Google Apps Admin Help

Welcome to Google Apps

We're excited that you're ready to set up Google Apps for your organization.

This setup guide will cover basic and advanced configurations for businesses and schools so you can get up and running smoothly.>

You can move through the 10 sections in order, or jump to a particular section using the links on the left.

If you're interested in live help, please join one of our Getting Started webinars. In these sessions, a Google Apps technical advisor will go through the steps to get you setup on Google Apps. They last approximately a half hour and are a great way to understand the basics of getting started as quickly as possible.

The sessions take place at the following times:

• Mondays at 1pm PST/9pm GMT
• Wednesdays at 9am PST/5pm GMT

Click here to register

You can also view the presentation from the webinar here.

Introduction

In this first section, we'll cover several introductory topics, including how to:>

• Sign up with the production domain name you intend to use
• Verify domain ownership
• Run a phased deployment (pilot), or switch now

You can skip this section if you purchased your domain name through GoDaddy.com or eNom.com when you signed up for Google Apps.

Did you sign up with the production domain name you intend to use?

If you have more than one domain name, make sure you choose which name you'll use for your Google Apps account carefully.>

We recommend that you sign up with the domain you utilize most, or the one that serves as your primary business identity for messaging and collaboration. For instance, use organic-city.com as your production domain name rather than test.organic-city.com.

Signing up for your production domain name will not disrupt your existing mail system or website.

If you need to receive mail at multiple domain names, you can configure a domain alias. See Section 4 for additional details.

Have you verified ownership?

Before you can set up Google Apps, you have to verify that you own your domain name. Verification does not disrupt your existing services, and ensures that only authorized administrators can manage Google Apps for your domain. >

Your Google Apps control panel will indicate whether or not you've verified ownership yet.

Are you ready to switch your organization to Google Apps?

Most organizations transition their users to Google Apps at one time. This is the simplest and most efficient method. >

Other domains opt to transition their users over time via a pilot or a phased deployment. This allows larger enterprises to evaluate Google Apps before rolling out to the entire organization, or to deploy in phases to subsets of their organization.

Pilots should be run on your production domain. Your pilot can run simultaneously with your old system, without causing service disruption.

Subsequent sections of this guide will walk you through this process.

Do a one-time switch

Many customers have moved to Google Apps in a matter of hours or days.>

Here are they key steps to this process.

• Create user accounts
  You can create users one-by-one or in bulk.

• Migrate old data
  You can move over any old data into Google Apps such as mail, calendar and contacts.

• Set up desktop clients and mobile devices
  You can configure desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook or mobile devices like Blackberries or iPhones.

• Set up mail
  Work with your domain host to switch MX records and deliver your domain's mail to your Google Apps account.

Proceed to the next section to get started with creating users.

Tell us how we're doing: Please answer a few questions about your experience to help us improve the Google Apps Setup Guide.

Implement a pilot or phased deployment

Setting up a phased process allows you transition to some of your users to Google Apps. Many customers have set up a pilot in a matter of hours or days.>

Contact a Deployment Specialist. We offer free assistance to qualified organizations that plan to roll out Google Apps Premier Edition within 3 months to more than 50 employees.

There are several key areas to the pilot process, and you can find additional details on these topics in the following sections of this guide.

• Set up mail
  Setting up mail routing properly allows your users to use Google Apps in their daily work. Pilot users' mail will be delivered to both Google Apps and your old mail system. Pilot users will be able to email non-pilot users, and vice versa.

• Migrate old data
  You can choose to migrate all of your data over to Google Apps or to start fresh without migrating any data. There are a number of ways to migrate mail, calendar and contacts, each with distinct benefits and trade-offs.

• Set up desktop clients and mobile devices
  You can set up desktop clients such as Microsoft Outlook or mobile devices like Blackberries or iPhones.

To get started, proceed to the next section.

Tell us how we're doing: Please answer a few questions about your experience to help us improve the Google Apps Setup Guide.

Verify domain ownership

To activate your account, you need to verify that you own your domain name. Verification does not disrupt your existing services, and ensures that only authorized administrators can manage Google Apps for your domain.>

We recommend that you verify ownership right away.

You can create a CNAME record or upload an HTML file without influencing your existing email accounts or web pages. These changes will either happen through your web host or your advanced DNS provider, and you may require their assistance.

Requirements

• Access to your advanced DNS is required for the CNAME method. You may need to contact your domain host
• Web hosting is required for the HTML method.

How to do it

You have two options to verify that you own the domain: create a CNAME record or upload an HTML file.

Click Activate Google Apps at the top of your control panel to select a method. Both methods require that you sign in to your account with your domain host.

If instructions for your domain host aren't provided, or you're having trouble creating your CNAME record, please contact your domain host directly. Google provides the necessary information for a CNAME record, but doesn't support your domain host's user interface beyond the CNAME record guide.

Once you've completed the appropriate steps with your domain host, be sure to click Verify to finish the process in the Google Apps control panel. You'll know when verification is complete by checking the status of your services. Next to Calendar, for example, it will say Active instead of Updating.

Do you want to sign up again with your production domain name?

If you've signed up a different domain name than your production domain, we suggest starting again. We don't currently support domain name changes to your Google Apps account.>

If you do continue testing on a non-production domain name, you'll need to create a new account with your production domain name once you're ready to deploy Google Apps to your organization.

Sign up for your production domain

If you have Google Apps Premier Edition on a non-production domain, you can cancel your free trial by visiting your control panel, clicking >Domain settings, and selecting the Account information tab.

Then, sign up with your production domain at http://www.google.com/a.

You will be directed to return to this setup guide once you've signed up for your new domain.