You’re using the best online email service out there, so why not take advantage of all it has to offer? Here I list just a few of my favorite Gmail features and how to integrate them. Enjoy!

Multiple Inboxes:

• Turn on the lab (via the green beaker in the top right hand corner of Gmail)
• If you have a small screen, set it one on top of the other. Otherwise, 17”+, you can put them side by side
• Configure the number of extra inboxes you would like and their respective orientation

On my personal account, I only use one extra inbox. It sits above my main inbox and holds all “starred” emails. I star emails that are either important reminders for the upcoming few weeks or emails that I need to respond to soon. My goal for email is to keep my extra inbox as empty as possible.

In other accounts, I have used up to 3 extra inboxes for different labels, such as ‘ACTION REQ’D’, ‘REPLY REQ’D’, and ‘REMEMBER.’ This worked okay, but it was a bit overwhelming at times and I noticed some overlap between a few of the labels. I believe this is only effective if it is a very specific email account. My Media Director account for the UBC SLC worked in this respect very well, but I would never try it with my personal account as there are just too many types of emails coming through.

Labels:

If you’re like me, you get quite a few emails from Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and other social media services every day. Of course, you can disable these notifications from the service themselves. But in some cases, it’s nice to have the emails somewhere.

With Filters and Lables, you can have Gmail take these emails, apply a specific label, and move the emails directly to those labels. I check my Facebook messages in a Facebook label once a day. Keeps my inbox clear, but also keeps me on the ball with the information:

• Go to Settings
• Click “Filters”
• Scroll to the bottom and click “Create new Filter”
• Type the name that displays in the emails from the service in the From: field. (eg. “facebook” or “twitter”)

• Configure the filter for the service you would like as seen below. If you haven’t already setup a label for it, you’ll have to click “new label” from the drop down menu.
  
  

Forwarding:

If you have a personal account, as well as other email accounts for work or involvement, it can become quite involved to check all the different inboxes. Of course, sometimes it is necessary if that is how the organization requests you function. In that case, I forward all mail from that other account to my personal Gmail.
Then, to prevent crazy inbox cluttering, I setup a label/filter system as explained in the previous tip to place all that mail automatically in a label without ever entering the inbox.

• Instead of the From: field reading “facebook,” you place your other account’s email address in the To: field (eg. To:nathan.tippe@slc.ubc.ca). That way, any mail that comes through your account that is addressed to that email will go straight to that label and skip the inbox.
• The two main reasons for this are (1) to be able to access your mail from one account should you need to and (2) for security reasons should anything happen to your other account or if it is a temporary account.

Tasks:

Enable tasks (on the left hand side right below Contacts). While many argue that they have far too many tasks to possible use the basic application, it can be useful for remembering simple things and time-bound tasks also synchronize with Google Calendar.

Handy Labs:

As I mentioned, Labs can be enabled from Settings, and then configured by clicking on the green beaker in the top right hand corner. Below are some extremely handy labs currently available - keep checking the Labs page as there are more being added every day!

Message Translation:
Living in a multi-cultural city like Vancouver, I often get messages with certain parts of the text in different languages. Even if it is the “Sent from my iPhone” signature written in Chinese at the bottom, it’s still nice to have the option to translate it. Message translation does exactly this.

Canned Responses:
If you’ve ever needed to handle any administrative tasks at all or communicate with a large number of people, Canned Responses is a lifesaver. To give you an example, I was receiving many emails with the same question for a couple weeks. Rather than setting up an auto-responder for when Gmail believed an email was asking this question (as this is extremely impersonal) I programmed a Canned Response. Then, whenever I received this email, I typed the text “Hey _____” and then inserted the canned response. If the question was more or less specific I would have the option to alter the text slightly, but just having the majority of the text scripted already saved hours of my time.

Undo Send
Saved my life on multiple occasions. An absolute necessity of a lab. ‘nuff said.

Sender Time Zone
If you every correspond with people in other areas of the world and get confused for a brief second when you receive a lot of emails at 5am, it’s probably because of the time zone. Sender Time Zone reminds you of the state of the location the sender is in when you check the email at 9am and go to give them a phone call. Oops, it’s 3am in their location. Good thing …
 
Standalone Program:
Hands down, one of the best programs to run Gmail on your computer is MailPlane (Mac only). It is dedicated to improving the functionality of Gmail and saving your browser space. Just constantly leave it open on a space on your Mac.

I would argue that Chrome is the best browser to run Gmail. While it still has many problems with Flash and YouTube, the overall interface is intuitive and it will just keep getting better.

That covers most of it! Play around with different labs and settings when you have a few spare moments - you might discover something you never thought was possible with conventional email! Happy gmailing :)