Posts Tagged ‘google’

I’ve been exploring the features of Google Docs, and I can highly recommend it for any small business looking for a simple way to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, presentations and even calendars. And you can’t beat the price – its FREE.

If you are not already using Gmail to handle your domain’s email (I highly recommend this as well – see earlier post), then you will need to setup a Google account in order to use Google Docs. All of this is listed under the heading, Google Apps.

The Administrator(s) and/or document authors decide with whom to share each document. There are several ways to organize the documents, including folders. Alas, you can’t share folders. Go ahead and organize all of the documents you have access to, but they will not be located in the same folders for other users. This does allow for individual flexibility on how to organize and find your docs.

Google Docs provides a way to create new documents in addition to uploading documents. Microsoft Office document types are supported, as well as PDF uploading. There is a limit to the size of the files, the total storage space, and the number of users – but you can easily upgrade to a paid, enhanced version if you outgrow the free version.

The real power in Google Apps is in Forms and Sites, IMO. Forms are a powerful way to collect information, including automatically including user names and timestamps. Sites is a way to put your Forms, as well as an impressive array of Gadgets and page types, together to form a multi-page company Intranet. Sweet.

I have been test-driving Google’s email (“Gmail”), routed so that it uses my own domain. So far, it has worked great, though I let my hosting service do the heavy lifting as far as changing the settings where needed to get the routing done properly. My hosting service made this easy – so it required hardly any time on  my part.

I love that I am able to use my own domain, which means that I do NOT change my email address or lose the reference to my business website.

The reason I decided to give this a try is that I became frustrated with accessing my email from multiple locations – IMAP service was not a perfect fit. I also really liked Google’s approach to handling email in “conversations,” and it does a good job of linking separate emails appropriately.

If you have an exchange server, and it is working smoothly – I think you should stick with your investment. If your email is always “going down” or not working properly, you may want to experiment with Gmail. I recommend setting up a personal account and just using it for awhile. This will give you an idea of how it looks and feels. If you decide to make the change, Google even offers an easy conversion tool to move all of your existing email and contacts from Outlook and other software – to Google.

Next up, I will be experimenting with Google Docs!