If you run a trades crew in Surrey, there's a good chance the business runs on a few personal Gmail accounts, a group text and whatever laptop left the shop this morning. Quotes go out from someone's personal address. Change orders get decided in the group chat. Drawings live on the foreman's laptop.
That works fine with one crew. It starts to fall apart with two sites on the go, a new hire who needs last week's drawings, or a customer asking for an email trail that only exists in someone's personal inbox.
Some crews are already on Google Workspace, so email is on the company domain. The job itself can still run through a group text, though, with files sitting in whichever Drive they were saved to.
That's usually the point where Microsoft 365 for trades crews stops being "an office thing" and becomes the way the shop and the field stay on the same page.
Why trades crews outgrow Gmail and group texts
A personal inbox is fine for the first few bids. Then supplier emails, GC threads and warranty follow-ups pile up in a Gmail or Hotmail account the company doesn't own. When that person is on holiday, on another site, or leaves, the history goes with them.
Group texts are even quicker, and that's the problem. The office and the crew send photos of marked-up drawings, "use revision C," "GC wants as-builts by 3." There's no shared record. The lead's phone becomes the archive, apprentices scroll back for context, and the estimator at the shop can't search for what was decided last Tuesday.
Files go the same way. The PDF sits on the foreman's laptop or behind a personal Drive link pasted into the thread. The crew on a Langley or Delta site ends up working from an older copy, and the mistake shows up later as rework, not as an "IT problem."
In our post on what breaks first on the job site, we described how work moves between the shop, the truck and the site. Microsoft 365 gives all three the same email, the same place to talk and the same files.
What changes when email moves to your company domain
The first change is ownership. Everyone gets an address on the company domain, and customer and supplier emails stay with the business. When someone joins, you add an account. When someone leaves, you keep their mailbox instead of digging through a private Gmail for last year's quotes.
For trades that matters because the paper trail is the job: bids, change orders, inspection notes and supplier confirmations. If those only exist under a personal address, the company doesn't really have them.
Moving over takes some planning: who keeps which address, what gets forwarded for a while, and how the crew signs in on phones and tablets. We sort those details out during the assessment. The end result is simple, though. Email the company owns, on a domain your customers recognize.
Moving from Google Workspace
You don't have to move. If Google Workspace already works for your crew, staying on it is a perfectly good answer. We set up and support Google Workspace too, and the same habits apply: one shared drive per job, chat that links to it, and company control of accounts and phones. This section is for crews that have decided to switch.
The move is more straightforward than it sounds. Email, contacts and calendars come across, so nobody retypes the supplier list or re-enters the week's site dates. Files in each person's My Drive go to their OneDrive, and shared drives go to SharePoint, so a drawing the whole crew uses stays somewhere shared instead of landing in one person's account. If a file has been revised a lot, we check its version history first so the copy the crew relies on is the one that comes over.
You keep your domain, so customers and suppliers keep writing to the same addresses. We copy everything over and get the crew signed in first. Then we change the domain's MX records, which tell other mail servers where to deliver your email, and new mail starts arriving in Microsoft 365. We time that switch for when the office and the field can check the first few messages, not while the morning's quotes are going out. Until then, new mail keeps arriving in Google Workspace as usual.
After the move it's ordinary upkeep: add accounts when people join, close them when they leave, and keep each job's files limited to the people who need them.
Teams instead of group texts for the day's work
Texting isn't going away for "I'm on site" or "running 10 minutes late." The problem is when the job itself lives in a text thread.
Teams gives the office and the crew a shared place for the day's work, tied to company accounts instead of one person's phone. Photos, quick decisions and "here's the current folder" stay where the right people can find them next week.
You don't have to replace every text. The goal is to stop the only copy of a decision from being buried in someone's messages while the truck is already heading to the next address.
SharePoint for drawings and job photos
If drawings, photos and permits only live on the device that took them, the office is always a step behind.
SharePoint, with OneDrive on the devices people carry, becomes the shared shelf: one place for drawings, photos and job documents instead of a mix of personal Drive accounts and USB sticks. People in the shop and on site open the same folder, not a screenshot someone texted three hours ago.
Microsoft 365 handles the collaboration side. If you also need a help desk, backup and secure access from site, that's what managed IT for electrical contractors covers, and the two usually go together.
What happens when a phone doesn't come back from site
Phones get dropped, left in trucks and lost between sites. If that phone had customer contacts, job photos and a signed-in mailbox, buying a new one isn't the whole fix.
Microsoft Intune lets you enroll company phones and laptops so settings follow the device, and so a lost device can be wiped remotely. New phones can also get their apps and settings pushed out instead of being set up by hand in the truck.
We set this up for Able Electrical LTD, a Surrey electrical contractor, when we moved them to Microsoft 365 Business Standard and enrolled their company devices in Intune. The details are in their managed IT case study.
Before you migrate: four questions
Ask your office lead and one field lead:
- Whose Gmail, Hotmail or Google Workspace mailbox still has customer or supplier email the company needs?
- If the main group chat disappeared tonight, which decisions and photos would be lost?
- Where do today's drawings live: a shop folder, SharePoint, or a laptop that left this morning?
- If a company phone didn't come back from site, could you wipe it?
If a couple of those answers are shaky, you're where most growing trades crews start. Book an IT assessment or call 778-895-6072, and we'll walk through email, Teams, files and devices with you in plain language.
FAQ
What does Microsoft 365 include for a trades company?
Business email on your own domain, Teams for chat and calls between the office and the field, SharePoint and OneDrive for shared files, and the Office apps. Some plans, such as Business Premium, also include Intune for managing company phones and laptops.
Do we have to stop texting?
No. Quick texts are fine. The issue is when change orders, revisions and job photos only live in a private group chat. Teams gives the company a shared record of that work.
Can we keep our existing email addresses?
If your team already uses addresses on your own domain, including on Google Workspace, those addresses move with you. If people are on @gmail.com addresses, they'll get new company addresses, and we can set up forwarding while customers and suppliers switch over.
What comes over from Google Workspace?
Email, contacts and calendars move to Microsoft 365. Files in each person's My Drive go to OneDrive, and shared drives go to SharePoint. Your email addresses stay the same, and we only switch new mail over once everything is copied and the crew can sign in.
Related service: Microsoft 365 for trades