Getting Started with Google Apps

This post was published long ago, when I was a student and an amateur blogger. The links might be outdated and content may not be useful anymore. Please read this content keeping its age in mind.

Here is the documentation i prepared for my client to get started with google apps.

Now that you have a new Google Apps account, you’re ready to take advantage of all the benefits of Google Apps Mail, Calendar, and Docs. We think you’ll find that these services will make communicating and collaborating with your coworkers easier and more efficient.
To get started with your new email and calendar services, follow the instructions in this guide to complete the following tasks:

Step 1: Access your new email and calendar services.
Step 2: Set up your email  (including personal contacts).
Step 3: Set up your calendar.

After you finish the setup tasks, browse the rest of this guide to learn more about using your new email and calendar services.

How to Get Help

If you have a question about Google Apps or your account that you can’t find in this guide, or you encounter an issue comment to this post.

Step 1: Access Google Apps

You can access Google Apps directly using these links:

http://mail.yourdomain.com – for Google Mail

http://calendar.yourdomain.com – for Google Calendar

http://docs.yourdomain.com – for Google Docs

http://sites.yourdomain.com – for Google Sites

 

Please note! You cannot go to http://gmail.com and login with your Google Apps Domain username and password – you need to use the link on the http://mail.yourdomain.com page or one of the links above.

Step 2: Set Up Your Email

To complete the switch from Outlook Mail to Google Mail, you might need to set up email filters, create an email signature, and import your personal contacts.

Set Up Email Filters

1. Click Create a filter at the top of your Mail window:

   

2. Enter your filter criteria in the fields:

   

3. Optionally, click Test Search to see which messages currently in Google Mail match your filter terms. You can update your criteria and run another test search.
4. Click Next Step.
5. Select one or more actions to apply to messages that match this filter’s criteria:

   

   Note: These actions are applied in the order in which the actions are listed. For example, you could choose to Forward matching messages to a specific email address, then Delete the messages.

6. Click Create Filter.

Create an Email Signature

You’ll need to create a new email signature in Google Apps.

1. Access Google Mail.
2. In the upper-right corner of the Mail window, click Settings.
3. On the General page, in the Signature section, create your signature.
4. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

Note:

• Your signature can be plain text only.
• You can’t add a corporate logo to your signature.
• You can set up only one signature.

Import Your  Personal Contacts

You can import all of your personal contacts in Outlook Contacts to Google Apps, using a comma-separated values (CSV) file. However, you can’t import any mailing (distribution) lists you saved in Outlook.

1. From the Address Book feature, click Import / Export from the Address Book Tools menu.
   The Import / Export Contacts page will be displayed.
2. Under Export:, leave the Choose a file format to export to: drop-down as "Microsoft Outlook (.CSV file)" and click Export Now.
   Your system’s File download utility will appear, asking if you want to open or save the file.
3. Save your file (which will have a default name of cc_addr_outlook.csv) to your hard drive so that you can import it into Google.  Note: If you have more than 3,000 contacts, you must create two or more "smaller" CSV files with fewer than 3,000 contacts each, and import these files separately.
4. Open Google Mail and click Contacts.
5. On the right, select Import, browse to the file on your computer, and then select Import.

Create Personal Mailing Lists

If you used personal mailing (distribution) lists in Outlook, you can recreate them in Google Apps, using your contacts manager. For details, see Add a Contact or Group.

Step 3: Set Up Your Calendar

To complete the switch to Google Calendar, you might need to set your time zone and other options, recreate your calendar events in Google Calendar, set a different default reminder time for events, and turn on invitation replies (notifications you receive when attendees accept or decline your invitations).

