September 3rd, 2008
Google Apps
Posted by Greg Atkinson under Church 2.0, Churches, Communication, Companies, IT, Products, Random Thoughts, Web 2.0I’d like to find out how many of you use Google Apps at your church. I’ve heard of some churches (including very large ones) that have left Exchange and gone completely “Google”. How many of you have done that? How many are considering? How many would never leave Exchange?
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:09 am
We switched to Google Apps in July and love it! We’re a small-mid sized church (400) and were using just hosted pop email and didn’t have any kind of shared calendaring. Now we have shared calendars, but what has been even more powerful are the online docs. We put all of our important documents out there and during meetings we can all have the document up and work on it together, we can all see changes each other is making as they’re being made. We use it to track task lists for projects, develop series treatments, and are starting to look at the dashboard features for data analysis and dissemination. It’s amazing what all is offered for free. The switchover went smoother than I thought it would. I highly recommend it for any sized church.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:28 am
Our church switched to Google Apps over a year ago and have had a lot of success with it. As the technical arts director the maintenance time I spend with Google Apps is nothing in comparison to Exchange. We have had very little downtime with Google Apps. It can be frustrating when there is downtime because you have no control over the resolution of the issues, but you must rest assured that Google is a competent company who is out there working to get the issue resolved. Our ministry teams use the calendar and collaboration through google docs. I would recommend Google Apps.
September 3rd, 2008 at 6:39 am
Our tech and worship ministry is in the midst of switching some of our stuff to google apps. We started with calendar, and we love it. Being able to invite people and schedule people has been a great addition to the team. We are starting to convert some of our documents and such to google docs, but that will take a little while. So far we are liking the switch.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:08 am
We’re all Googly at Flamingo Road Church. But for a non-computer whiz like myself, the transition was brutal and so glad it’s over!
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
The downside to Google Apps is that you are removing any privacy as they do scan email and documents (see the advertisement on the sides). If that is acceptable, fine otherwise, find some ISP who is unlikely to do that.
Google’s revenue model is advertising and click-through. Not a bad model (I use google mail and have used google apps as well.)
If you are looking for a free “local” alternative, why not look at Open Office? It runs on pretty much any platform out there and is quite compatible with MS office.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:22 am
we’re in the process of switching to google apps at first baptist knoxville tn. e-mail was the big draw for us, as our previous e-mail provider had become terribly unreliable. calendars and documents are in the future for us.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 am
We’re in the process of switching, more for e-mail than anything else. Trying to get our DNS services squared away first, then mail, then hosting.
In regards to what Joel says, Google’s algorithms do react to what’s on the page, but I don’t really see that as scanning your e-mail/docs as much as what’s on the page. Also, there’s not really an easy to use free, local alternative for Mail that makes sense for a lot of smaller churches. That adds in the need to host some form of mail server locally, administer it, filter Spam, and manage the users. That’s something I actually want to get away from. Besides, we were using a hosted POP/IMAP solution before. This should at least give us a stable mail environment.
I’d like to hear more about how the staff are using the other shared features, though. That’s not on our roadmap right now, but if it has some potential, I’d like to investigate it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:33 am
Our church was recently using a virtual Exchange server setup, but some of the limitations prevented us from fully using it. now that Google can sync with iCal using CalDAV (http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=99355), we are moving to Google Apps. Those with iPhones and other devices can sync to a local client and then to their device(s) and services such as Plaxo.
One huge advantage that we see is that it will be easier to find volunteers to manage Google Apps, as it is easy to train - Exchange, on the other hand, isn’t. The other main advantage is that it will free up people to focus on other things than patching Exchange and maintaining more servers than necessary.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:09 am
We are use gmail, gcal, and often gdocs. No Outlook, but still fall back on Word and Excel.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:37 am
We have recently switched to google apps for e-mail (keeping our domain name) and are going to start using google docs more. Our secretaries have started using google calendar on their own because they like the sharing features so much. I personally use google docs more than I use Microsoft Office for Mac.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:42 am
You know… it’s something I have considered. Until last week.
The Google monster is leading the charge to gobble up whitespace which will make using wireless microphones tough. But here’s the real rub! They are advocating a policy change with the FCC that would CRIMINALIZE the unlicensed use of wireless.
What the heck is that about?
