Why would I want to keep Outlook when I switch to Google Apps Premier Edition? The big change is that now your email, contacts, and calendar are all available through Gmail, which sure beats having to log into the awful Exchange web access system. Once loaded the interface is no different than normal outlook, so no real loss there. In Google fashion, it’s an installer that walks you through each step in setting up your synced outlook profile. Of course, this is not a perfect solution (Google themselves refer to it as a tool to “ease migration” from Exchange to Google Apps) and currently not supported are tasks, notes, journals, or public folders, which may turn some off of the idea entirely. It also supports the importation of archived folders (archive.pst) and Microsoft Exchange Profiles, so that you don’t lose any archived data.
Transitioning to web based programs can be jarring for some people, both due to a few popular features of desktop clients (one common complaint we heard was the lack of a preview pane in Gmail) and having to go through the process of loading your browser in order to check your mail. One of the first complaints we heard when switching our aforementioned client to Google Apps was that the employees didn’t want that sudden change in their working interface. With us moving over to Google Apps in the near future as well, we figured now would be a good time to start looking at some of the issues people may be having switching over.įull disclosure: we are an Apps reseller, so it is in our interest to have people switching.
We’ve recently been dealing with a bunch of Google App related questions due to the movement of one of our clients to a Google Apps based operating environment.