This weekend i finally decided to move one of my domains (saurers.com) to Google Apps. The main reason for doing this was that several of my family members have used different mail services and i didn’t want to maintain them any more. I was playing around with Google Apps some time ago but my ISP didn’t have the possibility to configure the MX records within the web interface therefor it was hard to move. Of course i would had the possibility to change the domain to an other ISP but i host several domains there and didn’t want to add another provider to maintain. For some time now the ISP allows to configure the settings within their web interface and this weekend i finally started to move.

One of the main questions for me was how the Google Apps and my current Google Account interact or work together. I couldn’t really find good explenations about that on the net therefor I asked a friend who already ported a domain to the service. The way google is handling the stuff is still a little bit confusing to me but i will try to explain it.

  1. You will have two Accounts that are complete independent from each other
  2. Both of them can have a mailbox, a calender, a docs, chat and a sites account (maybe more in the future)
  3. Google Apps services are independent from all other services of the same kind
  4. You may configure your current Google account to log in with your Google Apps credentials (may be useful as described later

This are some major points you should consider if you want to use Google Apps. Now lets start the process.

  1. Sign up for a new Google Apps Account @ http://www.google.com/a
  2. Go to you ISP and add the specific domains for your services and configure the MX entries as described within the help
    Special the MX records will take a little bit longer to be active (my took more than one day)
  3. Create your accounts for the domain (several possibilities you can even upload a config file for creating several accounts at once)

With thees steps (all are explained in detail in the help pages) the domain is configured but your not integrated with your old account and you have now at leas two mailboxes. If you want to hold them seperated this is ok but i wanted to integrate them therefor there are some more things to do.

  1. Google Accounts allow you to collect mails from different other Accounts via pop3 download and you will even be able to send other addresses (e.g. your old @gmail.com) through the new account. You can set up them at the settings of your new mail account.
  2. I wanted to move my calendar to the Apps account that special my family can see my appointments. Using SyncMyCal for several time now i just switched the sync settings from one of my clients to the new account. All Stuff was synchronized correct. On all other Clients i had to remove all entries befor updating the configuration to the new account otherwise it would have added all appointments several times. You can also export the calendar on you old account and import it on the new one if you don’t use synchronisation.
  3. If you want to be able to log in with the new App accounts to all other services you are using from Google (e.g. Reader) you have to add the new app account to your google profile. The profile can be configured under https://www.google.com/accounts/ManageAccount

I took me nearly have of a day to configure all the accouts for my family correct, but now i have just one point to maintain and it is much easier to help because all are using the same interface.

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