When we started Interactivar Stefan and I were working from different locations. We looked for Online Collaboration tools to avoid sending emails back and forth. I just wanted to get rid of it having experienced major issues with different versions of the same document in the past.
We tested a few and we finally decided to go with Google Apps. I made some experience with complex intranet solutions in my corporate life and later in my consulting business with a VPN based on Windows Server and Microsoft Exchange. Compared to that, what you can do with Google Aps for free is just amazing.
With the experience using Aps for Interactivar especially Email and file sharing for project documents with clients I now decided to use it for Hess y Roettges as well. Last Friday was a holiday in Chile, it was cold and rainy. So I took the chance to use that day for migration.
I set up Google Mail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. Still to come: Google Sites! I started with Google Mail. These were the steps:
- Associated my domain with Google Aps
- Set-up User Accounts on Google Aps
- Changed the MX Record with my domain host
- Set-up IMAP for the accounts in Google and in Outlook.Tested and done.
Find here more detailed instructions here.
This was pretty straight forward and I immediately could send and receive Emails via Outlook using the Gmail System under my own domain. Fantastic! Now I wanted to take advantage of the 7 GB Webspace that comes with each account for free and upload all the emails from the existing accounts. We used to backup our emails by frequently saving our Mailboxes into a pst file and stored it on an external hard drive in a separate place. The migration took the longest time. One way of doing it was just to move folders from my original Personal Outlook Folder into the new IMAP Email Folder that appeared in the Outlook Folder list as soon as the set-up was complete. It then synchronised automatically with my account on Google. From now on we don’t need to worry about backups anymore! For my Email account this wasn’t a problem as I don’t hold a lot of emails anyway, only the very important stuff. I actually migrated all my emails while watching the second half of Bayern Munich – Hamburg on ESPN.
It was more difficult for my wife’s email account. She has all the daily customer interactions in her Mailbox. So we had to upload about 400 MB. Using the previous method didn’t work. Outlook just crashed. There is a tool available that helped me transferring emails, the Google Email Uploader.
Took a few hours but now everything is up there and working fine. With that the contacts can be uploaded as well. You can use Outlook as before but you now have the option to use the Google Webmail function as well, which is pretty cool. If you set-up IMAP, it is similar to Exchange, constantly synchronising. The Spam Filter is very accurate. You actually don’t need to delete Emails anymore with more than 7GB of webspace. One difference is that Google Mail uses ‘Labels’ rather than the traditional folders. You can assign an email to various Labels, like tags. The search is just incredible. Once you get used to it you probably don’t need Outlook anymore.
There is some controversy around ads and privacy on Emails. The ads are only displayed when you open a particular email. It then displays ads relevant to the content. I was exchanging Emails recently with my real estate agent as we are looking for new offices in Providencia or Las Condes. When I opened the email, real estate ads for Santiago were displayed. It’s far from Spam I consider it as additional information. And if you want to get rid of it you can upgrade your account for 50 US$ per account per year.
Here is what Google has to say on Gmail Privacy:
In the next post I’ll share my experience with Google Calendar.
