Google Apps
Google’s office tools offer a mind-boggling array of cloud-based productivity options to even the smallest firms. Essentially everything you do at work is now available anywhere, anytime, from any online connection.
Better yet, it’s all FREE for the Standard version or $50 per year per user for the Premier version, which includes additional storage and high-quality, unlimited support.
A few main point about Google Apps Standard version.
- Google will host your organistaion’s email under your own domain name
- You are allowed up to
5010 users each with their own email account (in April 2011 google reduced the limit to 10, after that you have to upgrade to $50 per user per year or $5 per month per user) - Each email account gets over 7GB of storage
- Reliability is very good and its cloud based, so issues with stability are a non issue
- Spam filtering is high quality
- Users can connect with gmail, pop or imap (including SSL) from their favourite email client
- Works well with iOS devices like iphones/ipads/ipods and is easy to set up
- Google Calendar function works very well and is a productive tool
- Google Docs allows collaboration on documents
- Google Sites allows intranet page creation.
Google Apps is a great option for a small organisation with tight budget, needs reliable, secure email with generous storage.
We can provide the following services regarding Google Apps Standard Edition:
- Set up google apps for your domain, including dns records, txt records – €25
- Google Apps Account management – €50 per year
- Migration to Google Apps email – €25 per email account migrated
Even though Google Apps Standard edition is free from google you still need someone who can set up, manage and support your accounts, unless of course you have someone in house who can do that already for you.
(If you wanted to do it yourself, then please see our tutorial on how to set up google apps)
Below you will find some comments and additional information about the main google apps services offered with the standard version.
Google Apps Email
Google Apps Gmail supports your company’s URL and looks the same from any web browser or mobile device. For example, it instantly turns even an iPod Touch into a work portal. Gmail has plenty of room for every employee’s work e-mail, with 7Gb + on the free versions and 25 GB of storage per user with a paid Apps account.
Employees have complete remote access, and the system requires them to log in to do their work, for total accountability. Gmail conversations are “threaded,” unlike most desktop e-mail clients, which means e-mails are grouped by similar subject lines, making it simpler to track intricate, multi-party exchanges.
However: be prepared to view ad-supported content. Text ads are Google’s main business, so you’re pretty much always looking at them. Some may be relevant, but many businesses will be wary about opening their private company e-mails to marketers, even if anonymously.
Google Apps Calender
Google Apps Calendar creates a common platform on which to schedule appointments and events throughout your entire business in real time. It lets assistants schedule executives’ appointments from a remote location, and it lets your clients update meetings as they need to–again, as it happens.
There’s no other calendaring tool out there like it. The scheduling features alone are a must-have for small businesses. Just don’t ask it to do too much.
Quite simply, when it comes to group events, it’s the scheduling tool of the gods, it even generates e-mail invitations that include a button to respond. When employees indicate they will attend, Apps Calendar automatically adds the shared meeting to your schedule and theirs. It also lets you merge employees’ calendars with yours in order to manage your whole team’s time with a bird’s-eye view.
However: Like Apps Gmail, Calendar can be slightly confusing and complex; managing Calendar Settings can be daunting (but easier than Outlook). And you can expect to deploy another project management app like Smartsheet or LiquidPlanner to really make scheduling really work to the max. Also, managing permissions and privacy has proven to be difficult. And, of course, different people manage their schedules in different ways. Be warned: Integration with Outlook is futile but integration with iOS is a dream.
Google Docs
Offline content creation can actually work. Its collaborative word-processing features, which let multiple parties make revisions simultaneously, are a revelation for any fast-moving creative team. Suddenly, creating a proposal or a presentation is an almost-weightless task. Forget writer’s block: Real-time chat and comments put the group’s feedback right on the page, and changes are saved automatically and often. You’ll never look at writing or editing the same way again.
Google Docs….rocks. It’s simply the best collaborative work tool on the market and you can’t beat the price.
However: as cool as it is, Google Docs will not replace Microsoft Word or OpenOffice when it comes to producing slick, professional-looking documents. More troubling, connectivity can still be an issue, a scary prospect when Docs freezes up in the middle of saving a document. And forget about using the wildly unreliable e-mail attachments and publish-to-web features; both can be unstable.
