Migrating to Google Applications

After several months of testing last year, our business migrated to Google Applications earlier this year.  This blog is to provide some information on our initial experiences - with the hope that it would help others lessen their migration time.  It may also help encourage others who are considering cloud computing for messaging and calendaring.

Being a calculated risk taker, I spent time over several months researching and testing Google Applications. 

Being that we are small company (less than 10 users), the general input I was getting from others who have made the switch is that "it is a no brainer".  I've too much experience to know that any new situation brings with it advantages and disadvantages.  One of my primary concerns was how much time we would lose getting used to the new interface.  Another was losing key e-mail communications.

During our testing phase we planned to continue using our current in-house mail server (Notes / Domino software) and forward mail to our new Google mail server.  We ran into problems getting this to work.  The main issue was that Google does not allow having a "personal" account (e.g. Google Mail, Adwords, Blogger) with the same user name as a "business" account. In my case, I was using my primary e-mail as my user name for my "personal accounts" - robert.gepfert@ardentraining.com.  We have had several Google "personal accounts"  (two Google Blogger accounts, Local Business, Analytics, Adwords, and Optimizer) for a long time.  To remedy the problem of being able to use Google mail in our "business account", I created new user names for these "personal accounts".  It took several weeks to figure out this was the problem and fixing it. 

One of the messaging administrators at one of our customer companies recommended keeping our current messaging environment active along with Google mail. I did this by listing Google servers as the first four mail servers in our MX records and our Domino server as the fifth. We have been using both mail servers and it is working out well in the first few weeks.  Every day, I find myself looking in my Notes mail less and less.


However, we plan to continue using our Notes / Domino environment.  One reason is that it stands ready to be our disaster recovery plan should we need to shut down Google messaging.    Though we like the benefits of cloud computing, our core strategy is that we could have our mission critical applications (messaging, calendaring, CRM, financial) within our control.  By that, I mean two of these applications run on our internal systems and the two that Google currently runs (Messaging and Calendaring) can be brought in house within a short period of time (the time it takes for the MX records propagation)

One of benefits of using Google for messaging is that the amount of time I check SPAM is significantly less.  Before this change, I was checking an average of 200 SPAM messages daily.  Now, it is averages less than 50.  I believe that one reason for this is that I only used my primary e-mail address in Google.  The other e-mail addresses I'd set up over the years in Notes (e.g. bob.gepfert@ardentraining.com) go to our Notes server.  There have only been one or two false positives in my Notes mail so far.  I have also removed alias e-mails from our Domino server document. 

In our advance research, there were warnings against moving your domain registration to Google.  We heeded that advice.  We continue using Network Solutions as or domain service.

To our pleasant surprise, we have not had to spend much time so far learning the new interface.  We quickly found that folders are called labels (though Google's storage of an e-mail means that a document can appear in different "labels").  The time saved by being able to more quickly log in off site (we use VPN for our accessing our Notes messaging when off site) has been helpful.  


One disadvantage I have found so far is lack of stationary in Google Mail (or at least I have not figured it out yet).  My work around has been to create a draft and cut and past from a sent mail document.

I like seeing the pictures of individuals in the mail document (for those who have Google mail and have a picture).

From a training perspective, we purchased a manual from ElementK.  Though our current usage is equal to the capabilities we used in Notes, we are looking for greater productivity from Google Applications.  As such, we will become students of Google Applications through various learning options (the ElementK manual, the videos and articles and Google, mentoring sessions, lunch and learns, and group training).  

One example of this is that we did not use chat before (though it a feature in Notes).  Though we only use it once or twice a day, it has been a less obtrusive way for our employees to quickly touch base on something without having to interrupt a co-worker in their office.


Another example is that we found we could create a web based form for class evaluations in a short period of time (less than 30 minutes).  Having the template creator in Google made it much easier than our past options (creating it in Domino or HTML).


Being that the software is continually being updated, we have found some of the functions in printed material in the manual are different in the current version.  This is to be expected with cloud applications. 

I hope this article gives you some additional ideas to help you.