I only use Gmail for my personal email, and I certainly don’t get any important assignments there. But I do know people whose jobs are mainly email-based and use Gmail for all sorts of work-related topics, tasks and projects. If Gmail is also your tool of choice to manage work stuff, you’ll probably like this list of Gmail features focused on productivity – a bunch of extra Gmail tools that can be enabled in Labs and which can help you become more productive when working with email.
- Auto-Advance – Moves on to the next conversation (or goes back to the previous one) instead of displaying the inbox after you mute, archive or delete a conversation. It can save you a few clicks every day.
- Canned Responses – Creates automated responses from emails you need to write frequently. In that way you’ll only need to type them once, and then select them from a drop-down menu next time you need to send a similar message.
- Google Calendar gadget – Displays your Google calendar on the left sidebar, so that you can easily keep track of all upcoming events and appointments, and details for each of them. You can also add new events.
- Mouse Gestures – Lets you browse your email with gestures. Hold the right button and move the mouse to the right to go to the next conversation, move it to the left to go to the previous one or move it up to go back to the inbox.
- Nested Labels – Creates a hierarchical structure of labels thanks to the use of slashes. If, for example, you want a “Tracking” label with two child labels named “Software” and “Blog”, create these three labels: Tracking, Tracking/Software and Tracking/Blog.
- Quick Links – Saves bookmarks to any Gmail URL. This means you can create links to frequently used filters and advanced searches, such as messages from a certain person, emails with attachments or unread messages, to name a few.