Comments on: Google Apps

By: Tony Huy

Tony Huy — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:00:42 +0000

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.

By: Matt Kerner

Matt Kerner — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:52:46 +0000

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.

By: Bob Cottrill

Bob Cottrill — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:51:02 +0000

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.

By: TroyL

TroyL — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:35:39 +0000

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.

By: joshbrown

joshbrown — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:59:15 +0000

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.

By: CindyK

CindyK — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:59:15 +0000

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.

By: Malcolm Lanham

Malcolm Lanham — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:36:52 +0000

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.

By: Mike Sessler

Mike Sessler — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:48:59 +0000

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.

By: Jason Adelsberger

Jason Adelsberger — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:08:15 +0000

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.

By: Ryan_B

Ryan_B — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 16:38:00 +0000

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.