Migrating My Domain to Google Apps

I have to admit I think I’m behind the times when it comes to imple­ment­ing Google Apps for my domain. I decided this morn­ing to make the move and so far — I’m lov­ing it. I will not lie mov­ing away from Microsoft Out­look took some work. I’ve been using Out­look for the last 10 years. I’m also the per­son that uses email as a file cab­i­net, mean­ing I don’t like to toss email. I’m always afraid that I’ll need an email the moment I delete it. Out­look would move at a snail’s pace on my com­puter and that could have some­thing to do with work­ing with 8 dif­fer­ent appli­ca­tions at a time on a lap­top. I also hated it when Out­look would crash; this always hap­pened when I was mid way through a long instruc­tional email that needed to be sent an hour ago.

How Did I Pre­pare for the Migration?

First, let me say don’t do it this way — I now have a Gmail account that houses much of my email that with­out a lot of sort­ing and delet­ing will clog up my Google App email, so for now I’ll need to do some tog­gling. I started by inte­grat­ing my POP email accounts to see if I could get by with­out open­ing Microsoft Out­look for a month. Suc­cess! I’ve been con­tem­plat­ing the migra­tion and after I made it a month I fig­ured I could do it with­out too much pain.

I love the fact that I can use my per­sonal domain on Google Apps for email, shar­ing infor­ma­tion between users that I select and cre­ate col­lab­o­rat­ing groups that I see fit.

Why Gmail?

I have learned to love Gmail. It took me time to adjust from the Out­look sys­tem of Fold­ers to the Gmail sys­tem of labels, but once I did it I loved it. It was as easy as cre­at­ing fil­ters and adding a cou­ple of clicks to an email that arrived and now every­thing fil­ters and files nicely. I also love the fact that Gmail is extremely accu­rate and easy to search; I’ll attribute this to the fact that it was built by the top search engine.

Stay­ing Orga­nized with Google Calendar

Google cal­en­dar is easy to use and it can be shared eas­ily. It syncs well with my Palm Pre and I can access it from any­where — that’s more than I can say for my Out­look calendar.

Doc­u­ments Wher­ever I Go

I can’t say that I’ve com­pletely migrated to the Google Doc­u­ment fea­ture, but I’m work­ing on it. I do love being able to gain access to doc­u­ments from any­where and the abil­ity to share and col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers. I’m still work­ing on for­go­ing my Microsoft Office, just not quite there yet.

Man­ag­ing My Contacts

Google also offers Google Con­tacts. Google Con­tacts syncs with my Palm Pre eas­ily and Google will even sug­gest some­one as a con­tact if I start to email them fre­quently. I’m lov­ing this fea­ture. It works seam­lessly with Gmail and it isn’t the “resource hog” that Microsoft Out­look was.

My goal in 2010 was to cre­ate bal­ance in my life and I have to be hon­est, I’m feel­ing much more orga­nized with Google Apps. Suc­cess in mar­ket­ing also requires a high level of orga­ni­za­tion, so I’m sold. The best part is it’s free for your per­sonal domain and as long as you don’t go over 7 MB it doesn’t cost you a thing!