[This is part 7 of a 10 part series titled: “So You’re An IT Noob“]
Your team has computers. You have an internet connection. Everybody in the office is connected. Now what do they do besides being on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube (or Vimeo for your worship guy)?
Productivity software is going to be critical. Email, calendars, word processing, presentations, etc. It’s all going to be needed. As a noob, you’re going to want to make it an easy process. You’re also going to want to keep the expenses down. There are four options (there are probably more) that we’ll focus on. There are probably more, but these are the easiest and quickest options and will get you and your team up and running quickly.
Google Apps
I am a big fan of Google Apps. I use it for almost all the domains I own and I recently converted my own church over to it. It’s free, easy to set up and has a ton of features. Email, calendaring, word processing, spreadsheets, forms, presentations, etc. It’s all there. Granted some of the features in the productivity apps aren’t as full featured as some others, but again, it is free and for most people, it does what is needed. It’s also compatible with Microsoft office products.
On the downside, Google recently made changes. While Google Apps Standard used to be free for up to 50 users, that limit is now 10. After that, you’ll need to upgrade to the business version which is $5 per user per month or $60 a year per user.
Churches (and other non-profits) however, can upgrade to the education version for free if they are a registered 501(c)(3) organization. Please note this will only work if your church is registered with that status. Churches by default are 501(c)(3) status, but that won’t be good enough.
Microsoft Office
Yes, I know some Apple fans cringe reading that, but people do use this product. As somebody that is Switzerland-neutral on the whole Mac vs PC debate, I can say that starting with Office 2007, Microsoft finally did it right in both design and in functionality. The interface is much cleaner and the apps work very well. Say what you want about Microsoft, the one area they excel (no pun intended) is in their educational and non-profit pricing. They offer steep discounts for both. The downside is, without an Exchange server, you’re limited to keeping emails local using POP. However, there are companies that provide hosted Exchange solutions. For the noob, this may be the way to go at first.
Open Office
Open Office is an open source suite of applications including word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, databases and even a vector graphics editor. Open Office is free (via download) but there are organizations that sell it on DVD at a low price while also offering tech support. I’ve used Open Office before. It’s a great suite of apps for free and they are all compatible with Microsoft Office. The only downside (and I haven’t used it in awhile so it may have changed) is that since it runs largely on Java, it runs slower than other apps. Still, this is an excellent alternative if your team does not want to go with a web based solution (Google Apps) and are on a really tight budget.
iWork
Apple has put together their own suite of productivity apps on their platform. Pages (word processing), Numbers (Spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentations) make up iWork. The cost is pretty inexpensive. You can purchase the CD version at Apple’s website for $80 (or less from Amazon) or you can download each app separately for $20 from the App Store. The latter option might be good if you have people that will only be using one of the products. The only downside is these apps will only run on Mac computers.
There you have it. As always, provide some feedback on anything else you’d suggest (keep in mind this is for the noob).
Next up: Mobile solutions!
Eric J says
Openoffice is on life support http://www.libreoffice.org/ is where (i’m pretty sure) ALL of the developers moved to.
I used to use a combination of libreoffice and google docs before i got a free copy of office from a microsoft employee.
Eric Dye says
True, Eric.
Read about it here: https://churchm.ag/oracle-discontinues-openoffice/
Tony says
I was curious as to how many users at your church are using google apps.
Jay Caruso says
Tony, I moved all of the staff at the church I attend over to Google Apps this past December. The server they were using for Exchange was old (about 5 years) and couldn’t handle the load anymore. It was constantly going down. However, everybody was such a MS Office user that it was a tough sell.
But considering the economic environment, I convinced them it was worth the price (FREE). Plus my church does not have a full time IT employee, and any support they were getting was done by volunteers and usually after hours. It’s six months later and everybody loves it now.
Jay Caruso says
Thanks Eric!
Joanna says
You overlooked one of the big advantages of Google apps (particularly Google docs), the ability to work collaboratively . Back when I used to work using microsoft office for team projects, collaboration would involve a lot of emailing backwards and forwards for every tiny update and inevitably someone would end up working off an old, faulty copy of the document. I got the ministry team I’m on this year onto google docs. It has made things so much more efficient because people can work on the documents whenever they feel like it without generating a barrage of email. It means everyone always has access to the most up to date version of the file.Google docs is particularly helpful when we are operating on tight deadlines because multiple people can be working on the same document at the same time without having to be in the same place.
Since we mostly only needed google docs, we had everyone set up their own google accounts and then created shared folders everyone in the team had access to. Worked for us, although might not be suitable for bigger teams.
Jay Caruso says
Great thoughts Joanna! Thanks!
Karen says
We tried to get g-mail setup for our church and were told we didn’t qualify as a non-profit:
http://www.google.com/nonprofits/eligibility.html
Notice the part under “Restrictions” that says “The following organizations are not eligible for Google for Nonprofits:
Religious content or proselytizing on website as well as organizations that use religion or sexual orientation as factor in hiring or populations served” and “Places or institutions of worship (e.g., churches, ministries, temples, synagogues)”
No more free for churches.
Jay Caruso says
Wow! This must be a relatively new policy. I guess they rolled it out when they made their changes last month.
That’s lame.