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Google Apps:

Standard Edition

This section will discuss some of the basic features and advantages of Google Apps Standard Edition. This page is currently under construction.

sampleThe introduction of Google Apps has presented businesses and organizations of all sizes with a nice suite of online collaborative tools including email, document sharing, calendar sharing, chat, and, most recently Google Sites. Google Sites is a customizable, online website collaboration suite complete with ready-made templates for 'Company Intranet', 'Team Projects', 'Employee Profile', and much more.

The Standard Edition is available free of charge and the "Premier Edition" is available at $50.00 per year per user (Free to Educational and other qualifying organizations). While the Google the Google Apps Premier Edition presents a great value (it's a fraction of Microsoft Exchange), the free Standard Edition is, of course, a good place to begin to evaluate Google Apps. A free Google Apps Professional 30 Day Trial edition is available as well.

One very big advantage is the ability to easily access your Google Apps applications via mobile devices such as Blackberry.

Interest in Google Apps (particularly the Email component) has grown exponentially over the past year to the point that we currently offer configuration free to our hosting clients. Many other providers are electing to do the same, or to do so for a nominal charge.

The starting point is signing up for the Standard Edition Account, you can do this here. Simply select the Standard Edition and populate the required fields for sign up. We STRONGLY ENCOURAGE YOU, however, to take a few minutes to review our articles (or anyone's articles for that matter) on the correct way to go about setting up your Google Apps account. It is actually a fairly easy and straight forward process, but you can save yourself a lot of grief by simply doing a bit of reading and avoiding common mistakes, as well as taking advantage of various tips-and-tricks.

Let's take a quick look at the primary components:

Google Apps Email

The first time I saw Google Apps Email was when a client requested integration with their hosting services. Having set up and reviewed the service, I thought the client, who was migrating from SmarterMail, had clearly lost his mind.

The organization layout of Google Apps email, on first inspection, appears nothing short of ridiculous. Needless to say, after having tried it out on one of our own sites, I very quickly came to love it and have advocated it's use for all clients where it is applicable. (It's paramount to find out if it will work with your existing site software before taking the plunge. While in the vast majority of cases it will be just fine, for some software, such as WHMCS for example, which does not currently support the SSL component, it will not work with email piping).

An additional concern in getting started is the migration of emails form your existing email client into Google Apps Email. While the Premier Edition does come with an integrated Migration Tool, as well as dual email routing to prvide redundancy during migration, we have found that most email can be migrated successfully (although a bit less elegantly) using the Standard Edition. Please see our upcoming tutorial on email migration tips-and-tricks for details.

Tutorials: Google-English Dictionary, Google Apps Set Up, Migrating Email, IMAP with Google, POP with Google, Customize Google Home Page, Creating Labels.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar allows you to share your calendar events on a selective basis with both team members (I.e. other users within your Google Apps Account) along with those outside of your team. Like the other applications available, it can be easily integrated with your email. It also supports importing data form many other calendar formats as well as employing the iCAL format for calendar sharing.

Google Docs (Documents)

Google Docs allows you create and share documents online in real time with your  team members, as well as to invite those outside of your team to view your documents. It can be easily integrated with your email, and allows you to view documents via your mobile phone. It also supports a large number of languages (more so than the calendar or email apps). Google Docs Page

Google Sites

Google Sites allows you to make information easily available online. It can be used collaboratively, as well as allowing for file uploads and integration with Email, Docs, and other Google Apps applications (As well as YouTube if you're into that kind of thing...). It comes complete with a selection of customizable templates, or you can create your own Google Sites can be accessed via any internet-capable device. Google Sites Page.

 

 

   

TUTORIAL WILL BE COMPLETED DURING THE WEEK OF APRIL 27, 2008, PLEASE CHECK BACK AND WE APOLOGIZE FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE.

 

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