Welcome to the G Suite

In CM Jamie Davidson’s citywide COVID-19 update email sent on April 8, 2020, he announced that the city was moving from Mircosoft Exchange to Google’s G Suite. We wanted to give employees a little more information about this exciting new change.

While this is a huge change that may require some learning and patience on everyone’s part, here is why we’re making the switch:

Switching to G Suite is going to save the City over $100,000 a year in software, hardware, licensing, and product costs. In a year where we could see significant budget impacts due to the fallout of COVID-19, these savings couldn’t be more timely.
The built-in, real-time collabration tools of the G Suite has the potential to significantly improve and even revolutionize the way we work together.
The G Suite is great for work-from-home situtations . . . like COVID-19.
Many city divisions are already using personal Google accounts and apps to conduct city business. While we salute those individuals for their resourcefulness, we regret to inform them that they are breaking Google’s terms of service. Switching to G Suite will make them legit.
Our deal with Google will come with unlimited cloud storage that will eventually allow you to access your files from anywhere and from any device.
The switch to G Suite comes with significantly more licenses which will enable more employees to have a city email address and access the Google tools.
The G Suite apps can do almost everything that Microsoft products can as well as a whole lot more.

Be an Early Adopter

We’re looking for a group of employees to be early adopters and beta testers for the G Suite. You’ll get early access and help us work out any hiccups in the implementation and transition.

If this sounds like your jam, click here.

Tentative Timeline

Phase One: Gmail & Calendar

4/24 Sync IT data to G-Suite
4/27 Division Meeting to Roll out G-Suite to IT
- 2 Weeks to get comfortable
5/8 Evangelist group data synced
5/11 Meeting with Evangelist group for Roll-out
- 2 Weeks to get comfortable
5/25 Next Group to be Evaluated

Phase Two: All Other Apps

More details on Phase Two coming soon

What’s included in the G Suite?

GMAIL

Secure, private, and poweful email for your business.

Calendar

Integrated online calendars designed for teams.

Hangouts Chat

Direct messages and group conversations to help employees collaborate and comminicate easily and efficiently.

Hangout Meet

Connect with your team from anywhere. With easy-to-join video calls, you can meet face to face without the added cost of travel.

DOCS

Create and edit text documents right in your browser—no dedicated software required. Multiple people can work at the same time, and every change is saved automatically.

Sheets

Collaborative, smart, secure spreadsheets that work great with similar features to Excel.

Forms

Create custom forms for surveys and questionnaires and seamlessly collect it all into spreadsheets for easy analyzation.

Slides

Create and edit polished presentations in your browser—no software required. Multiple people can work at the same time so everyone always has the latest version.

Keep

Keep organized. Capture inspiration and to-dos effortlessly. Collaborate on notes with teammates and set reminders to stay on track. Everything syncs across your devices, so what’s important is always in reach.

Currents

A tool to help employees engage with one another and build a productive community where everyone is on the same page.

Drive

Store any and every file. Access files anytime, anywhere from your desktop and mobile devices. Control how files are shared.

AND SO MUCH MORE!

Frequently Asked Questions

Will all of my emails transfer over?

All of the emails you have in your inbox will automatically be transfered over to your new Gmail account. Your email address will not change. You will be asked to create a new password just for an extra layer of security.

While we’re in the process of migrating email from Outlook to Gmail, we’ll be running mirrored systems. This means that during this migration window, anything you send/receive from Outlook will show up in Gmail and anything you may send/receive from Gmail will show up in Outlook.

The best thing you can do to help with this migration is make sure you’ve emptied out your email trash can.

I'm not familiar with Google products. How can I learn?

We understand that this will be a big change for some people and we are committed to helping everyone learn to use these new tools effectively.

We will be doing many in-person trainings as well as creating and currating tons of online help videos and resources. We are also identifying employees in every department that will be able to further help and train you on G Suite applications.

What if I absolutely have to have a Microsoft Office product for my job?

We believe, and 2 billion G Suite users can back us up, that G Suite will be a great tool for the majority of employees and work uses. Most employees will find that they can kiss Microsoft Office goodbye forever.

However, we understand that there may still be some employees who need Microsoft Office programs. For example, our Accounting Division has very specialized uses for Excel that assist them in keeping the City in the black. They will be able to keep using Excel for those purposes. Similar accomidations will be made on an as-needed basis at the department level.

What we really want to discourage is employees claiming they need Microsoft Office because they don’t want to learn G Suite for whatever reason.

What about all of my Word docs, Excel worksheets, and Powerpoints?

The G Suite apps have built-in compatability with Microsoft files. You can take a Word document and upload to the G Suite and it will automatically convert into a document you can edit using Google Docs. The same is true for Excel and Powerpoint files.

What is the timeline for this migration?

Our great and powerful wizards in I.T. started laying the groundwork for the migration on April 9, 2020. They worked through Easter weekend to get our Active Directory and all of our emails transferred over.

Once this process is complete, I.T. and the G Suite Evangilists (employees who want to help roll things out) will beta test the new tools and work out any bugs.

Once all the bugs have been worked out, we will begin with a citywide roll out of Gmail and the Google calendar tool. These two applications are the top priorities to help get employees comfortable with.

Once everyone is feeling good with Gmail and Google calendar, we’ll begin rolling out the full G Suite.

What other organizations use G Suite?

G Suite has over 2 billion active monthly users and many employees and departments in our very own city are already using G Suite products to help them get work done.

Locally, Provo City as well as the Alpine School District use G Suite with great success and at tremendous savings.

If you have questions about any part of this migration to G Suite, we want to answer them on this page for the benefit of everyone. Please submit questions to Pete at pwolfley@orem.org.