MS Exchange -> Google Business
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Interesting - we went the other way. We used Google Business email (with Outlook integration) when we were a startup and switched to MS Exchange when we were acquired. For a couple of months we worked in hybrid mode, which was surprisingly painless. /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
I'm not aware of all the reasons for our change other than Exchange Server 2003 has some serious limitations and the cost to upgrade to Exchange Server 2016 was elephanting outrageous. I'm sure our CIO looked at quite a few options before pulling this particular trigger.
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
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I'm not aware of all the reasons for our change other than Exchange Server 2003 has some serious limitations and the cost to upgrade to Exchange Server 2016 was elephanting outrageous. I'm sure our CIO looked at quite a few options before pulling this particular trigger.
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
Yes, IMHO MS licensing tends to favor large enterprise clients. :( /ravi
My new year resolution: 2048 x 1536 Home | Articles | My .NET bits | Freeware ravib(at)ravib(dot)com
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dlhale wrote:
Just assume that the CIA reads everything.
:thumbsup:
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The company I work for is in the process of switching from our old internally hosted MS Exchange Server 2003 to Google Business accounts. Our IT department is proceeding person by person, department by department. They haven't reached my department yet but its imminent. I'm a long time Gmail / Google Drive user for my personal stuff and will want to access the new business account on all my various business devices (Win 7 PC & iPhone) as well as my personal devices (iPad, iMac & Chromebook) but still keep my personal Google account available on all devices. Likely won't be a problem... Has anybody already gone through this particular conversion? Any words of wisdom?
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
We made this switch in 2012, replacing in-house Exchange-clone servers (Zarafa). It's been great in terms of taking the job of maintaining mail servers away from our limited IT team. We made things unnecessarily hard for ourselves by not training or supporting users properly. I encourage you to invest in training up a few people at least, who can then support their colleagues. Most important point - if you do everything in Google Apps via the web, you will experience happiness (after the initial pain of adjustment). If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients), or the Google drive sync tool, or any other non-web tools, you will experience pain. The Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook is at best a sticking plaster. Do not rely on it long term. Especially since those who cling to Outlook will be the power users (probably your senior sales people and C-level execs) who will have the greatest trouble with GASMO. The exception here - the Active Directory sync tools work very well. Our company now splits into those who love GMail, a large number who don't really care either way, and a small number of Outlook zealots who hate it with a passion. If you want the migration to be successful, IMO you must mandate an end-date for Outlook and move everyone to the web clients. Support them with training, tips, hand-holding, bribes, whatever, but just do it. Oh, and the multiple-account support of Google stuff on web and Android phones is pretty much universally awesome. You should have no problems there. Everyone else should learn from how well this works. I suggest making use of the multiple users feature in Chrome, although you can usually switch within each app too.
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We made this switch in 2012, replacing in-house Exchange-clone servers (Zarafa). It's been great in terms of taking the job of maintaining mail servers away from our limited IT team. We made things unnecessarily hard for ourselves by not training or supporting users properly. I encourage you to invest in training up a few people at least, who can then support their colleagues. Most important point - if you do everything in Google Apps via the web, you will experience happiness (after the initial pain of adjustment). If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients), or the Google drive sync tool, or any other non-web tools, you will experience pain. The Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook is at best a sticking plaster. Do not rely on it long term. Especially since those who cling to Outlook will be the power users (probably your senior sales people and C-level execs) who will have the greatest trouble with GASMO. The exception here - the Active Directory sync tools work very well. Our company now splits into those who love GMail, a large number who don't really care either way, and a small number of Outlook zealots who hate it with a passion. If you want the migration to be successful, IMO you must mandate an end-date for Outlook and move everyone to the web clients. Support them with training, tips, hand-holding, bribes, whatever, but just do it. Oh, and the multiple-account support of Google stuff on web and Android phones is pretty much universally awesome. You should have no problems there. Everyone else should learn from how well this works. I suggest making use of the multiple users feature in Chrome, although you can usually switch within each app too.
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We made this switch in 2012, replacing in-house Exchange-clone servers (Zarafa). It's been great in terms of taking the job of maintaining mail servers away from our limited IT team. We made things unnecessarily hard for ourselves by not training or supporting users properly. I encourage you to invest in training up a few people at least, who can then support their colleagues. Most important point - if you do everything in Google Apps via the web, you will experience happiness (after the initial pain of adjustment). If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients), or the Google drive sync tool, or any other non-web tools, you will experience pain. The Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook is at best a sticking plaster. Do not rely on it long term. Especially since those who cling to Outlook will be the power users (probably your senior sales people and C-level execs) who will have the greatest trouble with GASMO. The exception here - the Active Directory sync tools work very well. Our company now splits into those who love GMail, a large number who don't really care either way, and a small number of Outlook zealots who hate it with a passion. If you want the migration to be successful, IMO you must mandate an end-date for Outlook and move everyone to the web clients. Support them with training, tips, hand-holding, bribes, whatever, but just do it. Oh, and the multiple-account support of Google stuff on web and Android phones is pretty much universally awesome. You should have no problems there. Everyone else should learn from how well this works. I suggest making use of the multiple users feature in Chrome, although you can usually switch within each app too.
