by I’ve been using the Spark IM client for a number of years now and, whilst it has not been updated for quite some time, it still does the job I need it to. I recently helped a friend move to Google Apps on one of their domains, but who also happened to be a Spark user. Setting up a Gmail account in Spark is reasonably well documented but there are some subtle differences in this setup when it comes to Google Apps accounts.
So here is how to configure Spark IM to work with a Google Apps account (taking fred@example.com as the use case).
- On the main Spark login page, enter the following details:
- Username: fred
- Password: *****
- Server: example.com
- Then click the Advanced button:
- Uncheck the “Automatically discover host and port” option, and enter
- Host: talk.google.com
- Port: 5223
- Tick the “Use OLD SSL port method”
- Click OK and login in as normal
The only slightly odd part is that, for most other things, your username is the full fred@example.com but in Spark (and some other IM clients), you need to split this apart and use the domain portion as the server name instead. It may not be perfect but this is what worked for me!
Perfect. Was searching for steps to configure. And now IT WORKS FOR MEEEE … Yippeee …
Was wondering if there is any other better IM which works well with google apps. SPARK is good. But not great though meets my requirement.
Your choice of other IM clients really depends on which operating system you use (e.g .Windows, Mac, Linux). However, this page from Google lists quite a few of the more popular ones:
http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html
Many of my colleagues are very keen on Pidgin and use it quite extensively.
I don’t commonly comment but I gotta say appreciate it for the post on this perfect one : D.