Saint Mary's University is "Going Google"

We are pleased to announce that Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota has signed a contract with Google. Over the fall of 2011 all current faculty, staff, administration and students will be transitioning to this new platform.

What is Google Apps?

Google Apps is a suite of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on their own servers. Google provides these applications as a "service," rather than as software to download and install. To access these applications, you simply use a web browser on a computer that's connected to the Internet.  

Why did we choose Google Apps?

In response to feedback regarding email from the 2009 technology survey and the changing world of collaboration and email services, the University started a pilot of Google Apps (email, calendar, docs) in the fall of 2010.  The pilot started with 30 users last fall and quickly grew over the spring and summer semester to roughly 250 users.  We looked for an email and calendar solution that could provide with us the following benefits:    

• Innovative solutions -- We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the Google Apps platform to provide faculty, staff and students with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting their work done
• Highly scalable environment -- With Google Apps, our email capacity will grow automatically as our Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota grows.  Currently GoogleApps offers 7GB of email storage space.
• More collaboration features -- With Google's next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, students, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before.
• Instant messaging -- Because Google Apps includes Google Talk, we can now implement an instant messaging system for Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota.

What exactly does Google Apps include?

Your new Google Apps account will include the following services: 

Google Mail	Google Calendar	Google Talk	Google Docs	Google Sites	Google Video

What are the key benefits? 

• Lots of storage -- You get a full 7.5 GB of online storage for your email (this is 100 times what you have now), so you can archive all of your email online. You'll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.  Many of you can save time immediately by not having to clear out your email messages to free up space.
• Enhanced message organization and retrieval -- With Google Mail, you'll spend less time managing folders and searching for messages. For example, you can add one or more tags, or "labels," to your messages to organize and store them more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it's in your Inbox or stored in your message archive.
• Easier and faster meeting scheduling -- Google mail allows you to create a meeting invitation and view the free/busy time for participants.  This means you can schedule the meeting for when people are available and have your calendar automatically populated with the meeting.  Meeting scheduling and invites can also be done directly on your calendar.  You can also easily view participants’ response to the meeting invite.
• Easier calendar sharing -- Google Calendar lets you and your team members quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way for you and your coworkers to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it's easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.
• Excellent spam filtering -- Google mail does an excellent job of keeping the junk out of your inbox without you spending time managing white and black lists.
• Integrated chat -- With the Google Talk instant messaging application, you can communicate instantly with your coworkers right from the Email interface. In addition, all your chats are automatically saved in your Email application, so you can always retrieve important information.
• Real-time collaboration -- Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and you and your team members can view and edit them at the same time. You can still use your Microsoft Office products as needed, but now you'll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents. 
• Easy-to-build team web sites -- With Google Sites, your team has the ability to quickly publish a robust internal web site on which to gather all sorts of shared information, such as documents, spreadsheets, presentations, files, and videos. You can even embed Google calendars and other gadgets on your site!
• Powerful video sharing -- Using Google Video for business, you can easily share videos with your team or throughout the Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota for a whole new level of communication and collaboration.
• Ease of use -- Many of our faculty, staff and students already have personal Gmail accounts and are already familiar with how to use these tools.  In addition, Google provides a wealth of resources, as can be seen from this web site, to help all of us learn how to leverage these new tools in our role.

Implementation Plan

• All current faculty, staff,students that have an @smumn.edu email account have been created in the GoogleApps system.  You may log into the system with the same username and password you use for webtools.  Your email won't be delivered to this location until the Migration process occurs.  However, you can start using GoogleApps for collaboration with colleagues, peers, and instructors.
• All new accounts will be getting created on the GoogleApps System starting September 1st, 2011.
• SMU Information Technology will contact departments through the fall semester to determine a date for migration to GoogleApps.  We intended to have all current faculty, staff and administration email delivery migrated by Thanksgiving Break.
• SMU Information Technology will switch current student email delivery to GoogleApps over Christmas break.

Please monitor future newsletters and your email for communication details on your migration.