Gmail 'priority inbox'

[RandBlade]

Has anyone tried the new 'Priority Inbox' feature from Gmail? I've just started using it and I must say its made a decent start.

I currently have 320 unread emails (all from last 10 days) although most 'important' ones have already been replied to. I gets lots of 'unimportant' emails each day that in part are just sent for the sake of being sent (eg we count the cash in each location morning and night and I get an email of how it is, I just want the emails for the records if we ever have a problem not because I need it/care normally). One thing with email is that without even loading an email on either my iPhone or Gmail's site I can see the first 2 lines or so without 'reading' the email so have often read it without ever marking it read.

From the 320 emails it picked out 3 as important, each were ones I need to reply to. I think I'll still read all my mail but a good idea I think when I have hundreds at any time it seems a good way to filter through which ones to start off with

[Ominous Gamer]

You have 10 days worth of unread/unmaintained email? Christ, if I tried to pull that off the county would lock my account after the first week.

Guess this is why I wasn't overly impressed with the new feature when it rolled out, rarely do I allow my personal email accounts build up to beyond a single page.

Spoiler:

Labels + Archive

[RandBlade]

I have about 50 emails+ a day and as I said almost all are non-urgent, while I don't have a 'desk job', there's no point me spending an hour each day doing nothing but reading email. Especially when as I said most 'unread' emails are actually read anyway.

I am using labels and archiving now, but still ...

I like a new Labs option which is to change your default reply button to "Send and Archive" rather than just "Send"

[Discord]

That's what filters are for...

[Illusions]

Just got priority inbox, so I haven't really been able to assess its usefulness, however its seeming like I may eventually really dig into setting up more organized labels, filters, etc. for everything that gets mailed to me, in addition to beginning to use +whatever@gmail.com with certain bulk mailing lists to filter them faster.

[LittleFuzzy]

I don't need the feature. I only created the gmail account so I could post materials to Google Docs for my D&D group, and those guys are the only ones sending messages to that address.

[Spawnie]

Ive been using the "labels" feature for this task till now and it works like a charm, especially for routine non-important emails.

Funnily, they dont mention that you have to check the "archive this (skip the inbox)" checkbox for it to be at all useful. Otherwise you get the same mess but its mildly colourcoded.

[RandBlade]

That's what filters are for...

That assumes your emails are consistent enough to get filters to work.

I get multiple emails a day from the same people, some urgent, some really not important at all, just there for the record, while an equally huge number I'm CC'd in on but its not for my attention. But people don't write the emails consistently enough for me to make clear and simple rules to filter them all.

That OTOH I suppose is what Google has always been good at. Pre-Google, searching on Altavista etc was fairly useless, quite hit&miss. Then Google came and was a revolution making it so much easier to find what you were looking for.

Pre-Gmail I was getting regular junkmail into my Hotmail account. Yes you could set up rules to filter out junkmail, but nothing consistently worked. Gmail came and has a virtual 100% success rate for me at blocking spam, but not blocking real mail. Quite impressive and not something I could do with filters.

I suppose sorting through this is pretty similar. If anyone has a track record of sorting through to find the needle in the haystack its Google.

Day 2 using it and for most of the day every important email it marked that came in was something I'd need to reply to. A few important ones were marked as not important though but it did give a good starting point at what to go through. Started going back through my older emails now and archiving the ones them. Some were things in recent days that are important for me but not for immediate response, I'd already noticed them but planned to respond later when I have more time. Marked them as important manually to 'train' the system. End of the night I got my first unimportant ones get marked as important, I think its interesting the way you can train it and I'll be curious if it works or not.

I do like the new optional layout though. I have mine set now to show "Important and Unread" then "Starred" then "Important" (but read) then "Everything Else".

I only recently found the keyboard shortcuts and one other advantage of the "unimportant" category is it makes it much quicker to read then archive them. Open first one then alternate between keys y (archive) and o (open), can very quickly go through them all.

[Dreadnaught]

You have 10 days worth of unread/unmaintained email? Christ, if I tried to pull that off the county would lock my account after the first week.

Guess this is why I wasn't overly impressed with the new feature when it rolled out, rarely do I allow my personal email accounts build up to beyond a single page.

Spoiler:

Labels + Archive

Agreed, if you're someone who reads and labels everything it works. Though for people who do get hundreds of e-mails a day this can be super effective.

It's also an interesting development in modern society that something like this was seen as important to develop. Spam filters were the first wave to prevent unsolicited mail. But lots of mail isn't unsolicited, yet it's also not important.

Now many people get so much e-mail they just want to know what needs addressing, and so Google made an algorithm that sorts mail by how often you receive, open and reply to someone.

I knew this was a big deal with an e-mail list I subscribe to sent an e-mail asking people to flag their e-mails as important so it wouldn't get deprioritized by the priority inbox. Methinks some e-mail marketers spent the past week freaking out about this.

Day 2 using it and for most of the day every important email it marked that came in was something I'd need to reply to. A few important ones were marked as not important though but it did give a good starting point at what to go through. Started going back through my older emails now and archiving the ones them. Some were things in recent days that are important for me but not for immediate response, I'd already noticed them but planned to respond later when I have more time. Marked them as important manually to 'train' the system. End of the night I got my first unimportant ones get marked as important, I think its interesting the way you can train it and I'll be curious if it works or not.

Two tips...just do be clear, you know you can flag e-mails as important to help the algorithm learn, right?

Secondly, GMail recently started allowing nested labels: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/0...d-message.html

Not sure if this would help you but for me this was huge, because I don't like having more than 12-14 labels. Anything more and I think it becomes difficult to remember what "folder" you put something in. But if you nest the labels, it allows you to set broad labeling categories and then sort them things out in sub-labels. And if you need to get rid of a sub-label, you can fold the e-mails into the parent label.

[RandBlade]

Now many people get so much e-mail they just want to know what needs addressing, and so Google made an algorithm that sorts mail by how often you receive, open and reply to someone.

Rather than "unsubscribe" from adverts (typically from sites I've bought something off just once) I've recently started just filtering them out. So almost all email I get now is from people I work with.

Two tips...just do be clear, you know you can flag e-mails as important to help the algorithm learn, right?

Hence me saying: "Marked them as important manually to 'train' the system"

Secondly, GMail recently started allowing nested labels: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2010/0...d-message.html

Yes, about bloody time too! Quite a simple thing that was missing.