Microsoft Office

[Stevo985]

 

You can, actually. You can share Excel workbooks and edit them simultaneously (although i think there are limitations to what you can edit)

GMail's better than outlook, to be fair. We switched over to that a couple of years back and I'd never want to switch back.

Gmail is Web based. You can't run a corporation of thousands of people on Gmail. Outlook is quite a powerful tool in large companies and it's great IMO.

As big a Gmail fan as I am for personal stuff. It just wouldn't cut it in a corporation.

 

Our 30,000 employee Corporation is doing alright...

[CVByrne]

Wow on Gmail. How on earth do you use Gmail for that? I'm amazed.

You all just use the Web client? How do you arrange meetings? Via Google Calendar too yeah?

[Stevo985]

Wow on Gmail. How on earth do you use Gmail for that? I'm amazed.

You all just use the Web client? How do you arrange meetings? Via Google Calendar too yeah?

Yep.

 

Apart from the fact you have to open it in a web browser (Chrome) I don't really see what the difference is in "how you use it" compared to Outlook. (Bear in mind there's a difference between the GMail you and I use for our personal email s and the GMail that a corporation uses. I couldn't really tell you what they are, but it's not just thousands of us logging into the regular GMail and using that)

 

I have no idea about the IT behind it. That's not my job.

 

All I know is from a users point of view, GMail has been better than Outlook was. If we were given the choice I wouldn't go back. And I'd wager if it was put to a vote in our company, GMail would win by a landslide.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Stevo985

[snowychap]

You can't customize the web based email clients, though, can you (macros, add-ins and so on)?

[Stevo985]

Macros? Not sure. I've never needed to use a Macro in email so wouldn't know (never had to with Outlook either)

 

What do you mean by add ins? GMail has loads of things called "labs" which are like extra features and add ons etc that sort of modify how GMail works, if that's what you mean?

[legov]

Ah well, I ended up putting in a request for a refund. Called up Microsoft, and they did the terribly intrusive remote-control thing, and still it didn't work. Oh and the whole trial-by-error process took more than **** five hours.

 

The technician himself was helpful enough, but **** the product.

 

Edit: Oh wait I need to call the helpline again in order to do the refund. I haven't done that yet. Bollocks.

Edited August 2, 2013 by legov

[snowychap]

Macros? Not sure. I've never needed to use a Macro in email so wouldn't know (never had to with Outlook either)

What do you mean by add ins? GMail has loads of things called "labs" which are like extra features and add ons etc that sort of modify how GMail works, if that's what you mean?

On the add ins: my brother's company, for example, uses a piece of software for scheduling jobs and so on; they supply an add in for outlook to automatically convert email detail in to a new job (so filling in the appropriate fields on the software).

It would be the same kind of thing with macros in outlook as in excel or wherever else. Automating repeated tasks for efficiency, e.g. sending output to populate spreadsheets (or to do as per the above with the scheduling software).

Edited August 2, 2013 by snowychap

[CVByrne]

Really amazed by that Stevo. I'm looking at Outlook here and it's a different world of functionality from what I know in Gmail.

I click on calendar and I get views if all my team and what meetings they have. What time they've free. I can book meeting invite them and book the room all through outlook and inside of a 60 seconds.

It also feeds into one note so emails can be sent to it.

As a suite of software Office is top notch. Big big fan. Obviously I use a large amount of macros, financial addins and Bloomberg / Reuters links that other software doesn't have access to.

But that's what makes Office the cash cow it is.

[Stevo985]

Really amazed by that Stevo. I'm looking at Outlook here and it's a different world of functionality from what I know in Gmail.

I click on calendar and I get views if all my team and what meetings they have. What time they've free. I can book meeting invite them and book the room all through outlook and inside of a 60 seconds.

 

GMail does all of that. As I said, this isn't the GMail that you get when you sign up for a free account.

Google Mail/Calendar/Drive/Contacts/Maps/Groups/Mobiles/Sites/Search whatever is all integrated into the same thing.

 

I can do all you've mentioned above. Put a meeting in, it'll tell me where the meeting is, give me directions, tell me when I need to leave. Then of course it integrates with my phone (as it's android) so my phone will tell me if there's traffic and I need to leave early (if the meeting is offsite) and that sort of Google Now stuff

 

It does everything we ever used Outlook for and considerably more.

 

Macros? Not sure. I've never needed to use a Macro in email so wouldn't know (never had to with Outlook either)

What do you mean by add ins? GMail has loads of things called "labs" which are like extra features and add ons etc that sort of modify how GMail works, if that's what you mean?

On the add ins: my brother's company, for example, uses a piece of software for scheduling jobs and so on; they supply an add in for outlook to automatically convert email detail in to a new job (so filling in the appropriate fields on the software).

It would be the same kind of thing with macros in outlook as in excel or wherever else. Automating repeated tasks for efficiency, e.g. sending output to populate spreadsheets (or to do as per the above with the scheduling software).

 

I've no idea to be honest. 

