VLE - Are you still using yours as much?

[mavhc]

https://support.google.com/a/answer/60218

 

Google groups for group discussions

[limawhiskey]

Just a few points

 

Lack of an address book

Lack of email encryption - have to use a third party at a cost

Outlook plugin is rubbish

Public folders (or similar)

 

We're using Contacts and the domain directory as an address book, with the domain settings controlling what is listed in the directory. Maybe it's lacking a feature that O365 offers?

 

As the Gmail 'experience' is designed for the browser and Google's own apps, the Outlook plugin being rubbish is neither here nor there for us, but I can understand if you're used to using Outlook that would make it a PitA. Frog mail was a pretty poor browser based email client by today's standards so Gmail is way ahead of what our staff are used to.

 

Not looked at email encryption yet, that's interesting. I agree with you on public folders though, if they are what I think they are. I just about have wrapped my head around Groups (Google's way of dealing with shared mailboxes) and once our staff got it, they were happy enough but I do think that aspect could be better.

 

Thanks for the update, just wanted to check I hadn't missed anything blindingly obvious

Edited August 11, 2016 by limawhiskey

[FN-GM]

We're using Contacts and the domain directory as an address book, with the domain settings controlling what is listed in the directory. Maybe it's lacking a feature that O365 offers?

 

Can you see lists of users and groups and then separate them into separate lists? For example our users in our MAT can filter between the schools and see other users.

 

Can you do a mail merge with gmail? Pretty sure you can't.

[asc]

Can you see lists of users and groups and then separate them into separate lists? For example our users in our MAT can filter between the schools and see other users.

 

Yes you can have multiple domains in one Google Apps OU - works well for allowing communication across a MAT whilst allowing schools to keep their own domain names.

 

Can you do a mail merge with gmail? Pretty sure you can't.

 

Mailmerge is possible in Google Docs & Gmail yes. We use a plugin called 'Yet another mail merge' (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/yet-another-mail-merge/mgmgmhkohaenhokbdnlpcljckbhpbmef?hl=en)

[asc]

Just a few points

 

Public folders (or similar)

 

For public folders, we create an account such as [email protected] or [email protected] and then add the relevant staff members as delegated access users. They can then have a 'Shared Mailbox' (https://support.google.com/mail/answer/138350?hl=en)

[maark]

At my previous school virtually all staff used outlook with the sync tool with no problem.