The way we have it configured is as a front end to a Gmail mailbox. Moving emails from a personal account to a shared account can be done in a couple of ways: 1) forward it to the shared account or 2) if you allow users to share the password for the shared email account (not recommended), in an IMAP client where both accounts are configured, you could drag the email from one account to the other.

I personally prefer forwarding the message. That way everyone can see the history of that message and how it got there. We all know that context for messages in email is in short supply. So I think that anything we can do to maintain or provide more context for the message is helpful.

You are essentially correct. What I’ve found the most useful is to create an email address specifically for the project.

Then you can accomplish shared inboxes in a number of ways:

• give all the group members access to it
• use Email Center Pro to manage it. Email Center Pro adds a nice layer of reporting on top of the mail box plus it requires unique logins. Having unique logins was a critical requirement for us. That way if someone leaves the team, you can simply deactivate their Email Center Pro account. You don’t have to change the password on the underlying GMail account.
• somewhat different – you can use a Google Group for the project. While not part of Google Apps yet (are you listening Google??) its a great way to collaborate on projects if you don’t have to worry about the from address of the emails that are sent out
• ultimately, if you can swing a Google Wave invitation, that looks like it will be excellent for project communication

There are a number of other useful tools in the Apps constellation to help with project management and collaboration. Google Moderator lets users post ideas and other users can vote them up or down. This is a great way to prioritize feature requests or bug fixes. Sites is a useful to put all of the project communication in one place. You can take a look at Google’s example site here.

For migrating email from exchange, there are tools available. We used the free IMAP migration tool from Google. We migrated all of our users’ email over as part of the deployment.

So for us, Google Apps not only replaced Exchange, but SharePoint and a Blackberry server as well. I have been very happy with our decision to move to Google. Most of our users are thrilled with the change.

Good luck with your decision. Feel free to post back with any other questions.