We made the switch a few years ago and I agree with everything above. It was a pretty smooth transition, it's great not having to deal with an Exchange server anymore, and everyone I work with loves it now. Just about everything allows multiple logins - Gmail, Drive, Calendar, etc., even their mobile aps -- so you can use your personal and work accounts at the same time with no problem. I also agree that you should get everyone on the web clients. I don't even install Outlook on anyone's machines anymore.
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The company I work for is in the process of switching from our old internally hosted MS Exchange Server 2003 to Google Business accounts. Our IT department is proceeding person by person, department by department. They haven't reached my department yet but its imminent. I'm a long time Gmail / Google Drive user for my personal stuff and will want to access the new business account on all my various business devices (Win 7 PC & iPhone) as well as my personal devices (iPad, iMac & Chromebook) but still keep my personal Google account available on all devices. Likely won't be a problem... Has anybody already gone through this particular conversion? Any words of wisdom?
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
Okay, we gave up our mail servers a long time ago for GMail and Gmail/business. Best decision EVER! (I find the SPAM portion to be near perfect) We don't use Google Apps much, all of our clients use MSFT Office still. The multiple accounts, and multiple senders is a great feature. All my mail is configured in the web client, and that configuration carries to the phone. (as someone else mentioned). We have an Office 365 license, but the ONE TIME we needed to use the storage to move a large VM. It crashed in our region for the day. Google Drive handled it just fine. Reaffirming the Google Decision. HTH
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Okay, we gave up our mail servers a long time ago for GMail and Gmail/business. Best decision EVER! (I find the SPAM portion to be near perfect) We don't use Google Apps much, all of our clients use MSFT Office still. The multiple accounts, and multiple senders is a great feature. All my mail is configured in the web client, and that configuration carries to the phone. (as someone else mentioned). We have an Office 365 license, but the ONE TIME we needed to use the storage to move a large VM. It crashed in our region for the day. Google Drive handled it just fine. Reaffirming the Google Decision. HTH
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We made this switch in 2012, replacing in-house Exchange-clone servers (Zarafa). It's been great in terms of taking the job of maintaining mail servers away from our limited IT team. We made things unnecessarily hard for ourselves by not training or supporting users properly. I encourage you to invest in training up a few people at least, who can then support their colleagues. Most important point - if you do everything in Google Apps via the web, you will experience happiness (after the initial pain of adjustment). If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients), or the Google drive sync tool, or any other non-web tools, you will experience pain. The Google Apps Sync for MS Outlook is at best a sticking plaster. Do not rely on it long term. Especially since those who cling to Outlook will be the power users (probably your senior sales people and C-level execs) who will have the greatest trouble with GASMO. The exception here - the Active Directory sync tools work very well. Our company now splits into those who love GMail, a large number who don't really care either way, and a small number of Outlook zealots who hate it with a passion. If you want the migration to be successful, IMO you must mandate an end-date for Outlook and move everyone to the web clients. Support them with training, tips, hand-holding, bribes, whatever, but just do it. Oh, and the multiple-account support of Google stuff on web and Android phones is pretty much universally awesome. You should have no problems there. Everyone else should learn from how well this works. I suggest making use of the multiple users feature in Chrome, although you can usually switch within each app too.
VSpike wrote:
If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients),
I'm curious what you've ran into? I've been accessing my personal gmail using Outlook (via imap) for most of the last decade and never had any major problems.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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VSpike wrote:
If you try to use Outlook (or to a lesser extent IMAP clients),
I'm curious what you've ran into? I've been accessing my personal gmail using Outlook (via imap) for most of the last decade and never had any major problems.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
I think GMail's IMAP implementation is OK. Since labels are mapped to folders, you can see a message appear in multiple folders. Deleting/copying/moving usually does the right thing (removing/adding tags). The same can't be said for the GASMO tool! The problems we've have are related to very large mailboxes with lots of folders. The IMAP client in older Outlooks was very bad IMO. In newer ones it seems better, but they've remove the option to download headers only. Syncs seem to take a long time and often never complete. IMAP rates are throttled by Google which doesn't help large syncs. We also have some shared mailboxes that people use to replace the old "Public Folders" feature of Exchange. Dragging and dropping between accounts in Outlook is unreliable with IMAP and GASMO. A couple of users with large mailboxes have managed to break their treasured folder structure completely, and none of the available Google Apps backup systems do a decent job of restoring. This gets towards the main problem of this approach. You are meant to use labels in GMail in quite a different way to the traditional folder hierarchy favoured by some email users (me too, once upon a time). Tag emails for actions/status. Use search to find emails rather than filing them. If you stick with IMAP, you are never encouraged to transition to this native way of doing things, and will never get the full benefit. It also means that Outlook or IMAP users who try to view their email in Gmail web will have a horrible experience because it doesn't deal with large folder structures well. I've used GMail with Thunderbird in the past and it's a perfectly fine way of doing it, but after the pain of switching to the web client I would not go back. I liken it to doing something like switching from Delphi to C# and then trying to write C# like it's Pascal all the time instead of writing idiomatic C#. Possible, yes, but probably not ideal. Above is my personal slant - IMAP will probably work fine for lots of people. I was thinking about it from a point of view of an IT staffer who has to support a roll out. If you allow Outlook and other clients, it will cause more of a drag on support in the long run.
