Friday, June 4, 2010

Customizing with Google LABS

A key benefit of using Google Apps is that new innovation is constantly being made available to users and admins through Google LABS. LABS offer a variety of extensions and features that can customize your Google experience.

I am a minimalist when it comes to my email set up, however I have enabled a number of labs to improve the functionality of my Gmail experience. First I have enabled most of the labs for viewing PDF's and other documents directly in Gmail. I have also enabled signature tweaks, translate message, send and archive, drag and drop, POP mail fetch and nested labels.

You can turn this features on and off through the LABS page in settings or from the beaker symbol in the webpage header.

I have also enabled my Google Apps for Offline working. I use a laptop as my primary machine and I find that sometimes I need to work where I do not have a connection to the internet. The Offline mode allows me to work with both Gmail and Calendar when not connected. Once connected all changes are sync'ed with the web versions of Gmail and Calendar. This is very convenient for air travel or when you are in a location that doesn't offer free wifi. Offline mode was also available for Google Doc's however with the new implementation of HTML 5 for some of the Doc's applications offline mode is not available for editing of documents when not connected to the internet. Google is working on bringing back the offline function for Google Docs very soon. As I mentioned in an earlier post I use Microsoft Office for most of my document creation and editing functions.

The bottom line is that users will be able to customize there experience with Google Apps through the use of Google LABS.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Getting your data into Google Apps

UPDATE:

Google has just released a new single app to migrate all data from Outlook to Google Apps. Now it is a one step process.



Once you have converted your email from Outlook to Gmail or Google Apps you need to get your data moved as well.

Moving Email is easy for the most part. The Google Email Uploader application can automatically transfer your mail from your .PST file into GMail.

Calendar and Contacts are a little bit harder. Google has a product called Google Calendar Sync that syncs your Outlook Calendar with your Google Calendar.


Once installed, change the settings to sync from Outlook to Google Calendar. All of your future calendar events will be transfered to Google Calendar.

Transferring contacts can be a little more involved. The long way is to export all of your Outlook contacts into a .CSV file and then from within Google Contacts select import from the top right menu bar and import the .CSV or vCard file(s) into your Google Contracts.

I did it through my blackberry loading Google Sync onto my Blackberry and setting it up to sync to my Google account. You could also use Google Sync to sync your Blackberry Calendar to your Google Calendar.

Google's applications for Gmail and Calendar are very functional and feature rich. Google's implementation of a contact management system needs work. A few add ons are available like mailbrowser however they install an application on your desktop and you only have the functionality when you are on your system. I think this defeats the benefit of having Google Apps available anywhere.

Not on pet peeve with Google Calendar: Most calendar systems allow you to change the time zone for an event. For people who travel and set up appointments in different time zones this is a must. Google only allows the user to set up a timezone for the entire Calendar. For an enterprise ready application Google needs to build their Calendar system to support event timezones.

In my next post I will highlight the labs that I have installed.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Starting Google Apps

How to sign up and start using Google Apps is well documented on line. If you want to get started visit http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new. Use your existing domain or create a new domain. Follow the instructions

What is interesting is how you set up your Google Apps. If you use the Premier addition you can continue to use Outlook to read and write you email and calendar. However, if your Going Google I recommend you move to the web interface for its ease of use and constant feature upgrade.

I use my Google Apps Gmail account to consolidate all of my email accounts into a single web interface http://lifehacker.com/376367/consolidate-multiple-email-addresses-with-gmail.

Even with Multiple Email accounts consolidated on a single Gmail account, you can send your email from the separate accounts from within Gmail. However, choose your default address wisely because a quick email will be addressed from your default account.

I had one problem. My ISP, ROGERS wouldn't allow me to use their SMTP address to send email via Gmail. I had to sign up to a SMTPtoGo.com account and use that to send my ISP emails using my ISP email address. Easy fix and it works great.

Now I had my new business domains and all of my personnel email addresses consolidated into one Gmail account with individual account control for sending and receiving. My email was now assessable from any internet connected computer on the planet.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Moving from MS Office/Exchange to Google Apps made Easy

My name is Jeff and I live in Ottawa. I'm creating this blog to share my experiences creating a new business and using cloud based free services for all of my IT needs. IT is now a commodity and any SME can quickly and inexpensively set up their basic services on free cloud based apps.

For years I have been a closet techie and have provided most of my own IT support even when I was running companies that had IT departments. For most of my career I have been a Microsoft Office/Exchange user for most of my core IT functions.

Last year I started my own business (in fact 2 different businesses) and set them up using Google Apps. In this blog I will share my experiences both good and bad as I have made the switch to cloud based computing for my businesses.

For 15 years I was a Microsoft office user. Last year I was in the Middle East on business and I found that my connection to my ISP POP email was not reliable. I was trying to do business half way around the world and couldn't access my urgent emails. When I returned to Ottawa, I looked at setting up my new business domains on a cloud based service (webmail). I looked at Yahoo, Hotmail and Google. I went with Google because of the ease of setting up my own domains and quickly starting the services I needed like Email, Calendar, Contact Management, Document Storage and mobile integration. Did I mention that I live on my blackberry!

Well that was a year ago and I have not looked back since. I have used Google Doc's but I don't expect to give up MS Office anytime soon.

I will follow up with my random experiences "Going Google" on this blog. I hope you find it useful for your business.