We recently received our notification that important changes were happening to Google Apps. This means our Google Apps accounts are being transitioned to Google Account infrastructure.

The upshot of this is that a lot of the services that were previously only accessible to Google Account owners will now be accessible through Google Apps. This may sound trivial but it really is a massive undertaking for Google. It also signifies how Apps is maturing and becoming an important part of their product mix. Which all bodes well for the future – but back to this transition business.

Google have provided an easy-to-use wizard that will help administrators through the transition process. Just work your way through and it should take no longer then 5-10 minutes to get your transition underway. Each time we initiated a transition it was complete within an hour.

Google Apps Logos

As Google is advising everyone to initiate their transition before the automatic switchover date we’d suggest you get going with your transition too. Here’s a brief overview of each step you will have to take and what you should pay particular attention to:

1. Understand the transition

2. Review new services

3. Notify conflicting accounts

4. Select users

This was the approach we took and thankfully we didn’t encounter any issues.

5. Confirm

All in all this was a straightforward process. We didn’t encounter any service interruptions during the transition, which only took an hour and a half in total. And unlike some of the horror stories we’ve heard we haven’t encountered a single issue with our new Google Apps services – yet!!!
If you’re concerned about data loss or migrating data between conflicting accounts why not trial the excellent Backupify – it’s free for the first 30 days.

François Roshdy

François is director of user experience at Border Crossing UX. He specialises in helping clients continuously improve the experiences they deliver.