Google Apps Premier Edition Reference Guide for Administrators Last Updated: August 14th, 2008
Dear Google Apps Administrators, Welcome to Google Apps and the Premier Edition Free Trial! The mission of Google Apps is to design and deliver a progression of remarkable online applications that improve your organization's operational efficiency with communication and collaboration. To ease your organization's analysis of Google's hosted applications, we'd like to offer you a reference guide with information on several important topics that are commonly researched by new administrators.
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OVERVIEW Google Apps gives everyone at your organization a custom email address, tools for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, a shared calendaring system, and access to a flexible intranet system. Gmail Email with lots of storage, search tools, and integrated chat. Google Docs Create, share, and collaborate on documents in real-time. Google Calendar Coordinate meetings and company events with sharable calendars. Google Sites One-stop sharing for team information.
SETUP With your administrator account, you can access the Google Apps control panel and verify domain name ownership to activate Google services. If you haven't already signed up for Google Apps and created an administrator account, visit www.google.com/a to get started with an edition of Google Apps that fits your needs. How do I access the Google Apps control panel? The person who signed up your domain for Google Apps is the initial administrator.
PILOT Transitioning to Google Apps can be challenging for users who are unfamiliar with Google applications. To familiarize your users with Google applications without disrupting day-today business, we suggest running a Pilot. What is a Pilot? A Pilot is a test of Google Apps that is run in parallel with your existing email, calendar, and document systems. A Pilot will not interfere with your current set-up and will allow you and your users to test out the functionality of Google applications.
DEPLOYMENT After running the trial, you will have a much better understanding of what Google Apps can do for your organization. The next step in the process is to deploy the services and start using Google Apps as your Enterprise Solution. What are some key points I should look into for deployment? • Email Delivery Options: Google Apps has multiple methods of delivering mail (MX records, gateways, routing, etc) that require different configurations.
MAINTENANCE Congratulations on deploying Google Apps! Now that your users are communicating and collaborating with Google Apps, you still have some work to do. What is Maintenance? Maintenance, with regards to Google Apps, is the task of ensuring a positive experience for your users. As the administrator, you will also be responsible for managing user accounts and promoting the usage of Google Applications throughout your organization.
