California Dept. of Technology Pilots Workspace Interoperability with HiView

Looking to test Office 365 and Google Workspace interoperability, California Department of Technology (CDT) chose to pilot Google Workspace Enterprise Plus. The project (known internally as the Center for Government Excellence and Transformation) was executed by both Google and HiView Solutions, who collaborated to create a pilot plan. The pilot was quickly delivered by HiView Engineers and Change Managers, and users were trained and supported throughout the process.

The challenge

With employees using Office 365, the Google Workspace Enterprise Plus pilot would take place within the existing environment. Interoperability was a major priority, made more challenging given the large size of the overall organization. Precision was crucial when it came to technical design.
Additionally, pilot activities were conducted fully remotely, which was fortunately typical for the HiView team.

The approach

The pilot took place over the course of 5 weeks with leadership from both Google and HiView Solutions. This included the Workspace environment setup; the unique security compliance needs of CDT as a large government entity were taken into account throughout this process. Upon the implementation of Google Workspace for the pilot users, hands-on training and testing was performed to onboard the users and Admins, as well as to evaluate the viability of Workspace as an alternative solution for CDT. Following the pilot’s completion, next steps were determined for initiating a larger pilot with the California Government Operations Agency.

The results

• Technical design was documented to serve as a blueprint for the rest of the organization’s transition
• User feedback regarding onboarding and pilot with Google Workspace was overwhelmingly positive
• Calendar and mail interoperability confirmed
• All ~60 user experience test scripts passed
• All security compliance needs met or exceeded
• A phased deployment plan was created for the remaining teams’ transition