Productivity with Gmail

When it comes to email, I find Gmail has become a preferred favorite mainly because of its web2.0 feel and the great integration with Firefox. There are two features that has become a godsend for productivity in Gmail that I find lacking in other email services.

Labels and Filters

Labels are an awesome feature that allows me to organize my mail without being limited to where to put them (i.e folders). I can put multiple labels, and each label can function as folders for easy searching. For example Azri sends an email about his Alienware recommendation. To organize by folders, I have to decide to place the email either in my ‘Laptops’ or ‘Cuz’ folder. But in Gmail, I can label both keywords, so the email will be listed if I searched for ‘Cuz’ or ‘Laptops’ labels.

Filters is another function that I cannot live without in emails, and Gmail does it exceptionally well.

Yahoo mail uses the old skool filtering method. For example you set two separate filter criteria

the 1st – From: Azri@cuzzis.cuzz, place in ‘Cuz’ folder;

2nd – From: Dani@cuzzis.cuzz, place in ‘Family’ folder

Then when an email comes in (say its from Dani@cuzzis.cuzz) it will go through the 1st filter first to see if it is from Azri@cuzzis.cuzz, then if its not, it checks the 2nd filter. In this case the 2nd is true so the email is moved to the ‘Family’ folder. Yahoo also limits only around 15 filters can be created for its free account.

Gmail is more straightforward in that you can set as many criteria as you want. For example,

Filter1 – From: Azri@cuzzis.cuzz OR Afiq@cuzzis.cuzz, apply label: Cuz;

Filter2 - From: Azri@cuzzis.cuzz OR Dani@cuzzis.cuzz, apply label: Family.

In this example all emails will be checked against each filters independently, and any matching criteria will be given the label. So emails from Azri@cuzzis.cuzz will have both the labels ‘Cuz’ and ‘Family’.

Gmail also has a ‘Search rather than Sort’ approach where you can easily find messages you want using its search function. It takes advantage of Boolean functions and labels search. For example if I just want to see all unread messages EXCLUDING emails in the ‘Cuz’ label I will do a search for “label:unread label:-Cuz”… (the minus sign before ‘Cuz’ will exclude the label from the search)

Sources:

http://www.z-oc.com/blog/2007/10/how-to-manage-all-your-mail-in-gmail-filters-labels-multiple-ids-and-even-backups/

http://www.g04.com/misc/GmailTipsComplete.html#Tip-01

The links above contain a lot of useful techniques to improve productivity and provide visual explanations of what I’m trying to say… Hope you guys find productivity in Gmail too…

Power To The Users!!

**P.S. The email accounts used above are only for example purposes and are not real addresses**

-jobe