Making the Google “full-account” transition

The problem is one familiar to those who rely on an email address linked to their organization’s domain: They used the email address to set up a Google “consumer” account to take advantage of any number of Google applications, such as Google Docs, Google Reader, Google Voice, whatever. But then their organization got a Google Enterprise “corporate” account by adopting the Google Apps platform for that same domain. As a result, users found themselves with dueling or conflicting Google accounts linked to the same email address, and messages prompting them to choose, for example, whether they want to login into their personal consumer Google Docs account or to their corporate Google Docs account, part of their organization’s Google Apps account.

Adding annoyance to injury, users became chronically frustrated when they would login into their Google Apps account to use an application like Google Docs, but then had to do a separate login with the same email address to access another Google application that was not yet even part of the Google Apps platform, like Google Reader or Google Voice.

Since May, Google has signaled it would be moving purposefully toward single login integration of more Google applications. To do so, Google has been actively rebuilding its Google Apps infrastructure. But there is no free lunch to be had with this transition, since users eventually will have to go through some toil and trouble to resolve their conflicting consumer and corporate Google accounts.

That said, what Google now calls a “full account” transition, with one login to access all Google applications linked to one’s domain email address, is manageable. But it takes some attentive work at the individual user level because there is no magic button that will port your content or settings over from your Google consumer account to your Google corporate user account. You will need to slog through each application and decide what to do to reach Google account single-login nirvana. (Yes, that’s a joke.) You will want to get familiar with Google’s Data Liberation Front. (That’s not a joke.)

Early last month Google provided an early-adopter option to transition to the new Google Apps infrastructure, on a user-by-user basis within one’s domain. Google indicates it will force the transition this Fall.

Based on our experience at LSNC, I would recommend taking advantage of this option immediately, so that you can see, on a limited basis, exactly what happens as users make the transition. You’ll be glad you did. Our experience with a small group of early adopters was that it can be very understandably confusing about what to do with the conflicting accounts, how to assign a new email address to one’s conflicting Google consumer account, how to get one’s stuff over from, say, one’s consumer Google Docs account to one’s Google Apps Google Docs, and on and on. We spent several days troubleshooting a small set of user transitions, and we believe it will seriously help us with the global transition we plan to implement in a few weeks.

Trust me, you will not anticipate every scenario with every Google application, and you will feel frustration. For example, at LSNC we had migrated some but not all of our consumer Google Groups discussion groups (you know, “@googlegroups.com”) to our Google Apps domain (“@lsnc.net”). When we triggered the Google Apps full-account transition for a few early adopters, we didn’t think out in advance that those early adopters would no longer be recognized by the “@googlegroups.com” discussion groups, since for those few Google automatically changed the email addresses linked to the discussion groups to a temporary “transition” email address. As a result, those few users could not post to the group, although Google did forward messages from the group to their Google Apps Gmail accounts. What did we do when we realized what happened? We went into overdrive and completed the migration of all our Google Groups and brought them into our Google Apps domain.

Another simple example : You love Google Voice. Who doesn’t love Google Voice. According to Smarterware you cannot transfer your Google Voice number over to your new Google Apps account. But now it looks like Google will accept requests to transfer your Google Voice number if your organization has completed the full-account transition, although the user may need to wait a while.

May the transition be with you.