Set Time Zone and Other Options

The default time zone, language, and other locale settings for Google Calendar are:

• Time zone: (GMT-05:00) Eastern Time
• Display language for interface: English, unless you chose another language when your first accessed your account.
• Date format (for example, month/day/year): Depends on the language currently selected
• Time format: 12-hour clock (for example, 1:00pm)

To change the default time zone and other settings, follow these steps:

1. Access Google Calendar.
2. In the upper right Calendar window, click Settings.
3. On the General page, in the Language section, select a language.
4. In the Country and Your current time zone sections, select the appropriate options.
5. In the Date format section, select an option.
6. In the Time format section, select an option.
7. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

Recreate Your Calendar Events

The first time you access your Google Apps account, your calendar will likely be empty or show only a few new event invitations.

To recreate your calendar manually, you can can:

• Send new invitations for events you previously scheduled in Outlook
• Request others to send you new invitations to events to which you were previously invited

To import your calendar events from CampusCruiser:

1. Access your Personal Calendars.
2. Click on the Export button.
   The Export Event pop-up will be displayed; click Close to close this window without exporting events.
3. In 1. Please choose from the following available calendar(s), use the drop-down to select which of the calendars to which you have access should have its events exported.
4. If you have a specific date range in which the target events exist, then do the following:
   • In the Between field, click on the calendar icon to pick a date or enter a date in MM/DD/YYYY format as the start of the date range.
   • In the And field, do the same to set the end date of the date range.
   • Note that setting a date range is optional.
5. Click Export Event.
   The Export Event pop-up will perform the export process; in a moment, your browser will give you an option to save the resulting file to your hard-drive.
6. Click Close to close the Export Event pop-up.

Import events from iCalendar or CSV files into Google Calendar

1.  

2. To import events from TimeCruiser, iCalendar or CSV files, just follow these steps:

3. Click the Add down-arrow button at the bottom of the calendar list on the left side of the page, and select Import Calendar.
4. Click Browse and choose the file that contains your events, then click Open.
5. Select the Google Calendar where you’d like to import events, then click Import.

Please note that recurring events may not be recognized when importing events from CSV files. In this case, individual items will be created for recurring events that fall between the dates you’ve selected.

Set Up Event Reminders and Invitation Replies

By default, the event reminder is turned off for Google Calendar. You can turn reminders on, and choose whether to receive a pop-up notification or an email notification:

1. Access Google Calendar.
2. In the upper-right corner of the page, click Settings.
3. Click the Calendars tab.
4. Under My Calendars, click the Notifications link for your calendar. For example:

   

5. In the Event reminders section, click Add a Reminder:

   

6. Set reminder options.

   

7. In the Choose how you would like to be notified section, select the email check box for Invitation replies.

   

8. Click Save at the bottom of the page.

How Google Apps Mail Is Different

The following are some key features that make Google Mail different from Microsoft Exchange

Email Conversations Instead of Multiple Messages

Rather than listing each message reply as a new message in your Inbox, Google Mail groups a message and its replies in a conversation, which is listed only once. Opening a conversation shows all its messages in a neat stack, which you can easily collapse or expand. When a new reply arrives, the stack grows and the conversation is marked as unread, indicating there’s something new to look at. Grouping messages this way allows you to quickly retrieve all messages within a thread and reduces inbox clutter.

Here’s how a conversation appears in your Inbox:

Here’s what an opened conversation looks like:

Labels and Stars Instead of Folders

Instead of organizing messages in folders, you can organize your Google email conversations by applying labels. The conversation remains in your Inbox with the label clearly shown. You can list all conversations associated with a label, similar to opening a folder of messages. But unlike with folders, you can view all conversations in your Inbox at once, r

egardless of label. And if a conversation applies to more than one topic, you can give it multiple labels, retrieving it with any label.

The "stars" feature provides another way to categorize and access messages. Simply click the star icon to the left of any message to highlight it. You can then display any starred messages by clicking Starred in the left pane.

Archiving Online Instead of Saving to Your Desktop

With Google Apps Mail, you no longer risk running out of space for storing email. Instead, you get 25 GB of online storage space for just your own email and attachments, all hosted on Google’s secure servers. With that much space, you no longer need to save messages on your desktop in [personal folders (PST files)/an email Archive] to free up disk space, but can archive messages online instead. An archived message is removed from your Inbox but you can still find it later by viewing All Mail or using search. Or, add labels to messages before you archive them for even easier retrieval.

