Praveen Rajan: How Google Apps killed my Tuesday

I spent the last few hours trying to sort out my email accounts spread across a few domains. The objective was to centralise everything on Google Apps (now open to everyone), and then try and manage my assorted email accounts from a single Gmail / Google Apps account.

I'll spare you my headache, as I didn't achieve what I set out to do. So here's a list of things I wish Gmail and Google Apps could have told me much earlier:

You can't POP email from another Gmail / Google Apps account (SNAG!)
You can't use the slick Gmail for Mobile J2ME Java-app with Google Apps (SNAG!)
The only real mobile app that works with Google Apps is targeted at the BlackBerry (for now) (SNAG!)
Mirroring is possible by using Gmail / Google Apps' forward as a copy (JOY!)
The "on behalf of" bug is solved with Google Apps -- but you still won't solve it if you're managing multiple "From:" addresses within a single account (SNAG!)
The custom URLs for each Google Apps module (e.g. http://start.praveenrajan.com) works as a redirect to a Google domain rather than an actual alias (SNAG!)
It is possible to ask for more free accounts for your Google Apps domain. I now manage 2 domains, with 50 and 100 user accounts respectively (JOY!)
When importing / exporting contacts between two Gmail / Google Apps accounts, it forgets to take the Groups with it -- I had to create all my contact Groups from scratch (SNAG!)
Managing 300+ contacts on Gmail is a PITA! Why can't I duplicate an email address across contacts?(SNAG!)
If you've got over 1,000 messages, there's a simple way for you to apply an action on all items -- upon selecting all conversations on the page, the app reveals an option to Select ALL conversations in the Inbox / with a particular label (JOY!)

Final score -- 7 snags, and 3 joys!

I didn't achieve my objective of centralising and mirroring all my emails. However, I still maintain that switching to Gmail / Google Apps is a great way to boost your productivity. I've been managing my assorted collection of personal and work-related emails on Gmail since 2005 and there's no turning back to my days with Outlook and gigantic PST files.

By the way, Google Apps is a great suite of software for small/medium businesses, and I'd recommend checking it out despite the little snags published here.

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