Following the ideas I had in my previous post concerning ways to improve communication, I realized the importance of organization when it comes to managing a group effort as well. A few days ago I noticed some changes in the labels off to the side of my Gmail account and this morning decided to inspect. Aside from ’starred’, ‘chats’, ’spam’, etc. , you can now create your own personal labels and mark emails to be moved there. I don’t think this organizational tool is completely new, but I was unaware of its presence before. Upon looking into this I also began to make filters for my incoming email for the first time! I’m happy to report that this method is already promising to be a positive change for my inbox.
Between emails from school and work, social networking sites and bills, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the growing number of emails we see on a daily basis. Even if you’re like me and are the type to check your email multiple times a day, having important documents several pages back in an inbox cluttered with Facebook notifications can quickly become an inconvenience. Even “starring” an email to acknowledge its importance can only go so far. Gmail is now presenting users with an improved option: folders! These customizable labels now let users not only specify something as important, but allow us to label how it is important.
The labels I chose for my inbox include ‘personal’, ’school’, ‘work’, ’second life’, and ‘receipts’ (picture below, although I have ‘receipts’ as a hidden tab). So I wouldn’t have to even concern myself with moving individual emails into these folders in the first place, I took the time to go ahead and start utilizing ‘filters’ as well. If you click the ‘filters’ tab at the top by the search portion of your Gmail account, you can specify to have mail from certain people, domains and so on all automatically moved into the appropriate folders.
don't tease about the ms paint
Since I will be starting work soon with people who I expect to be sending mail frequently, I decided separating these emails was a priority. I’m now having mail from Twitter, Facebook, Livejournal, and Flickr all forwarded into my ‘personal’ folder. I have anything with a “utexas” in the address being moved into ’school’. I created a label for SL too so I won’t miss any important messages from my group or from anyone else I may be collaborating with. My ‘work’ label was the most specific. I created two individual filters for everyone on my team. All mail from their email addresses (some had two listed, if so I made one for both) will be forwarded into ‘work’, and also all mail from their respective Second Life avatars will be forwarded here as well. Once we begin working on our project and I become more familiar with sites individual teammates use more frequently for work related conversation, I may have to go back and add additional filters. If I notice one person prefers using Facebook for sharing important links, I may want to go ahead and create a filter for that so that their notifications aren’t directed to ‘personal’ and potentially overlooked.
I just did some reading and it seems as if labeling has been an option, but the buttons making it easier are new. So I won’t miss out on any news regarding efficiently using my Gmail, I went ahead and subscribed to the Official Gmail Blog. As a messy person in general I can’t afford not to spend a few minutes setting up and taking advantage of tools like this.
(For some reason I’m not being allowed in insert a link! I’ll check back on this later, but here is the Gmail blog link: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/ )
