Innolea

Google Apps is equally beneficial for businesses and individuals like me. Individuals can manage emails, docs and calendars online with standard edition (free version) and there is another powerful Business edition (paid version) with readymade cloud applications for business and companies.

The main advantages of using Google App are : 1.) You and other members of your group/business will get a custom [email protected] email address, means instead of having [email protected] as your address, you will have [email protected] 2.) Google’s cloud enables faster collaboration, app and software are accessible everywhere and doesn’t require installation  3.) Google Apps offers extensive flexibility and control to companies and businesses  4) Security and spam protection

By setting up account and configuring your domain or website to work with Google Apps, you can use various Google services and third party cloud applications on your domain name. In case you have ever wanted to move over to Google Apps for your domain or small business for reliability, services and support but you’ve been confused about the set-up procedure, this how-to guide will surely help you.

We can divide the complete procedure to setup and Configure Google Apps into two simple steps

a) Setup Google Apps for a domain : involve filling out online application for registration and verifying domain ownership.

b) Configuring Google Apps for a domain : involve setting up MX or CNAME records for domain, changing DNS records etc.

Setup Google Apps for a Domain

1.) Go to the Google Apps homepage (google.com/a/) and sign up for one of the editions offered.

2.) Enter the domain name you wish to use with Google Apps. When you finish the basic sign up procedure, you will be redirected to Google Apps Login form for your domain.

3.) Login with your username and password. Verify your domain name ownership by either uploading a special file to your server, adding META tag to your Homepage, a new CNAME record for your domain or simply linking your Google analytics account. Now you are almost done.

4) On the main dashboard, you will find email service as not active. Click on the Activate Email to start email services. Click “Create new users” to start creating new user accounts and customize the appearance of your Google Apps by clicking the navigating to “Appearance” option available in “Domain Settings”. You will be able to upload your own logo.You can add free applications and paid applications available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Configuring Google Apps for a Domain

For configuring Google Apps you need three DNS records : 1.) MX records, It tells which company handles and delivers your emails (ie. Google). 2.) CNAME record : to get a custom [email protected] email address and if you type mail.yourdomain.com ( replace yourdomain with your own domain name) on you browsers address bar, it points to Google Apps login page. 3.) SPF record : for protection against spams. In this tutorial we are Configuring records for  gappsdemo.com.

Configuring your MX records

In your control panel, click on MX Entry from the Mail section (screenshot 1). Click Edit to set the default record to a higher value (higher means lower priority), Change current priority value of 0 to 50 for your destination and click Edit (screenshot 2).

Google recommends you to add 5 new MX records to your DNS zone file. Those entries are:

Now enter new entries, one at a time and at the end you should have something like (screeshot 3)

Configuring your CNAME records

Use  Advanced DNS Zone Editor to change the default CNAME record for mail.yourdomain.com ( mail.gademo.com in our example ) to a new record  “ghs.google.com”. Similarly to point services offered by Google separately, you can update CNAME records as follow :

Configuring your SPF records

Google recommends that you add the following SPF record to your DNS zone. In cPanel, again use Advanced DNS Zone Editor to have this record added for you. Select type “TXT” and add v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all to record for SPF (screenshot 5) . And you are done !

Notes and Other Resources

• [*] I highly recommend moving over to Google Apps.
• [*] The DNS propagation may take up to 48 hours to complete.
• [*] However, you pointed  the address of your services to mail.yourdomain.com but you can directly access to your Google Apps services using http://google.com/a/yourdomain.

[*] If you are new to Google Apps, then watch the introductory videos below and do subscribe Google Apps Channel for latest updates.

http://bit.ly/6SyD3o http://bit.ly/cfHX3z