Church Email/Calendaring system

[fredtgreco]

It's the start of the new year, so I am now looking at our email and calendaring system. With four people on staff now (three pastors, one admin), I am looking for the best system I can get for integrating email and calendars. I want to be able to have sharing of calendars within the staff, the ability to make some events private, and the ability to give public access to at least one calendar to those outside the "system" (i.e. to let congregants see a "Church calendar").

Right now we have a combination of Google Apps for your domain and Hosted Exchange (Office 365). If there is a seamless solution, I am all for it. A couple of caveats:

• Don't recommend that we just have everyone switch to Apple. Before you do, send me a $10,000 check to cover the cost, and then maybe I will think about it
• We need syncing capability between laptop email, iPhones and iPads
• Being able to create a calendar feed would be great

Thanks!

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Fred,

Given your list of requirements for the Calendars, why doesn't Google Apps accomplish all of the above? What are you missing in Google Apps that you're using Office 365 for?

 

[fredtgreco]

Rich,

The main drawback to the Google system is offline use. Google has decided that you should always be connected to the internet. When you are not, you can only see one month of your email, and none of your calendar or contacts.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Rich,

The main drawback to the Google system is offline use. Google has decided that you should always be connected to the internet. When you are not, you can only see one month of your email, and none of your calendar or contacts.

Hmmm...I know that I can get offline access to my GMail calendars and mailbox on my iPad and iPhone. Though you're correct that I can't access them more than a month back, I've never considered that much of a limitation of GMail as, even with Exchange, unless you're willing to keep a gigantic amount stored on your phone or iPad, it would be a liability to have that archived for a long time.

If you want offline access on your desktop, you could use Outlook and connect to Google Apps via iMap. I also use a program called GSyncIt for another reason. I have a corporate email and calendar and tasks as well as personl email. I don't want to manage my life on my corporate calendar so I use GSyncIt to synchronize my Calendar and Notes and Tasks with Google. For your purposes, you could set up your Outlook client(s) to sync events with Google Calendars. I haven't tried the private feature but I don't see why it wouldn't work because it can sync with multiple calendars. GSyncit will also sync Contacts.

Is it an integrated solution? Sort of. It's not Office 365 and Outlook but it's an option that would save you guys some money if that's a concern.

 

[littlepeople]

Starting this month, No new devices can set up activesync if you are using google-apps-free. Bear that it mind.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Starting this month, No new devices can set up activesync if you are using google-apps-free. Bear that it mind.

Sadly, Google Apps Free isn't even available for individuals any more but, thankfully (for now at least), Google Apps for Non-profits still free and feature-rich.