Gmail and other Google miscellany

A few thoughts about our institutional use of the no-cost version of domain-hosted Gmail (now part of the Google Apps industrial complex) and some other Google tools, prompted by questions over time that have come to us from other legal services field programs:

• LSNC is only a few months shy of a full year’s experience with domain-hosted Gmail, but the experience as a whole has gone very well. The service has been extremely reliable, vastly more so than the hosted service we used previously. Over time, almost all LSNC users have moved over and are now quite comfortable with the Gmail web-based interface. There are a few Outlook and Outlook Express hold-outs, but most folks found the switch irresistible once they bought into the convenience of universal access from work and home and wherever.
• Prior to the changeover, complaints about spam were the number one tech problem; since then, spam questions have dropped off the radar. Totally. I can’t even recall the last time someone asked me about spam problems with their LSNC email account. That said, should you consider switching to Gmail for your domain, be sure to have users import their Outlook or Outlook Express contacts into their Gmail contacts, which will tell Gmail to shield those email contacts from being shuffled into the Gmail spam folder. It matters, big time.
• There is no apparent limit on the number of email addresses you can request when signing up for Gmail as part of free Google Apps, but be sure to ask for plenty of them so you can get set up quickly from the get-go. Otherwise, you will need to cool your heels while awaiting approval for more addresses. A suggestion: Figure out how many email addresses you need (employees and volunteers) and then double that number. Even triple it, depending on how fast you think the demand may be for your organization. Be assured, as you use the service, you will find a growing need for more email addresses. (The Gmail admin panel is a breeze to use, by the way. And you can set up multiple individuals with admin privileges.)
• When setting up your domain email accounts, consider setting up your users at the same time with a general-purpose Google account with that same email address. At first, we “encouraged” users to set up their own general Google accounts but passed off to them the task of setting up the general Google account so they could use the same email address for accessing Google Docs and other Google apps. But then we realized how inefficient it was to do that, and that approach just seemed to confuse folks unnecessarily. This is what we do now: There is a central Gmail administrator who creates and manages all our domain Gmail accounts. At the same time that she sets up a new account, she also sets up the new user’s general Google account. The new users are then told they can use the same LSNC domain email address and password to access not only their LSNC email account but also their accounts for other Google apps. And to the extent that varied Google apps are integrated, even with the free apps (e.g., Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs) the shared login username and password makes it all pretty effortless.
• OK, so let’s say you have set up general Google accounts for your users. What other Google tools can we recommend? There’s lots to recommend, but we especially value Google Bookmarks, the vastly improved Google Reader and the underrated but very handy Google Notebook.
• With the formal debut of the Google Apps business model, be mindful that a dichotomy has emerged between the freebie families-and-groups service cluster and the for-cost small business and enterprise versions. This is not just a difference in things like storage space and support service levels. There are some basic Gmail functions and integration features that have long since debuted in regular Gmail and are available in the for-cost Google Apps services (e.g., mail fetcher and Google Docs integration) — but are still not yet available in the free domain-hosted Gmail accounts. LSNC hardly views these as deal breakers, but certainly you should assure your organization is getting what you need or want.
• The free version of domain-hosted Gmail integrates very nicely with Google Desktop. Yes, you can set your Google Desktop preference so it indexes your Gmail account, providing you with off-line access to all your email. Nice touch.
• That said, Google Desktop will index your Outlook contacts but not your Gmail contacts. (Boooooo!) It obviously would be extremely practical to be able to locate a contact to get an address or phone number via a Google Desktop search without having to open the Gmail interface, but there you have it … or shall I say, not.