Google-Powered Search

Google Mail features the same powerful search technology used on the Web to perform accurate keyword searches of all of your email and attachments. Search by keyword, label, date range, or a host of other options. By also archiving messages, you can instantly find any message you’ve ever sent or received, without having to create elaborate folder structures or keep unwanted correspondence in your Inbox.

Using Email

Send a Message

1. Access Google Mail.
2. In the pane on the left, click Compose Mail.
3. In the To field, enter the first few letters of an attendee’s full name to look up the address in your corporate directory.
4. Enter a subject and the message.
5. To add a file attachment, click Attach a file, and then browse to the file on your computer.

   

6. Click Send.

At message appears at the top of the Mail window, confirming that your message was sent.

Reply to a Message

You can reply to just the sender or to all recipients of a message.

1. Open the message or conversation. If the message is part of a conversation, open the conversation and select the message to reply to.
2. At the bottom of the message card, click Reply or Reply to all.

   

3. Optionally, add other email addresses to which to send the reply.
4. Enter your reply in the message field.
5. At the bottom of the message card, click Send.

Forward a Message

You can forward a single message in a conversation or an entire conversation.

To forward a single message:

1. Open the message. If the message is part of a conversation, open the conversation and select the message to forward.
2. At the bottom of the message card, click Forward.

   

3. Enter the email addresses to which to forward the message, and add any notes in the message field.
4. If the message has attachments, you can choose not to forward them by clearing the check box next to the file name, below the Subject field.
5. At the bottom of the message card, click Send.

To forward an entire conversation:

1. Open the conversation.
2. At the right of the conversation view, click Forward all.

   

3. At the bottom of the message card, click Send.
   Note: All messages in the conversation appear in a single message card to the recipient. Each message is clearly marked, and messages are listed in order from oldest to most recent.

Print a Message

You can print a single message in a conversation or an entire conversation.

To print a single message:

1. Open the message. If the message is part of a conversation, open the conversation and select the message to print.
2. Click the down arrow to the right of Reply, and then click Print.

   

   A printer-friendly version of the message appears.

3. Use your web browser’s Print options to print the message.

To print an entire conversation:

1. Open the conversation.
2. At the right of the conversation view, click Print all.

   

   A printer-friendly version of the conversation appears.

3. Use your web browser’s Print options to print the message.
   Note: Each message in the conversation prints on a separate page.

Using Your Calendar

With Google Calendar, you can create a calendar event in multiple ways: using the Create Event link, clicking on the calendar, or using the Quick Add feature.

Create an Event

To create an event:

1. Log in to your Google Calendar.
2. In the upper-left of your calendar, click Create Event to open the event details page.
3. Enter details, such as recurrence, attendees, an agenda, and a reminder.
4. Click Save.

Or, click on the calendar:

1. Click a spo

   t on your calendar to create a 1-hour event, or click and drag to create an event of more than 1 hour. Then type the event title in the box. For example:

   

2. Click Create Event to publish the event, or click edit event details to invite attendees, add an agenda, and so on.

Or, use Quick Add:

With Quick Add, you can type text such as "Meeting with Jane at 2pm next Wednesday," and Quick Add enters a new event on your calendar. If you type the full email address of an attendee, such as name@matsbelgaum.in," Quick Add adds the attendee to the guest list and asks you if you want to send an invitation to the attendee.

1. In the upper-left corner of your calendar, click Create Event to open the event details page.
2. Type a description of your event.
3. Click the plus sign.

Invite Attendees and Enter Event Details

If you’ve already published your event, you can edit its details by clicking the title of the event on your calendar:

Note: Once you’ve finished entering event details, click Save at the bottom of the event details page.

