GoogleOffice: Corporate Email with GMail
Last edited December 15, 2007
More by Reto »
In many ways GMail is the cornerstone of my GoogleOffice. So for Week 1 I'll spend some time justifying GMail, before passing on some tricks. This is a big topic, so I'll leave most of the crossovers with other Google services for when I discuss them specifically later.
Summary

It was sometime around 1999 when email at work stopped being a useful convenience and started being a necessary evil. Until recently, web based email was Outlook's ugly step child. You would ever have considered something like Hotmail as a business email client (rightly so!) -- in fact people actually used Outlook Web Access for Exchange to access work email via the web(!).

GMail has instant search results and lets you filter and label, so you can quickly get to the important stuff in an overcrowded inbox. These days you expect to be online, so you can download just for a local offline 'cache' or backup. Do this and it will change the way you think of business email. Gmail is a strong Google offering. Gmail for your domain is a robust, web hosted, email alternative that still provides POP3 access for local copies.

Business Case

  • 2Gb online storage capacity. All your emails are accessible from a web interface, plus you've now got a robust offsite backup strategy.
  • Conversation View. One of GMail's most addictive features. 'Email chains' are displayed as conversations, grouped together with their replies, including all different participants over long durations. Once you've had this for business you'll wonder how email could ever have worked without it.
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  • Instant search. Search the complete email text; search by sender, recipient, date, or label. Search in Outlook is so ridiculous it's been relegated from both standard Windows search shortcuts -- 'tis neither F3 nor Ctrl-f (it's F4) -- my recommendation? Hold down Alt before you trigger your next search in Outlook.
  • One SMTP server for outgoing mail. If you're using a desktop client, you can use Google's outgoing mail server no matter how you connected.
  • Use Google Calendar within your company. Share calendars and events using your domain email addresses instead of separate GMail ones.
  • Great web interface. Better than anything your ISP will provide, better in fact, than any desktop client will provide.
  • Excellent spam filter. Invaluable in a business environment; I've had zero false positives and only 5% of spam slips into my inbox.
  • Presence and Instant Messaging. GoogleTalk and GMail chat provide presence and IM between all your workers (and your clients). All your IMs are logged in your email -- as part of the email conversations that spawned them. For privacy you can go 'off the record'
  • VOIP with Voicemail. GoogleTalk has VOIP functionality, and these days also lets you receive VOIP voicemail in your GMail inbox. Sweet.
  • Email aliases for business roles (and individuals).
  • Internal mailing lists.
  • Mobile phone access. Via GMail mobile access.
  • GMail for your domain is free.

    • Why not a normal GMail account?

  • For business email? Seriously, if it's work, you've got to be sending it from your business domain. Maintain your brand and professionalism while taking advantage of GMail functionality.
  • Hosted email is more stable than its public cousin.
  • Google Calendar is fully integrated -- more on this later.
    • How-To

    Get GMail for your Domain

    Happily, this process is straight forward. Go to https://www.google.com/hosted and click 'I'm Interested'. You'll need to be logged in on a Google Account. Answer a series of questions about your company, the most important are 'number of users' and 'why do you want it?'. Be honest. For tips on the latter, look above at the business case :)
    It'll take a couple of days to process, so far I've seen either 25 or 100 accounts provided. If you've got a requirement for more, contact Google -- they've provided GMail for domains for several universities already.
    Hints and Tips

  • Create and share a label in Google Reader specifically for internal broadcasting using Webclips within GMail.
  • Get mobile access to your important business emails. Creating a standard GMail account and use filter rules to auto-forward all important messages to this account. Auto-forwarding lets you use any number of any filter rules to forward messages.
  • 'Save searches' with browaer bookmarks. Perform a search in GMail, then create a bookmark in your browser. Opening this bookmark will open GMail with the search performed. This works for any complicated search -- like your two top clients in 2006: (label:BHP OR label:Woodside) AND (after:2006/01/01).
  • Similarly, you can save a bookmark for composing new messages.

    • For those of you who can't let go of a desktop client I know of three options:

  • Opera. Opera's mail client supports labeling exactly the same way as GMail. Point of fact, Opera was doing it first.
  • Hosted GMail Client (Unofficial). Never used this but could be worth a look.
  • Any other POP3 desktop email client. GMail provides POP3 access to your email so you can access it from any desktop client.
    • Useful Links

    hosted-gmail-client - Google Code
    code.google.com/p/hosted-gmail-client/
    Hosted-Gmail-Client
    Windows client for the Hosted Gmail service
    Use this windows client to access your Hosted Gmail and Google Calendar account. Within an enterprise setting, users are often used to windows clients rather than web-based ones. This application makes the switch to a hosted email solution easier.
    Feature Requests

    Better integration with Google Notebooks
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