As I shared here, we made the switch from Microsoft Outlook to Gmail last month. After several weeks of using the new solution and learning a few new tricks along the way, I’m absolutely in love with Gmail and the other web apps I’m using.
In case you’re wondering, we’re not the only organization that’s recently made that shift. TechCrunch reported in recent days that the New South Wales Department of Education and Training has recently made a similar shift. The only difference is that instead of transitioning about 100 staffers like the NewSpring team, this organization’s transition to Gmail was for about 1.5 million students Australian students. They’re saving millions of dollars and, in my opinion, getting a much better solution.
I don’t own Google stock (as far as I know), and they don’t pay me to say this. I just think Google offers a far superior and almost free solution for managing email and calendars.
Any other ministries/organizations made the shift? Are you having the same success I’ve experienced?
Made the switch two weeks ago and we’re all loving it.
I love that my comment about how awesome Gmail is happens to be right next to an advertisement for an email service. Good times!
Most of us at Alive Church in Tucson are using gmail and their features, i totally agree and now, like you, i’m holding out for the Goggle phone, i only hope it’s as good! My only issue right now is my UT Starcom phone is windows based and use Outlook with it.
Question, would you have a suggestion for the best how to’s and things to look out for in making this happen. We do not have an official IT guy at our church and I am doing the research and would love to know the process you guys went through to make the switch.
We too made the switch recently. For the most part it has been well received. A few users are addicted to Outlook so we setup IMAP. We really like the ease of shared calendars. Finally, the massive storage is great.
We’ve been making the switch for the last few months – it’s not the simplest thing to transition people off of Entourage, but well worth it.
We made the switch just a little over a year ago and haven’t looked back. It’s been a great process. Everybody is using mail and several people use the calendar for scheduling (those that keep computerized calendars). One of the biggest perks has been shared spreadsheets for long-range worship planning. They’ve changed the way we collaborate/plan for the weekend.
My tip for the transition is to configure the domain at Google before switching DNS. Get people used to either going to gmail or set up additional IMAP accounts in their mail clients to check gmail as well (this is what we did for most people). Then when the DNS switch happens people don’t freak out about lost mail.
Since reading your previous post we’ve also made the switch to Google with our business and are loving it – especially the shared calendar capabilities. It is so much better for sharing info between multiple calendars than Outlook. Thanks for the point in the google direction! :)
Anyone had success with syncing Gmail contacts with their phones? We are using Windows based Treos for staff cell phones. That is the only feature keeping us tied to MS Exchange.
we have been on Google Apps for two years. LOVE IT!
@kelly Our guys have found several solutions that get google stuff sync’d up with windows phones. I think the one i use came right from google.
@inworship see http://www.simpledrive.net for the switch if you don’t have a web guy
We are a Mac/Vista/XP office and we made the switch a year ago. It’s been phenomenal.
Yep…over a year ago, and we all LOVE IT! We are in a small town with limited resources, yet have a bigger church and staff and it really fits the bill day in and day out.
I beta tested it for three months and we moved everyone over last week to Google Enterprise. I still sync everything with Apple Mail and Address Book, but flawless now…no better solution out there
I’ve been using gmail, calendar, reader, & documents for about two months now, and it’s probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me (other than Salvation, marriage, having a son, and shooting a 76). I do all my email through gmail. I use the calendar rigorously. I got my wife on it too. The Firefox 3 update + the Better Gmail 2 add on make the interface KILLER! Highly recommend it.
I suspect you have already placed the search string “newspring” in the google alerts. I really like it. That is how I find a lot of people who like and the very few who dont like new spring.
Keep on keeping on.
Vince, perfect, thanks!
If you like Gmail and “Remember the Milk,” try using the RTM for Gmail add-on! Works great! Now I can see my tasks and priorities on my Gmail screen, my iGoogle home page, my cell phone, and I can Jott to them all! -jw
Have you tried using a Site Specific Browser (SSB) like fluid (http://fluidapp.com)? It works fantastic with gmail.
We made the switch just over 6 months ago. We love it. It truly has changed our staff. Love to see that others have made the move as well. It also saved us a lot money each year. How can you go wrong. Saving money, better product, and happy staff members.
I have been knocking at the door of gmail for about 6 months now. I totally want to pull the trigger and move everyone over. The two things that keep me from making the switch for our church are blackberrys and the fact that our data is being controlled by another entity that has no financial responsibility to us.
[...] by Tony Morgan’s blog post about Google apps vs. Microsoft Office, we made the decision to use Google Calendar to streamline our staff scheduling. No more Microsoft [...]