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By robert, February 8, 2010 6:03 pm

I’m issued with an email account with Outlook Web Access (OWA) for my school email address (hosted by EMBC).  I don’t actually use it much – I prefer to use my Google Apps Gmail account as a client for my work address in preference to Outlook (which I just can’t make myself like) or the Outlook web interface.

I’d only recently noticed that the interface you get depends on the web browser you use.  If like me you use Firefox as your primary browser at work, a huge chunk of functionality is missing already (gee thanks Microsoft!).  The screen grabs below give an idea of the differences.

Straight away I’m using a clunky interface that looks like something from the Nineties to manage my email.  Compare that to Google mail which looks the same in IE, Firefox or Chrome (and I have all 3 browsers installed on all my laptops!).

I was going to write a comparison of the two platforms but it’s hard to find an aspect that OWA excels at.  Contact management is a joke, the PIM functions make me want to stab myself with a biro in frustration and anyone who has used Google mail knows the advantages of tagging mail versus folders.

Most teachers work as much from home as they do from work, if not more.  I know I do.  I like to have access to my emails from home and when I visit other schools.  All of my email that is, not the last two or three in my inbox.  I never take my laptop home – who’d want to use that piece of junk in preference to my own modern machine – which means I need access to email in the cloud.   Look at the generous mail allocation I get from work versus Google Apps email – I can search through archived emails and contacts with ease using the Google interface, without having to fire up a desktop mail client to achieve the same result.  It might help if EMBC gave you a reasonable amount of space – 100Mb is nothing, I’ve sent more email than that in a day!

(Compare that to the standard space allocation provided with Gmail and you see a world of difference.)

Fortunately Google Mail will retrieve emails from my work address, and send replies that look as though they have come from my work address, so I don’t have to soil my hands with Outlook Web Access (or a desktop client).

Until Microsoft comes up with a better interface that works well with Firefox, and EMBC can give us sufficient storage, I’ll continue to use the Google mail interface as my primary mail client.  What’s your email client of choice and why?

Comments

By Rob, December 24, 2009 9:00 am

I’ve used Google Apps for my domain, and until recently I wondered why I could have two separate Gmail accounts on the one login.  I’ve read various explanations of how Google accounts worked but it wasn’t until I disconnected my Google Apps account from my Google Account that the truth sank in.

I started with a Google Apps account and gradually added Google services to it.  I always assumed that I had one Google account, and that as administrator of my Google Apps domain, that I could reset the password etc easily if I was hacked.  Not so, because what I actually had was two Google accounts that had the same login details and the same password.

It suddenly made sense why PicasaWeb would not tag my images using my Google Apps contacts, since these were two separate contacts lists on two separate accounts.  I found Google Docs I had contributed to in my Google account, whereas most of my work documents were in my Google Apps account.

As a solution I migrated all my email and contacts to my GMail account (on the Google account).  I could now tag my Picasaweb photos using my contacts in my address book.  The contacts were also present in Google reader as well so I could now email articles to my friends.  It made sense to have all my services in one common account but this created a problem.

If you’ve used GMail to send email from a different address to your own, some recipients see a “on behalf of” message – e.g. From: userxx@googlemail.com on behalf of userxx@domain.com.  I didn’t think this looked very professional but Google has a solution.  Using the technique recommended by Google I set up another sending address but using the Google SMTP server with my Google Apps login details.  Now (as intended) I can send email from my GMail account and it looks like it came from my Google Apps account, and as a bonus an extra copy of outgoing mail is saved in my Google Apps accounts.

I’m not sure that using my GMail account is as professional as using a Google Apps account, but to recipients of my email there is no distinguishable difference.

There is very little operational difference between Google Apps email and regular GMail apart from the fact that the contacts list for Google Apps accounts are not shared with other Google services.  You can also add extra storage to a regular GMail account but this is not possible with a Google Apps account (unless you upgrade to the the premier version).

With many schools and businesses moving to Google Apps, I think it is important to be clear about the difference between the two types of account.  It would be nicer to see closer integration between Google Apps and Google accounts but I can see the reasons why this has not been implemented.

Comments

By Rob, December 18, 2009 5:36 pm

For years I’ve used and recommended Google Apps and Gmail to others, and have found them extremely reliable.

The last week I’ve run repeatedly into the same problem, and I’m sure that some other users must come across.  The problem occurred when I wanted to send an email to a group of science coordinators across the county.

I even have a list of emails set up in my contacts address book (on Google) for this purpose.  I emailed the group with an update and a link to a Google form for them to complete (only 8 users in the To: field).

The email bounced with the following message (Message rejected.  See http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=69585 for more information):

The solution in the past was to split the users between the To: and CC: fields.  I tried this again as my tried and trusted method of getting my email sent (in the absence of any useful advice from Google).  The email wasn’t sent and I received the following message instead (the error that the other server returned was: 550 550 5.4.5 Daily sending quota exceeded):

It now transpires that I am unable to send any email, at least for the rest of the day (at least) because google think I’m a spammer.  Nice one Google.

My email had a Word attachment and a link.  It was sent to a group of 8 people (all in my contact book).  It seems that this makes me a spammer.  Is it not within the realms of possibility that there are users out there who may want to send a link to a group of contacts.  Directing me to use Google Groups is not a workable solution Google – since most of the people I am trying to contact have barely mastered email.

I would advise Google to tweak their spam detecting algorithms.  If you have lots of people opening accounts to send spam, perhaps you need to look at the meagre amount of information you need to give to get a google account rather than cutting off your loyal users who merely want to email a link to a list of contacts.

Google touts its apps suite as a dependable and reliable system, and yet it has gaping holes like this, and yet it has published very little information for users telling them what to happen if this happens.  Google sort your act out if you want to see more people who have #gonegoogle.

Comments

By Rob, December 6, 2009 5:23 pm

I recently had to move my mail between a GMail account and a Google Apps GMail account. It is possible to move mail from one to the other with all tags intact, however there are several steps (the exact number depends on the number of tags you have) but the process consists mostly of repeating the same step.

Enable IMAP on both Gmail accounts and configure your mail client for both.  I used Windows Live Mail since it has a “Copy to folder …” option (and of course is free and readily available for Windows 7).

Replicate the tags structure for your destination GMail account so that it has all the tags of the source GMail account.  You can do this from inside the GMail web interface (while you enabling IMAP support).

Configure and sync both accounts in your mail client so you have a full list of tags (folders in your mail client) for both.

Your mail client sees the GMail tags as folders.  Go to the first folder you want to transfer – in the image I am copying my sent mail.  Select all the mail you want to copy.

Right click on your selected mail and select “Copy to folder” and then select the same mail folder of the GMail account you are copying to.

Click OK and you will see a progress bar as your mail client copies the mail from account to account.

You must repeat this for every folder/tag you want to transfer including the all mail folder (if you want to move everything or untagged email).  Keeping copying them to their corresponding folder on the destination account.

When you have finished the tagging/folder structure should be identical for both accounts.

You may also want to move your incoming mail filters and contacts from account to account as well.  Google provides a Google Labs feature for moving your filters, and you can export your contacts in a Google friendly format for moving from one account to another.

That’s it.  If you have a few hundred Mb of mail the transfer doesn’t take too long (depending on your connection speed).  You might want to do this at a quiet time of the day so that Google’s servers are under less load.

Update: I’ve just found an excellent piece of software that does automatically what I was doing manually.  It is called GMail Backup and is available from here.   Download the email from the account you are moving from, then change the settings and restore to the email account you are moving to.  The software takes care of labels etc (I’ve tested it with Google Apps and Gmail and have used it to move email in both directions).