Google Apps for Non-Profits?

We just went to Google Apps in October. We have 196 accounts, most of them migrated from Lotus Notes/Domino 7. Since Notes' web and mobile experiences were just horrible, we've had a lot of happy users now that we're in the new system.

The one issue we had was migrating over old mail, which drove us and our consultants batty. The root issue was that some of our people were grandfathered in to accounts without a quota. Those people (roughly 10% by number of users, but over 30% of the total volume of data) had lots of problems getting all of the mail over in a timely fashion. It took weeks for most, and we still have some a handful of stragglers, mostly people who had (inadvertently?) encrypted their mail. This likely would have been solved properly with more time, but we had a very tight window to get this done.

That said, we focused on getting 2012 email in first, and that took about a week for everyone. We're also sitting on a 100 Mbit connection, so that helps.

No issues with timestamps. For most people, the migration was easy. Folders turned into labels, message threads turned into conversations, etc.

We really pushed training. Hard. It was mandatory, and there were multiple small sessions to get everyone in. We focused only on Mail, Calendars, and Contacts for the migration, but now we're exploring more of the collaborative features of Drive (formerly Docs) and Groups.

Feel free to let me know if you've got any other questions.

CC

Thanks for the information!

I just moved to Google Apps at the beginning of the month. I had about 50 users, so the migration was not that bad. We were using a POP3 services, so everyone had a .pst file. No one had a pst file bigger than 2 gigs. I tried to have alot of the migration process happen over night so it didn't kill the band width.

The biggest issue I had is the email settings. Make sure you turn off the email retention! If you don't you will end up have to migrate more than once. That was a major pain! 

We also gave the users the choice to use Outlook or the web. Some people did not like how the folders on the web was and wanted to move back to Outlook.

Calendar stuff was pretty easier to transfer over. Had to do a "how to" document and send out to everyone so they understood how it worked. With the calendars, you will need to decide if you want people to share out the calendar to people outside the org. It makes a difference when you are doing the global setup.

Last thing I can think of, after you are approved and giving access to log in, make sure you request for more email address, you are only giving 10 to begin with. The approval process is pretty fast, but it does put a small speed bump in getting things all setup.

We moved from onsite Exchange to Google Apps in Feb. 2012, and have grown to love all its functionality. We have about 300 accounts, and had a very smooth migration process. We didn't have any issues importing psts, and brought over about a million emails and about 100,000 calendar entries. Depending on how people stored their contacts, we did have some massaging to do there. 

After having done a few rounds of testing, we brought over all the archived info, made the mx switch, and then brought over all active data over a weekend. It took most of the weekend. 

We're now using hangouts, g+, docs, chat, flashpanel, and lots of modern tools that are very beneficial. Very much meeting our expectations. 

-Russell

we also totally shut out outlook - maybe the best decision i made all year. 

Wow! Thanks to everyone who has responded. This is great information.