge files flying around on emails all the time this may not be enough but for myself who receives email with photo's, pdf and schematics in vsd file format I don't think I will ever use it all up.

The beauty if gapps is the IMAP system they have just within the last few days released the gsync software which is free to apps users. Basically it will sync your contacts, messages and calendar in outlook with the on line gapps storage. Because it's IMAP a two way handshake occurs so if you move a folder around in outlook this is reflected in the gapps interface. In a nutshell everything can be viewed anywhere you can hook in an IMAP account. We will be trying out in the not too distant future some blackberry hand sets, this is going to be great as we can view our emails / contacts and calendar on the move. Not only this you can share a calendar so others within your domain can view or change it. This is going to be great for our workers who don’t have a chance to make it back to the workshop/office to check their whereabouts the next day.

What I can say is watch out on how you go about migrating your data across. the gmail uploader will upload your archive folder into the inbox and if it's big you will have to move them all into the appropriate label (labels are effectively folders in gmail) areas. My suggestion would be to move your archive messages into the appropriate folders before you upload. You could then upload and the archived messages will be sorted correctly.

Second tip is not to use gmail uploader to upload your contacts this is because chances are you are going to use the new gsync software to auto sync you outlook goodies. If you do upload using gmail uploader then when you install gsync and use it it will create duplicates unless you de-tab the contacts tab.

gmail uploader - uploads your bulk pst outlook file.
gysnc - syncs your messages / calendar and contacts with the google site. I think this can also upload your messages from the pst file but it wasn't out so I used gmail uploader instead.

It is still early days and only costs $50 a year for all this goodness. I will endeavor to test the system for a couple of months before starting the office transition. From what I can see there are a few minor inconveniences but I’m sure the google team will iron these out within the next couple of months. If I should choose not to use the service then I have the hell of re-jigging the google to outlook pst saga and I don’t look forward to that.

Well done google for providing such a great service and I’m sure it will be a huge kick in the arse for Microsoft and their exchange system. For a small business like us we can put aside the exchange and move onto gmail as it can provide us with a headache free secure option. Tele working is going to be a breeze as the communications are going to be between the user and the mighty gmail server and not piping down our little adsl 6mb line.

Phew that’s about all for now here are a few links. If you wish to contact me then do so on the guest book.

Here are a few useful links.

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/email_uploader.html
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/busi ... _sync.html

[Adrian]

Update - We are now fully synced with blackberries and it works a treat with the contacts and calendars.

Having been running with this product for a while now here are some drawbacks that I'm sure will be addressed by google fairly soon.

Major one – no shared contacts like exchange public folders. It would be great for google to fix this so everyone could have a common address book. Our site engineers would then have seemless integration for roaming whilst keeping up with the customers.

The gmail app on the BB cannot view intricate pdf’s it just converts it to text and that’s it! The work around was for me to create another email address on our server and put that on the bb as an email account just for viewing pdf content. Should a pdf need to be looked at you simply forward it to your phone email account.

That’s it really the first will be a major upgrade for the apps customer base.

All in all the experience is great and I could not live without my desktop being integrated with my BB.

More soon
Ade