To invite attendees:

1. Open your event.
2. Click Check guest and resource availability.

   

3. In the Find a Time window, in the Attendees field, enter the first few letters of an attendee’s full name to look up the address in your corporate directory.
   Important: You can’t invite add email list (mailing list) to the attendees list. If you do, the members of the list won’t see the event on their calendars. However, you can create a contact group instead, using the contacts picker, which allows you to choose contacts from your corporate directory. You can then add that group to the attendees list.
4. In the Find a Time window, check availability of attendees. This window shows the free/busy information for any employee, even those still using Outlook. If necessary, use the options in the window to change the time for your event.
5. Click OK.
6. Alternatively, you can invite attendees as follows: In the Guests box on the right, enter the email addresses of the people you’re inviting, or click the Choose from contacts link to open the Contacts Picker, with which you can find addresses of your Google Apps Domain, or add a contact group that you already created.
7. Optionally, in the Guests box on the right, let attendees invite more people to your event or view who else was invited.
8. Click Save.

Google Calendar asks you whether you want to send invitations to the attendees.
Your attendees can respond to the event and leave comments in the event details.

To book a room or other resource for your event (depending on which resources are made available):

1. Open your event.
2. Click Check guest and resource availability.

   

3. In the Find a Time window, under Where, do either of the following:
   • Start typing any part of the room or other resource’s name in the "filter room" box. A list of matching resources appears in the list. For example:

     

   • Browse the list to find the room or other resource you want to book. For example:
     
4. Check the icon to the left of the resource name to see if it’s available during the time of your event:

   – Resource available

   – Resource not available

5. To see all the free/busy times for a resource, select the resource in the list and then click Add. The resource appears in the attendees list. If necessary, use the options in the window to change the time for your event.
6. To book the resource, make sure it’s in the attendees list, and then click OK.

To set a reminder for your event:

1. Open your event.
2. In the Options box on the right, choose the type of reminder you want (pop-up or email message) and when you want to receive it:

   

3. To add more reminders, click Add a reminder.

To set up a recurring event:

1. Open your event.
2. Select an option in the Repeats drop-down list:
   

Add an Attachment to an Event Invitation

At this time, Google Calendar doesn’t let you add a file attachment directly to an event invitation. However, you can add a link to a document on the intranet or to a document you created in Google Docs. If you want to attach a Microsoft Office document, you can upload it first to Google Docs (which converts it to the Google Docs format), and then add the URL to the Google Document to your event.

1. Open your event.
2. Copy and paste the URL to the document in the Description field:

Note: Alternatively, you can do either of the following:

• Send the attachment in a separate email message to attendees.
• Schedule the event through Google Mail: Compose a new message and attach the file. Then click Add event invitation and enter information about the event.

Share Your Calendar

By default, your "free/busy" calendar information is shared with everyone in the UNE.edu domain. You can share additional information with everyone or just specific employe

es, or stop sharing all calendar information.

1. Access your Google Calendar.
2. In the My calendars list on the left, click the down-arrow next to the appropriate calendar, and then select Share this calendar. 
3. Select the sharing options you want to use for your calendar.

View Another User’s Calendar

If other users have shared their calendars with you, you can add them to your list of shared calendars. If a user hasn’t yet shared his or her calendar with you, can can send a request to that person.

1. Access your Google Calendar.
2. In the Other calendars box on the left, click the Add down-arrow, and then select Add a friend’s calendar.

   

3. Enter the appropriate email address, and then click Add.
   If the user has shared his or her calendar, it appears in your list under Other calendars, and the user’s events appear on your calender. 
   Note: To hide or show the user’s events on your calendar, simply click the calender in your list.
4. If the user has not shared his or her calendar, a page appears, on which you can send a request to the user. Edit the default message if you like, and then click Send Request.

Print Your Calendar

1. Make sure the calendars you want to print are selected in your list under My Calendars. If not, simply select the calendars to highlight them.
2. At the top of the calendar view, select the view you want to print; for example, Day or Week:

   

3. At the top of the calendar view, click Print.
   The Calendar Print Preview window appears, on which you can select a font size, page orientation, and other options.
4. Select the options you want, and then click Print.

