Google Apps Premier Integration

[NorCal Einstein]

Hi guys,

So I've tried searching for some answers to my questions, but haven't had too much luck so far. I'm looking to pick up a Captivate in the next couple days out of contract, hoping an Android phone will give me better Google Apps Premier integration compared to my BB 9700.

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info on Premier users and Android phones, but I'm trying to figure out if the 2 really play well with each other or not. Does anyone here have any experience with this?

I've read on a few places that the only way people are getting good integration between phone and Premier is when they use their Premier email to initially set up their phone (which would then become the account holding Marketplace purchases). I don't want to do this since my Premier email is my work email, and I don't want to tie personal purchases (apps in the marketplace) to a work email address I won't own forever. Has anyone successfully added their Premier email account AFTER they've configured their phone with a default email account? (if that makes any sense).

Ideally, I'd like to have my Captivate set up with my personal gmail account by default. Then I'd like to set up my work email (Premier). I'm hoping that if I do this, I'd have my calendar and contacts syncing to my phone from BOTH my personal and work email. Is this something that seems viable?

I started looking into Android phones thinking Google Phone to Google Mail would have flawless integration, but haven't found any evidence of that so far. I'm hoping someone could shed some light on this.

Thanks,
Andy

 

[mneimeyer]

There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of info on Premier users and Android phones, but I'm trying to figure out if the 2 really play well with each other or not. Does anyone here have any experience with this?

If there's a better way someone please tell me but... the primary account I tied to the phone on initial set up was my Google Apps Premier. Then for email it forced me to set up a corporate/exchange account. I pointed that back to my Google Apps Premier account. This caused my email and calendars to double up so I disabled GMail syncing on the primary / gmail account and disabled calendar and contact syncing on the corporate/exchange account.

I've read on a few places that the only way people are getting good integration between phone and Premier is when they use their Premier email to initially set up their phone (which would then become the account holding Marketplace purchases).

Sadly this isn't something you need to worry about that because you CANNOT tie your marketplace account to Google Checkout when the account for Google Checkout is an Apps Premier account.

This is my BIG pet peeve with the Google Apps accounts, I'm paying for the account and get worse service than people using the free accounts. So when I go into my Settings -> Accounts and Sync I have THREE different entries. Exchange (Apps Premier for Email), GMail (Apps Premier for Calendar and Contacts) and GMail Again (my myname@gmail.com for Google Checkout which then forwards to my Apps Premier). I long for the day when Apps Premier accounts are first class Google Accounts and can be used anywhere in the Google ecosystem.

Hope that helps!

Matt

P.S. Once I figured out the black magic... it all works fine. I get my email, my contacts are there, all my calendars sync and I can buy anything in the Marketplace. I just wish it didn't involve Black Magic.

 

[NorCal Einstein]

Thanks for your info Matt.

Unfortunately, this isn't the slightly bit encouraging for me...

To have push mail/calendar & contact syncing, do we need to add Premier accounts as "Exchange" accounts? (Presumably using imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com?)

I'm wondering if its possible to setup the device with a personal email, and then add a Premier account (adding via exchange instead of IMAP). Would that achieve the endgame of having calendar and contacts from Premier synced?

I was really hoping that turning to Android would make my access to my Premier account through mobile a lot easier. Right now with my Blackberry, I have like 60% functionality, but it's enough for me to get through the week, just a little kludgy. I saw a chart of mobile OS compatibility to Premier accounts, and it seemed like the iPhone 4 would work fairly well, but I'm not about to go to Apple especially for a phone with so much bad press buzzing around it.

I might just have to bite the bullet and try the Captivate out. If you or anyone else has any more info on this, I'd greatly appreciate it though!

 

[mneimeyer]

Thanks for your info Matt. Unfortunately, this isn't the slightly bit encouraging for me...

No... no it wasn't. Especially considering this is a Google Email Solution and a (basically) Google OS...

To have push mail/calendar & contact syncing, do we need to add Premier accounts as "Exchange" accounts? (Presumably using imap.gmail.com and smtp.gmail.com?)

I'm wondering if its possible to setup the device with a personal email, and then add a Premier account (adding via exchange instead of IMAP). Would that achieve the endgame of having calendar and contacts from Premier synced?

In your case, based on my struggles, I would do just that. Set your non-Premier account as the "core" account (whatever they call it). I assume this will make it easier to connect up to Google Checkout (I.E. the Marketplace). Since "everything" seems to expect a standard @gmail.com address give it what it wants.

Once that's up then add the Premier account as an additional Exchange account using m.google.com as the Exchange server if it asks for that (I think I just gave it my Premier email address and it found it...)

I saw a chart of mobile OS compatibility to Premier accounts, and it seemed like the iPhone 4 would work fairly well, but I'm not about to go to Apple especially for a phone with so much bad press buzzing around it.

In another week I can tell you how the iPhone 4G compares (once the phone for my better half arrives). I can tell you that if it works like it did on my 2nd Gen iPod Touch running iOS 4 that it was seemless.

Now again, scary stuff aside, once I set up the accounts it DOES work exactly as expected on the Captivate.

If it matters, my understanding is that an @gmail.com email account is ALSO magically a Google Account. Whereas a Google Apps Premier email account is NOT also a Google Account. You can create a Google Account with the same credentials as a Google Apps Premier account but they are still two entirely different things. So far I personally have run into this with Google Voice (where the contact list maintained in my Google Account is NOT the same as the contact list in my Apps Email account) and on my Android where my Google Apps account cannot be used directly for the built in email app nor can it be used for the Marketplace.

Matt

P.S. I'll say it one more time... It does work once you set it up...