Google Apps for Business: Clients

As I mentioned in my post about the configuration of the backend of Google Apps for Business, this post is about how to configure desktop and mobile clients to be used with Google Apps for Business.

Configuration of Apple Mac OSX

Mac OSX has already integrated Google Accounts out of the box. So all you need to do is adding your personal Google Account.

To do so, do the following Steps:

1. Go to Mails, Contacts and Calendars Tab in System Preferences
2. Add a new account (by clicking on +)
3. Choose Google as account provider
4. Enter the e-mail address you previously configured in Google Apps for Businses admin panel
5. Enter the password for the given e-mail address
6. Confirm dialog by pressing OK-button

After you have completed these 6 steps your Google account should be added to Mail, Calendar and Contacts.

If you have configured additional calendars in Google calendar, go to https://www.google.com/calendar/syncselect and select all the calendars you d'like to sync to your Apple Calendar. Confirm the selection and wait some seconds/minutes until the additional calendars appear on your iPhone calendar.

Configuration of iPhone

To setup your Google Apps for Business Account on Apple's iPhone, do the following steps:

1. Go to Mails, Contacts and Calendar in iPhone Settings
2. Navigate to Add Account
3. Choose Microsoft Exchange as account type
4. Enter the e-mail address you previously configured in Google Apps for Businses admin panel
5. Enter the password for the given e-mail address
6. Enter a description for this account (e.g. Gmail)
7. Click on Next and wait, until the account is verified
8. After some seconds you will be prompted to enter additional data
9. Enter m.google.com into the server field
10. Enter your e-mail address into the username field
11. Click on Done and wait, until the account is verified and added

After you have completed these 11 steps your Google account should be added to Mail, Calendar and Contacts on your iPhone.

If you have configured additional calendars in Google calendar, go to https://m.google.com/sync and select all the calendars you d'like to sync to your iPhone calendar. Confirm the selection and wait some seconds/minutes until the additional calendars appear on your iPhone calendar.

You're done now. You should now be ready to use your Google Apps for Business Account within a webbrowser of your choice, your iPhone and your Mac OSX desktop computer.

If you have any questions concerning Google Apps for Business which are not covered by my posts or if you have any wishes concerning the topics of my follow-up posts, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Google Apps for Business: Backend

As I mentioned in my post about the registration for Google Apps for Business, this post is about how to configure Google's service to use it with your custom domain.

Configuration of MX entries

To let Google handle e-mails from your custom domain, you need to adjust the MX entries for your domain. To do so, you need to get in contact with your hosting provider and let them know, that they should set the following MX entries for your domain.

Name/Host/Alias	Time to Live (TTL)	Record Type	Value/Answer/Destination
Blank or @	300	MX	1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Blank or @	300	MX	5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Blank or @	300	MX	5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Blank or @	300	MX	10 ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
Blank or @	300	MX	10 ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM

There are some hosting providers where you should be able to adjust the MX entries on your own using the provider's configuration panel.

After the MX entries have been updated, it may take up to 24 hours until the changes take effect. From then on all the emails sent to your domain should be redirected to Google's mail server.

Configuration of e-mail addresses

Now it's time to configure the e-mail addresses you want to use with your domain. So let's assume you need two e-mail addresses for your custom domain. The one you defined during the registration process (as it was describe in my post about the registration for Google Apps for Business) and another which you are going to use for newsletters and so on.

Organization & users

To configure these 2 e-mail addresses, login to Google Domain Management (https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/yourdomain whereas yourdomain needs to be replaced by your custom domain. After being logged in, switch to "Organization & users" tab. There sould already be a user listed on this screen with the e-mail address you provided during the registration process. Open this user and scroll down until you find the section called "Nicknames".

Click on "Add Nickname" to add another alias which you are going to use for newsletters (e.g. newsletter@yourdomain.com). From now on, e-mails sent to either mail@yourdomain.com or newsletter@yourdomain.com are redirected to your mail inbox.

You're done now. In my next post I am going to explain you how you need to configure your desktop and mobile clients to use them with Google Apps for Business.

If you have any questions concerning Google Apps for Business which are not covered by my posts or if you have any wishes concerning the topics of my follow-up posts, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Google Apps for Business: Registration

As I mentioned in my introduction post about Google Apps for Business, I will start a series of posts about how to setup and configure Google Apps for Business.

In today's first part I d'like to show you how to register for Google's Service.

Registration

The registration is splitted up in 3 steps.

Step #1

Registration Step #1

To register for Google Apps for Business, go to http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/ and click on "Start Free Trial" on the top right corner.

Now you need to enter some information about yourself or your company. If you d'like to use it for your private organization or for private use only, you can enter your name as organization name.

After you have filled out all the necessary fields, click on "Next" to switch to the following step.

Step #2

Registration Step #2

On the next page you need to decide whether you d'like to use your own domain with Google Apps for Business or a complimentary mygbiz.com domain. I would recommend you, to go with a custom domain (e.g. yourname.com), because it enables you to switch to another e-mail provider somewhen in the future without changing your e-mail address. If you choose to go with a custom domain you'll later need to prove that you're the owner of the page. You may choose between different options to do that. I preferred to do it by uploading a index.html provided by Google to my domain's main HTTP directory.

Step #3

Registration Step #3

On the final page of the registration process you need to set your main user for Google Apps for Business. I would recommend you, to use your main eMail account for the domain (doesn't matter whether you decided for the custom domain option or the complimentary mygbiz.com option in step #2). The main account is used to sign in to Google Apps for Business administration console and for all other services used with this account (e.g. e-mail, calendar, contacts, ...). Finally you need to set a password for your main account and enter the captcha value in the field below it. Before you click on "Accept and signup" make sure that you marked the checkbox saying that you accept the terms of service.

You're done now. In my next post I am going to explain you how you need to configure your Google Apps for Business account to use it with your custom domain.

If you have any questions concerning Google Apps for Business which are not covered by my posts or if you have any wishes concerning the topics of my follow-up posts, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Google Apps for Business: Introduction

© Google Apps for Business

Some weeks ago I discovered Google Apps for Business, which provides cloud based services like Email, Calendar, Contacts, etc. which can be accessed from anywhere and from any device.

It is intended to be used by companies and organizations, but can also be used by private individuals.

The main advantages of Google Apps for Business over Google Apps for Private are the following:

• Use of your private Domain (or even multiple Domains)
• 25GB of storage for Google Mail
• A great control panel with a lot of configuration options available
• Better and faster support
• 99.9% uptime guarantee
• Disable ads in web interface

After I've used it for a few weeks, I have to say that I'm thrilled by the functionality and reliability of these services.

During the next few weeks I d'like to start a series of posts about how to set up Google Apps for Business and how to configure it on the following devices:

• Apple iPhone
• Mac OSX Mountain Lion (Mail, iCal, Address Book)
• Windows 7 (Outlook 2010)

If you have any questions concerning Google Apps for Business which are not covered by my posts or if you have any wishes concerning the topics of my follow-up posts, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.