Create a New Calendar

In addition to your account’s primary calendar, you can create any number of secondary calendars. Each calendar you create appears in your list under My Calendars.

1. Access your Google Calendar.
2. In the My calendars box on the left, click Create. 
   The Create New Calendar window appears.

   

3. Enter a name for the calendar. You can also select a time zone and sharing options for the calendar.
4. When you’re finished setting up the calendar, click Create Calendar.

Note: The number of calendars you can create at one time is limited. If an error message appears after you create several calendars, wait 24 hours, and then try again.

Managing Your Contacts

About Your Contacts

Your contacts in Google Apps fall under one of the following two categories:

• Personal contacts: If you imported your personal contacts to Google Apps (using the instructions in this guide), you can use the Google Apps contacts manager to access all of these contacts and add new contacts and contact groups. You can look up a contact to find email addresses and personal profile information, as well as quickly list all of the email conversations you’ve had with the contact.
• Corporate contacts: The email addresses of all your personal contacts, mailing lists, and outside contacts (such as vendors and suppliers) were added to Google Apps. You can access these addresses when you compose and email message or schedule an event, using either auto-complete address entry or the contacts picker.

Use Auto-Complete Address Entry

Google Apps contacts manager knows the addresses of all your personal contacts, mailing lists, vendors, suppliers, and so on. In addition, it automatically remembers email addresses of other people outside of your Google Apps Domain with whom you’ve corresponded. Therefore, when you start typing an address in an email message or event invitation, the addresses of personal contacts, employees, and anyone with whom you’ve corresponded automatically appear.

Use the Contacts Picker

The contacts picker lets you select any of your personal or corporate contacts when composing and email messages or scheduling an event. With the contacts picker, you can search for contacts using auto-complete address entry, or browse the list

To access the contacts picker when composing and email message:

Click the To: link:

To access the contacts picker when scheduling an event:

In the event details window, click Choose from contacts under Add Guests:

View Your Personal Contacts

1. Log in to Google Apps.
2. On the left, click Contacts.
   Your contacts list appears.
3. To view a contact’s information, select its check box.

Add a Contact or Group

To add a contact:

1. View your Contacts list.
2. Click the New Contact button in the upper-left corner of the contacts manager.
3. Enter your contact’s information in the fields. For additional fields, click More.
4. Click Save.

Note: Each time you reply or forward an email message, or move a message from the Spam folder to your Inbox, contacts manager adds the email addresses to the Suggested Contacts area of your Contacts list.

To add a contact group using personal contacts:

1. View your Contacts list.
2. Click the New Group button in

   the upper-left corner of the contacts manager.

3. Enter the name of the group.
4. Click OK.
5. In the Contacts list, select the contacts you want to add to the group.
6. Open the Groups drop-down list at the top of the pane on the right.
7. Select the group to which you want to add the contacts.
   
   Note: When sending email messages or inviting attendees to an event, you can enter the name of the group in the To field, instead of entering each contact individually.

To add a contact group using the contacts picker for corporate contacts:

1. Open the contacts picker by doing one of the following:
   • If you are composing an email message, click the To: link.
   • If you are creating an event invitation, under Add Guests, click Choose from contacts.
2. In the Search contacts box, start typing the name of a contact you want to add to the group. Then click the name to add it to the list below:

   

3. Continue adding contacts to the group.
4. When you are finished, click Save as Group.
5. Enter the name of the group, and click OK. For example:

   

6. To add the group to your email message or event invitation, click Done.

Note: You can quickly invite the same group to any future events you schedule in the future:

1. In your invitation, click Choose from contacts.
2. Selecting the group in the drop-down list in the contacts picker:

   

3. Click Select all:

So now you are familiar with using Google Apps. If you are facing any difficulties, feel free to comment to this post