I would guess that you can do that with it. The firs bit you've described sounds like stuff I've seen in GMail. We've had emails where we've had to fill in details on a form integrated into the email and that then goes and populates some other document somewhere.

 

But I've personally never had the need to do any of that so I can't tell you for certain either way.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Stevo985

[Stevo985]

I can tell you two things that GMail doesn't do that I used to use. Email recalls and read receipts.

 

Actually it might do them now, but I've got so used to not using them I haven't tried for years.

 

It's way better having your emails stored centrally too. When we used to have outlook all the emails you saved ended up saved on your PC (I think). 

Which made moving roles awkward.

[snowychap]

Right. I see that there is this Gmail contextual gadgets thing but that looks like something pretty official in order to develop something to get it as an add-in/add-on rather than personalizing one's own email to cover processes that might be specific to one's own use of the thing.

[Stevo985]

[CVByrne]

Cheers Stevo. Enlightening stuff that.

[Davkaus]

I can tell you two things that GMail doesn't do that I used to use. Email recalls and read receipts.

 

Actually it might do them now, but I've got so used to not using them I haven't tried for years.

 

Gmail can do both of these for businesses, if they're enabled by your Google Apps admin.

 

 

It's way better having your emails stored centrally too. When we used to have outlook all the emails you saved ended up saved on your PC (I think). 

Which made moving roles awkward.

 

If this is the case, it's solely down to poor implementation by your IT department, there's no reason for your emails or any user profile data to be stored only on the local machine in any decent sized organisation.

[Stevo985]

Thinking back I think it was only emails we'd chosen to save. A certain amount was stored centrally with outlook but you could archive emails, which would then be stored on your C Drive. It was bullshit basically.

 

But yeah, I can see that being our IT department's fault. They were shit back then

[limpid]

 

Gmail is Web based. You can't run a corporation of thousands of people on Gmail. Outlook is quite a powerful tool in large companies and it's great IMO.

As big a Gmail fan as I am for personal stuff. It just wouldn't cut it in a corporation.

But I suppose Google ain't targeting big enterprise. That's just an area they wouldn't get traction with right now against Microsoft. Who are as entrenched as anything.

 

My 3000 users seem perfectly happy.

[limpid]

You can't customize the web based email clients, though, can you (macros, add-ins and so on)?

You can pretty much do whatever you want. We don't. We don't see the need. When someone needs something really specific, they use another client.

 

We have people using Thunderbird, Outlook, Apple Mail and various mobile devices. Support is provided for the web client and that's what almost every user uses.

[limpid]

 

Macros? Not sure. I've never needed to use a Macro in email so wouldn't know (never had to with Outlook either)

What do you mean by add ins? GMail has loads of things called "labs" which are like extra features and add ons etc that sort of modify how GMail works, if that's what you mean?

On the add ins: my brother's company, for example, uses a piece of software for scheduling jobs and so on; they supply an add in for outlook to automatically convert email detail in to a new job (so filling in the appropriate fields on the software).

It would be the same kind of thing with macros in outlook as in excel or wherever else. Automating repeated tasks for efficiency, e.g. sending output to populate spreadsheets (or to do as per the above with the scheduling software).

 

There is an entire marketplace for extensions to Google Apps, you can get pretty much anything you want. We use a third party leave management system which links in. If there isn't a Marketplace app to do what you want, all the APIs are there and you can hire someone to develop your app.

[limpid]

I can tell you two things that GMail doesn't do that I used to use. Email recalls and read receipts.

 

Actually it might do them now, but I've got so used to not using them I haven't tried for years.

 

It's way better having your emails stored centrally too. When we used to have outlook all the emails you saved ended up saved on your PC (I think). 

Which made moving roles awkward.

GMail supports read receipts although I've never enabled it on a domain. Recalls never worked except with oother users of Exchange. People thought they'd recalled messages and regularly got embarrassed.

[Davkaus]

 

I can tell you two things that GMail doesn't do that I used to use. Email recalls and read receipts.

 

Actually it might do them now, but I've got so used to not using them I haven't tried for years.

 

It's way better having your emails stored centrally too. When we used to have outlook all the emails you saved ended up saved on your PC (I think). 

Which made moving roles awkward.

GMail supports read receipts although I've never enabled it on a domain. Recalls never worked except with oother users of Exchange. People thought they'd recalled messages and regularly got embarrassed.

 

 

 

There is a labs feature for recall, or was a few months ago when I was working with Google Apps.

 

It obviously has the same restriction as with Exchange, in that it will only work for emails sent to internal users. Not suppliers, as people often find, to their detriment.

 

I have to say I prefer working with Exchange, but mainly because it's all under my control, I just don't feel comfortable having my data hosted by another company. I'd avoid cloud services entirely if I could. Even if Google is fairly reliable, if there's going to be downtime or potential disaster recovery, I'd rather have it in my own hands or being worked on by someone I can give a bollocking to.

Edited August 2, 2013 by Davkaus