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I think GMail's IMAP implementation is OK. Since labels are mapped to folders, you can see a message appear in multiple folders. Deleting/copying/moving usually does the right thing (removing/adding tags). The same can't be said for the GASMO tool! The problems we've have are related to very large mailboxes with lots of folders. The IMAP client in older Outlooks was very bad IMO. In newer ones it seems better, but they've remove the option to download headers only. Syncs seem to take a long time and often never complete. IMAP rates are throttled by Google which doesn't help large syncs. We also have some shared mailboxes that people use to replace the old "Public Folders" feature of Exchange. Dragging and dropping between accounts in Outlook is unreliable with IMAP and GASMO. A couple of users with large mailboxes have managed to break their treasured folder structure completely, and none of the available Google Apps backup systems do a decent job of restoring. This gets towards the main problem of this approach. You are meant to use labels in GMail in quite a different way to the traditional folder hierarchy favoured by some email users (me too, once upon a time). Tag emails for actions/status. Use search to find emails rather than filing them. If you stick with IMAP, you are never encouraged to transition to this native way of doing things, and will never get the full benefit. It also means that Outlook or IMAP users who try to view their email in Gmail web will have a horrible experience because it doesn't deal with large folder structures well. I've used GMail with Thunderbird in the past and it's a perfectly fine way of doing it, but after the pain of switching to the web client I would not go back. I liken it to doing something like switching from Delphi to C# and then trying to write C# like it's Pascal all the time instead of writing idiomatic C#. Possible, yes, but probably not ideal. Above is my personal slant - IMAP will probably work fine for lots of people. I was thinking about it from a point of view of an IT staffer who has to support a roll out. If you allow Outlook and other clients, it will cause more of a drag on support in the long run.
VSpike wrote:
The IMAP client in older Outlooks was very bad IMO. In newer ones it seems better, but they've remove the option to download headers only.
Eeew. I used 2007 and 2010. If the header only option is removed in newer versions then it sounds like I've got another reason beyond the downgrades to the Todobar (only 1 months calendar shown, only 1 weeks appointments shown) to continue not upgrading my personal client. My main gmail account is set to download everything, but I also have a secondary gmail account that forwards to the main one. I don't need to download a second copy of messages from it; but I did need to connect to it in some way so I could sent from it when needed. Headers only keeps the pst small while letting me send from it normally. Gmail's search has always worked well enough I never did a lot of labels/folders. To keep it clean I had a marketing label years before google added the promotions tab to do the same. The other big one I have is receipts; mostly because otherwise finding them tended to result in a lot of noise in the search results. Searching from inbox would drown them in hits for a product from marketing messages from newegg/etc; and even just searching from within my everything else label was prone to noise from forum notifications or discussions with friends about tech. At some point I really ought to play around more with google's other category options. I never did much with them because they didn't align well with any of the points I considered cleaving my inbox into narrower subsets. For the last year or so I've also been procrastinating because after buying an android mail client that's claim to fame was being able to break your inbox down into dozens of finely demarcated categories I've been expecting some of their tech to get pushed into gmails web client as well.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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The company I work for is in the process of switching from our old internally hosted MS Exchange Server 2003 to Google Business accounts. Our IT department is proceeding person by person, department by department. They haven't reached my department yet but its imminent. I'm a long time Gmail / Google Drive user for my personal stuff and will want to access the new business account on all my various business devices (Win 7 PC & iPhone) as well as my personal devices (iPad, iMac & Chromebook) but still keep my personal Google account available on all devices. Likely won't be a problem... Has anybody already gone through this particular conversion? Any words of wisdom?
There are two types of people in this world: those that pronounce GIF with a soft G, and those who do not deserve to speak words, ever.
Few years back, I worked at a place which used Google Business for just email. I hated it. Have fun mixing your personal and business Google accounts.