Clayton Community Church is moving to G Suite!

We’re pleased to announce that CCC has chosen G Suite for its new email and calendar platform. Our IT team has been working on the migration and is looking forward to moving employees from their existing accounts with Intermedia to the new services in the coming weeks. We’ll begin with main staff members and then move through the individual ministry and events accounts.

What’s G Suite?

G Suite is a set of web-based messaging and collaboration applications that Google hosts on its own servers. Google provides these applications as a service, rather than as software to download and install. To access G Suite, you simply use a web browser on a computer that’s connected to the Internet or your smart device.  

For a quick overview of G Suite and why we’re so excited about the switch, check out this video!

Why did we chose G Suite?

We looked for an email and calendar solution that could provide with us the following benefits: 

Lower infrastructure costs — Our email will be stored securely on Google’s servers, and as a nonprofit this service is 100% free, saving us money every year. 

Ability to consolidate our platforms — We can eliminate redundancy by moving all of our email and calendar platforms to G Suite.

Lower support costs — Because Google hosts the email and calendar services, there’s no more email client software to maintain on individual computers.

Innovative solutions — We can leverage the ongoing creative and technical solutions of the G Suite platform to provide our church with powerful, easy-to-use tools for getting work done.

Highly scalable environment — With G Suite, our email capacity will grow automatically as our church grows.

Access to services from anywhere, anytime — A key benefit of the Google-hosted solution is that we can access email, contacts, and calendar from any computer or mobile device with an Internet connection, anywhere in the world

More collaboration features — With Google’s next-generation applications, we can collaborate with colleagues, volunteers, and partners more easily and efficiently than ever before

Instant messaging — Because G Suite includes Hangouts, we can now implement an instant messaging system!

What does G Suite include?

Your new G Suite account will include the following services:

Gmail

Google Calendar

Docs, Sheets and Slides

Google Groups

Hangouts

Google Drive

 

Here are some of the key benefits we think you’ll enjoy: 

Lots of storage: You get a full 30 GB of online storage for your email, so you can archive all of your email online. You’ll no longer need to worry about deleting messages or saving them in offline folders.

Enhanced message organization and retrieval: With Gmail, you’ll spend less time managing folders and looking for messages. Use tags, or “labels,” to organize, store, and find your messages more efficiently. And with the Google-powered search feature, you can find any message quickly and easily, whether it’s in your Inbox or stored in your message archives.

Easier calendar sharing: Google Calendar lets you and your team members quickly and easily share your calendars with each other and specify the details you want to show. Calendar sharing is a great way for you and your coworkers to keep each other informed about your schedules. Now it’s easier than ever to find out if someone is in a meeting, on a business trip, or on vacation.

Better mailing lists: With Google Groups, you can manage your own subscriptions to mailing lists—called groups—without the need to make requests to the IT Department. You can even create your own groups for your projects, teams, special-interest groups, and more. Not only do groups make it easier to send email and calendar invitations to groups of people but they also simplify sharing documents, files, sites, and more. You can even use groups to create full-featured discussion forums.

Integrated chat and video-conferencing: With Google Hangouts, you can communicate instantly with your coworkers right from Gmail, as a chat or video-conference. You can set your chats to be automatically saved in Gmail, so you can always retrieve important information.

File storage and sharing: With Google Drive, you can store just about any type of file, open it and work on it right in your web browser, and quickly invite others to work or view it. You can access Drive from any smart device.

Real-time collaboration: Using Google Docs, you can create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations, and you and your team members can view and edit them at the same time. You can still use your Microsoft Officeproducts, but now you’ll have more options for storing and collaborating on your documents. 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Is G Suite the same as the personal (free) version of Gmail and Google Calendar?

They’re similar, but we’ll be using the business-class edition of G Suite, which provides more features, more storage, and more support.

 

Will my email address change?

No, your email address won’t change! You’ll continue to receive all your email at your current company address.

 

Are you migrating my email to G Suite?

Yes, we’ll migrate all of your email messages personal contacts from Microsoft Outlook to G Suite during non-business hours, so they’ll be ready for you when you sign in to your new G Suite account.

 

Do I need to do anything after I get my G Suite account?

You’ll just need to complete a few simple tasks to complete your migration, such as re-creating any email rules you used in Outlook as Gmail filters, and setting up your mobile device to access your services from anywhere.

 

Will I get assistance during the transition?

To get you up to speed quickly, we’ll provide plenty of documentation and training resources. You can also visit the G Suite Learning Center for guides, tips and examples of how to make the most of your new services. Of course, you can also email Catie and she’ll get you answers! 

 

How much time will it take to set up and learn how to use G Suite?

You’ll be able to master the basics, like sending and receiving email and viewing and scheduling meetings, very quickly. It may take more time to really learn to make the most of your new services, depending on how you currently use Outlook. For example, for a typical email and calendar migration, expect to spend a few hours over the course of a week or so to take the training, review documentation, and set up your services. If you also access email on a mobile device, plan on spending a bit more time.

 

We think you’ll enjoy your new G Suite services, and we’re committed to making this a smooth transition.

More information to follow soon!