Summary

Using Google Apps, your business will have access to a free system that allows an email account for every staff, shared calender, construct your own intranet and use of Google docs.

Google Apps - Email, calendar and more for free

Google apps is free suite of programs and is suited to small to medium businesses (up to a maximum of 100 staff). Google apps is made up of:

• Gmail account for every staff(using your domain name instead of gmail.com).
• Calendar - each staff member can share their calender
• Google docs - online word and spreadsheet. Great for collaborating and sharing documents
• Google sites - create an intranet site for your business for internal access only
• All applications are accessible using your mobile phone
• A tool to migrate your outlook emails to gmail

All of the applications are hosted by google online. This means your business does not have to look after any of the infrastructure or backups.

Gmail account for your business

Gmail is an online email client where you can read and send emails. Having your email online has its benefits:

• Mobility - login and view emails from anywhere as long as you have an internet connection
• Can send and receive emails using multiple email accounts such as john@mynewbusiness.com, contact@mynewbusiness.com
• 6gb to store your email - never delete an email again
• No more backing up emails - its all online.

Google Calender

The google calender is an excellent tool for businesses. The calendar allows you to share, invite or take control of other staff calenders. The google calender has the following features:

• Integrated with gmail - notifications and contacts are all inbuilt
• Notification by SMS - need to know if someone has edited their calender or invited you? Google will send you an SMS. Google can also send reminder SMS
• Mobile phone sync - you can sync your phone's calender with google's calender if using a BlackBerry (your phone company may apply data charges)

Google Docs

Think Microsoft Word and Excel but it's free and accessed online.

• Share and collaborate with staff on documents - the documents are stored online
• Security - You can decide who can view or edit your documents.
• Revision control - Every time a document is edited a new version is created. You can go back and view what has changed
• Notification - Setup automatic email notification of when a document has been edited

The word and spreadsheets are not as powerful as the Microsoft versions, but what they lack in power they make up in simplicity and the ability to share and collaborate for free.

Google Sites

Google sites is a very simple site builder that allows you to construct intranets for your business. You can build sites that contain all your internal policy and procedures, list commonly used document & templates and more.

• Quickly create intranet sites for your business
• Allow access to only your staff, or for public access

Requirements for Google Apps

You must have the following to access Google Apps

• A domain name (eg - www.mybusiness.com)
• Ability to setup DNS - This is an important step. This should be undertaken by a google small business solution provider
• Sign up

Accessing Google Apps

When Google Apps has been setup, accessing google apps is easy. Simply point your browser to:

start.mynewbusiness.com
email.mynewbusiness.com
cal.mynewbusiness.com
docs.mynewbusiness.com
sites.mynewbusiness.com

To find out more please visit http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/index.html

This article is written by Sam Steele, project manager at DeboSoft - a website and graphics design company and a Google small business solution provider. Need help setting up google apps and migrating outlook emails? - contact DeboSoft.