What is Google Workspace?

Google Workspace provides a custom email for your Group and includes collaboration tools like Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites and more.

What are the advantages of using privately hosted email?

• With a custom domain name such as firstname.surname@1stgrafton.org.uk, Parents and outside organisations can be a lot more confident of your identity when receiving emails. Anyone can set up a free Gmail or Hotmail account with something similar to 1stgraftonscouts@gmail.com and pose as a leader. We want to make sure our adult members are protected from identity theft and safeguard our young people from imposters.
• A Scouting email address allows you to manage and maintain a Scout-Life balance by keeping your Scouting mailbox separate from your personal inbox.
• It looks professional. Quite often Scouting will lead you to have contact and dealings with public officials, MPs, Councillors, Business leaders and having your own custom scout email address will give a much better impression.
• When your group sign up for the system, you will automatically get an address book of all the people in your own group as well the District Team which will update as people join the organisation and leave – so you can always get hold of the people you need to.
• Centrally managed distribution lists can be setup so that you can be confident everyone who is supposed to receives your email.

What else do I get?

By hosting your Group’s email with us, you will receive for FREE:

• a free domain name provided by us (e.g. 1stgrafton.org.uk)
• Secure, personalised business class email, calendar, contacts and personal file storage and sharing with 30GB of cloud storage (Gmail, Google Calendar & Google Drive)
• Collaboration services to securely store and backup documents, essential for succession planning (Google Drive Shared Drives)
• Video conferencing for up to 100 people (Google Meet)
• Secure direct messaging and chat rooms (Google Chat)
• Secure social media and networking platform (Google Currents)
• Google Forms for secure data collection
• Web versions of Google Docs, Sheets, Slides and more (Google’s version of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint)
• A platform for Digital Scouting (Google Classroom)
• District-based technical support when you need it.
• Full GDPR compliance and alignment