Migrating Existing Email Accounts

At this point, I'll describe migrating email accounts, because most companies already use another email service. Click Migrations for an overview of the migration sources. The options there are Gmail, GoDaddy, another Google Apps account, Exchange Server 2003 to 2013, and Office 365. Select IMAP server for accounts for which Google doesn't offer a specific migration agent. You don't need an additional client on the source system with all sources.

Then, define the connection protocol. If the automatic detection doesn't work, select manually from the Exchange Web Services (EWS) or IMAP. Next, enter your email server's login credentials. Depending on which option you chose for Where are you migrating from? , this data is either the mailbox access data or – with Exchange and Office 365 – the Admin login data. It will take some time until Google migrates the data into Apps for Work and will depend on the amount of data and the connection to the existing mail server.

The service can currently transmit email messages, labels, and folders to Google Apps for data migration, but no calendar or contact data. The Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange (GAMME) client must be installed locally for this. Naturally, this is possible with a separate Exchange Server but not with Office 365 and IMAP accounts.

Custom Settings

Next, I'll look at security. To get started, click on the Security icon. Enable SSL and make sure that the system always switches to an encrypted connection if a user logs on to the Apps service. Here you can also define the password length and activate a second layer of security (known as two-step authentication) for logging on if desired. If this method is implemented, users log on using a confirmation code (provided by Google) in addition to their username and password. This approach may be a pain for many users, but it is very secure process for companies to ensure that nobody accesses company data without authorization.

Switch to the Company profile menu item on the dashboard. Here you can enter the various master data for the business, the time zone, and support. You can also determine whether your users are allowed immediate or delayed access to new features of Google Apps. A delay may be useful if you want to get an impression of the new possibilities yourself first or want to train the support. This is also the case with completely new apps. You can specify whether users are automatically allowed to use new apps or whether you have to share them first.

In Personalization , you can store the custom company logo, which can be seen (instead of the Google lettering) in all products and sites in the future. In Custom URLs , you still have the option to switch the URLs from Google Gmail, Calendar, Drive, and Sites to a custom URL for your domain. This is how, for example, to set up the http://gmail.domain.tld URL for https://mail.google.com/a/domain.tld . Note that you cannot switch to SSL for your own domain because there is no way to set your own SSL certificate for the URLs.

Simple User Management

In line with the current trend of working on a tablet or smartphone, there is the Google Admin console app in the Apple Store and Android Store. Don't expect too much from it at this point, however, because it currently only provides user management.

Install the app and log in using your Admin username and password. You will then see Add new user and Add new group on the dashboard. Alternatively, you can go to User on the left menu to reset the password or edit information.