Perhaps one of the most useful features is the appointment slots component. Of course, as with nearly all other calendar apps, you can set reminders at a specific time, or repeating reminders if you're prone to snooze alerts as I am. There's also a one-click option for adding Google Meet video conferencing to a meeting. I especially liked the automatic message you can set right from the calendar when marking yourself as out of the office. As in Microsoft 365 Business Premium, calendar entries can be public or private so only the right level of information is available to your coworkers. This seems like it would be an effective strategy for folks that only look at things at the top of their inbox.Ĭalendaring has also undergone a significant upgrade. Gmail has the ability to "nudge" someone about an untouched message as a reminder to get them back on track. One of the most annoying aspects of email is the person who can never remember to reply. Google has some unique mail features, too. For those who need to level up on collaboration, Google Chat allows you to create virtual rooms that let you have threaded conversations with shared files and tasks, similar to Microsoft Teams. Combine this with Google Meet and Jamboard for whiteboarding, and you've got a great toolset for remote work, with the ability to quickly share ideas and get traction on your documents at the same time. If needed, you can share that document with others, and work at the same time. When you need to open an attached document, you click to save it to Google Drive and start working on it. Because of this, the most popular items like Google Chat, Tasks, and Google Meet are quickly accessible from the same screen. Google has paid attention to the details of a typical workflow and understands that a lot of us live in our email. Hangouts, meetings, and your email are in quick reach along with the rest of Google's Apps menu. Love it or hate it, the interface is intuitive and modern, with nearly everything you want to see on screen. While Workspace extends to a large set of tools, the most popular one is probably Gmail. Policies, quarantines, and retention policies are all fair game, though I wasn't able to do much testing of them due to my account's restrictions. Much of Google's magic is in how little you actually need to configure, but you still get the same kinds of options you do elsewhere. You can also customize specific roles in case you don't want to give every administrator the keys to the kingdom. Permissions can then be set to reflect whether you're adding a standard user or an administrator. Unfortunately, I was not able to test the account management piece due to the restrictions on my test account, but it's done through the same application where you set up a domain (called Google Domains). Once you've added the appropriate information and verified your domain, you're off to the races. However, Google provides enough instruction that experienced IT pros shouldn't have too much trouble handling it. I have mixed feelings about this being such a prominent and in-your-face item, since setting up a domain tends to be somewhat painful the first time you do it. Getting Startedĭuring the sign-up process, you're required to supply a domain name. Then again, IceWarp's productivity suite lags far behind the capabilities of Workspace and its next-closest productivity competitor, Microsoft 365. If you compare it to our lowest-cost competitor, IceWarp Cloud, Google's offering certainly looks expensive-IceWarp's lowest tier starts at just USD$2.50 per user per month and even its mid-tier package only raises that to $3.90. Overall, Google Workspace is a good value but only because it includes one of the leading online productivity suites. Also, file storage is reduced to 30GB per user. This also includes access to the Workplace productivity suite, though with some feature disparities, such as a cap of 100 participants in video meetings and no noise cancellation feature. If that's too rich for your blood, there's a Business Starter plan that runs only $8.40 per user per month.
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