Google Apps Part 3: Making my online and offline workflows flow

Note: This is the final part of a three-part series on Google Apps, its advantages and how it fits into my workflow.

Like I said in Part 2 of this series:

Not everyone’s workflow is the same, and thus not everyone will use Google Apps the same. As I said, it has its limitations, and I’ve accommodated those in my workflow.

To say that I’ve fully let go of Microsoft Office or iWork would be a gross over-exageration. Both office suites are still an integral part of my workflow. Ditto for iCal, mainly because of having an iPhone and wanting to have the push capabilities of my schedule. And, for the same reasons, ditto to Address Book. I can’t live with my contacts online and my iPhone 3G empty.

At first, the fear of using online apps kept me away. But I decided I liked the power of Google Apps and the advantages. So I set out to find work arounds to my concerns.

Here’s how my workflow is set up with Google Apps:

1. Email server. I’ve replaced BlueHost email servers with Google email servers. The spam filters are great, and I have user-level control over forwards, rules, etc. Never looked back.
2. Email. I use the Gmail interface. I was using Mail with IMAP-enabled Gmail. However, you get a lot of duplicated messages in smart folders and threads because of the way Mail interacts with Gmail’s archiving structure. (This is really more of Gmail’s fault because of the way they use tags instead of folders. While in Gmail one message can have multiple tags, Mail sees each tag as a separate folder. Thus, you get multiple copies of the message.)
3. Email on iPhone 3G. For the same reason as above — multiple messages — I’ve stopped using the Mail program on my iPhone. Instead, I use Google’s mobile site. And I’ve found that I like it more. There is very little you cannot do in the mobile version that you can do on the full version.
4. Calendar. I keep my calendars on iCal and use that as my interface. To make it work properly with Google Calendars, I sprung for BusySync. This app allows you to sync iCal with Google Calendars. In my setup, I actually subscribe to my Google Calendars through BusySync. I have only one native calendar in iCal, and that is for personal use. (Note: BusySync costs $25.)
5. Contacts. I had to have my contacts in Address Book so they would sync with my iPhone. Having them in Google would do me no good. Now that Address Book in Leopard will sync with Google Contacts, this is not a worry. If you are using Tiger, I would recommend AtoG. I used it, and it worked pretty well.
6. Documents. For documents that require collaboration, I use Google Docs. For documents that I want to have access to for viewing anywhere, I upload them to Google Docs. But for all other documents, I generally keep them native. I prefer to work in iWork, but I use Office quite a bit as well. (With Back To My Mac, it’s much easier for me to fetch documents from my home iMac when I’m using my MBP, so that covers me as well.)

Here are a couple of other notes about how my workflow incorporates Google Apps:

1. iPhone email. While I use the Google mobile interface, I still have my dotmac address set up on my iPhone for times when I need to simply hit a link to email something or to post photos to Flickr. I would recommend setting up your email on the phone, but I would turn off the push capability.
2. Fluid. If you’ve not tried Fluid, you should. This is the easiest way to set up site specific browsers (SSB). Plus, it’s free. I use it for two email accounts with the Gmail web interface, Google Reader and Pandora.

So that’s it. That’s how I use Google Apps in my workflow. Google Apps is a great system, especially for small enterprises who need good collaboration tools. It even works well for individuals who are on the go and don’t work in the “normal” office environment.

I’d love to hear how others use Google Apps, especially from the Google Docs point of view.

In Part 1 of this series on Google Apps, I discussed what is included in Google Apps and why I chose to use it. In Part 2, I discussed reasons I chose to use Google Apps and some hesitations that might lead others to not use Google Apps.

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