Until Google gives up this tack, I’m reconsidering my Google love.
kdl
September 3rd, 2008 at 11:38 am
We switched to gmail several months ago. We also use google docs for everything the staff and/or volunteers collaborate on as well as gcal for our corporate calendar.
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
I’ve been 95% of the way towards going this route. The replies here pushed it the last 5% and I started setting it up today. We’re a very small office and they don’t collaborate electronically much. I don’t expect to see Cal or Docs used.
Nice part is that a lot of our staff is P/T and don’t have PCs at the church. This will let me give them church accounts without rolling out PCs.
September 3rd, 2008 at 7:48 pm
We switched Upper Room over to Google Apps about 4-5 months ago and are very happy. Because we are a sub-ministry of a larger church, we had our own domain, and our mail was routed through the Exchange server. We always had issues with that setup, and far too many messages got lost.
Since switching, our e-mail is now reliable, and far more accessible. Until a recent change in our IT staff happened, the Exchange server was not accessible from outside the building, which was very frustrating. Now I can get my mail on my iPod Touch, my laptop or someone else’s computer via the web.
We also use Google Docs for our tech team schedule, our cue sheet, input list and several other things we need to share between staff & volunteers. I even set up a Google mini-site for support issues. I don’t miss Exchange for one second.
Though I’m not in charge of IT for the whole church, I spend about 95% less time actually managing our Google account as I did simply trying to get IT to support our group with various Exchange issues.
Though we’re in the process of an eventual migration to an XServe w/ Leopard server, I’m very happy w/ Google Apps. It’s been a great interim solution for us.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:36 am
My first entry into full time ministry was as the Technology Minister for a very large church. We put in an Exchange server and spent thousands on upgrading everybody to Office 2003.
In my new ministry, I have switched my personal email over to Google Apps and use Google Apps for office documents regularly, but I also have switched to a Mac so I use iWork all the time. As part of the executive team of my new ministry… we are looking at switching our email and starting to use Google Apps for all of our basic office documents. We were considering an exchange server, but have moved past this because of costs.
My only concern is Google Apps does not have a graphic layout app that can replace Publisher or Pages nor do they have an Access program that we can use for those that need Access. So we will still need to purchase Office licenses for some.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Our Church made the switch to Google Apps on June 24, 2008. We use it primarily for Email and Calendar, some folks use Remember the Milk for Tasks. The Pastors are beginning to use Google Docs because the sharing of those documents is very easy, and I have an informational Tech site up using Google Sites.
The switch was not seamless, there were some bumps in the road, all of which pertained to the differences in the user interface between Google and Microsoft products.
We are now using OpenOffice.org for use on our own computers.
As Mr. Lanham said above, Publisher can be problematic, and I am far from being a Publisher expert but one of the Pastor’s wives who is a Publisher Pro swears that OpenOffice Draw is very nearly the same, although OpenOffice Draw will not as yet open Publisher documents.
We have 56 users of Google Apps at this time.
September 5th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
I design Web sites for churches and often encourage them to sign their domain up through Google Apps. Your domain is set up at $10 a year with GoDaddy or eNom and the mail exchange servers is automatically configured with Google to give you 100 free Gmail accounts with your own Webmail login area for anyone@yourdomain.com
All Google apps are automatically configured to work with the site as well so incorporating them into your site is seamless!
There is an interesting case study on Google’s site as well about Arizona State University switching their entire IT Dept. e-mail & calendar setup to Google.
September 5th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I’m with KirkL.
Google’s attack on White Space and its deceptive “Public Interest Spectrum Coalition” and “free the air waves” web site has me pulling everything Google related.
September 11th, 2008 at 8:51 am
We’re a large church and we switched (sort of) last month. I have been using docs and spreadsheets extensively for the past year - but I have the feeling that most folks are going to slowly transition out of MS office over the next few years.
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Late response, but we’ve been on Google apps for about 15 months now and would never look back. We use spreadsheets for worship planning, docs for collaboration, email, IM, shared calendar. The transition was rough for some people, but now everybody loves it.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Very late response… but we use Google Apps. Hands down better for the non-sys admin. I’m was a software programmer before becoming the youth pastor and Exchange was still a pain to manage. Some MAJOR side benefits of email via Google Apps are (1) great spam and virus control (2) remote access for your staff without setting up your own POP3 or IMAP or VPN.