For people like that, I find a proof of concept phase is usually worthwhile with any change. I had to go through this a little before committing our e-mail servers over to Google Apps by forwarding a copy of all e-mails from the POP provider to the corresponding Google Apps addresses. People could then test out reading e-mails before we ever converted. We worked out the kinks there and moved on. But I’m definitely open to continuing the discussion offline.

I’d also still say that this solution isn’t for everyone. It works for us – we’re small and can’t really afford any full time e-mail admins or to pay for hosted e-mail. We get quite a bit of value for our purposes, but not everyone will get that same value. I know that larger churches will have issues just due to the sending restrictions.

We at http://www.DurhamE.org have been using gapps since last Nov and have been very successful with many of the tools, the calendar powers our events section of the our website as well as internal calendars for sharing meetings,

email.. let’s just say it’s one less exchange server i need to support.. thanks gapps!

Our ministry teams have been using gdocs for collaboration, and gsites for the youth website and while the worship other ministry teams and uses gsites for an internal team communication tool.

so many tools at their disposal and all for free with little support on my end.

Tim Golden
http://twitter.com/goldeneye
http://www.DurhamE.org

The transition was very smooth, even for our non-technical users. Those using outlook noticed no real change (they where using POP to download to their machines already). Those using the web interface like Google’s version better.

One note about the send bulk emails. I would suggest not to send bulk emails with every one in a To, CC or BCC. This is not polite as some people may not really want their email known to every one else. Small groups is fine (5-10) but I would not do any larger.

I personally would setup a Linux server application to do that. The email would be sent directly from the server and not through Google. I know that it may be less convenient for the sender but it is better for the receiver.

We made the switch when I first came on board here at the Church. The Sr. Pastor was all for it.

I admit that the learning curve was steep, and it was difficult for some of the staff who are not tech savvy. But we held training classes and I sat with some of the staff one on one to get them up to speed first on Email, then Calendars, then Apps.

I have not found a better or easier solution for shared calendars. Some of our shared calendars include the Main Event Calendar, Room Scheduling Calendar, Vacation Calendar, and Operations Calendar. Then of course everyone has their own personal calendars that are shared between staffers for ease of creating appointments.

We finally share documents in Google Apps all the time. They don’t have to be prepared in Google Docs, you can just upload them for sharing.

I know that some of you may not agree, but I have full faith in Google for backups of email and all our docs. In fact I believe that they can do a much better job of backups than I can, with our current equipment and budget.

I love Google Apps!