Tag Archives: Inbox by Gmail

Taking learning beyond classroom walls with new features for Back to School

Posted by Dina Kachintseva, Classroom Software Engineer and Felix Wang, User Experience Designer

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

As any teacher would tell you, the classroom isn’t the only place where learning happens — it’s just the tip of the iceberg. From parents who help students with homework, to extracurriculars, field trips and more, there are so many ways students can learn beyond the walls of the classroom. This is why today we’re announcing new features to help teachers inspire learning for students, regardless of place or time.

Parents and guardians stay informed with Google Classroom email summaries

Parent participation has a major impact on student learning. Today, we’re launching a new feature in Google Classroom that will automatically share summaries of student work with parents. Once invited by a teacher, parents and guardians can receive automated daily or weekly email summaries of student work and class announcements, making it easier to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in the classroom.
“I enjoy helping my children prepare for assignments that they have coming up – and the earlier I know about them, the better,” says Michelle Barrette, a mother of five Medfield, Massachusetts students and pilot user of the new Classroom feature. “This way I can prevent them from missing deadlines and see if they need help brainstorming topics or solutions.”

Annotations help students color outside the lines — and the classroom

When teachers want to help students understand complex math or science concepts, visuals — like drawings on a whiteboard — can help. But how does this work when students and teachers aren’t in the classroom together? Today, we’re announcing the ability to annotate documents in the Google Classroom mobile app.
Using annotations, students can complete assignments, sketch out math problems or even create visuals of creative ideas directly on their devices. This gives students a portable classroom whiteboard on which they can easily draw and sketch. Now, thinking through complex homework challenges from home, school or on the bus is even easier. 

Teachers can use annotations to quickly grade assignments by writing directly on the student’s work, or highlighting the most important passages in a text or novel. Anne Farrahar, an English teacher in the Medfield Public Schools district, explains how her lessons benefitted from her high school students annotating a critique of Shakespeare’s "The Merchant of Venice." “They highlighted all the ideas they thought were convincing arguments in one color, and all the ideas they disagreed with in another color,” says Farraher. “This gave me the chance to assess students' individual understanding and, based on their responses, gather ideas for future lessons.” 

More Expeditions thousands of miles away or inside the human body

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to visit the White House Kitchen Garden or what it would be like to travel inside the human body? Today we’re announcing new Expeditions that bring students far beyond the usual places they can travel. With these adventures, like a visit to Bhutan or an exploration of the human vascular systems, teachers are able to deeply immerse students in lessons, creating vivid and memorable learning experiences.

In addition, the Expeditions app is coming soon to iOS. More teachers, including those who use iPads, will be able to share Expeditions with their students by using full-screen mode on the devices in place of a VR viewer. With over 200 Expeditions available, we’re excited for them to experience these virtual field trips on more devices. 

More Google for Education features for busy teachers and curious minds

In celebration of the new school year, we’re excited to share more new tools for teachers and students to break down traditional barriers within the classroom: 

  • A more organized Classroom. To make Classroom even easier to use, teachers can organize the class stream by adding topics to posts, and teachers and students can filter the stream for specific topics. Plus, users can now preview documents, PDFs, images and videos, all without leaving Classroom. 
  • Share your screens wirelessly at school. With the latest Chrome update, Cast for Education is now available to all teachers and students. This free Chrome app carries video and audio across complex school networks and has built-in controls for teachers — no new hardware required. Look out for updates including support for secondary domains coming soon. 
  • Google Forms get an upgrade with images. In Forms, teachers can now add images to questions or as multiple choice answers. This is perfect for subjects like math when students need to show their understanding of diagrams and graphs. 
  • Inbox by Gmail for the classroom. Inbox by Gmail is rolling out to Google for Education users. Coming soon, email notifications from Classroom will be intelligently grouped in Inbox, making it easy for teachers and students to find important updates and highlights. 
Whether students are at home or in the classroom, teachers can continue to inspire and support their curiosity with Expeditions, Classroom, Apps and Chromebooks. Stay tuned this week on Google+ and Twitter for more details on these exciting new tools. 

Inbox by Gmail: Evolving the inbox to save you time

(Cross-posted on the Official Gmail Blog)

Posted by Thijs van As, Product Manager

Staying on top of your to-do list can be a challenge. In order to get things done, you often need to hunt through your inbox to find what you’re looking for, whether it’s info about upcoming events, your next trip, or a news article you want to share with colleagues.

The team behind Inbox has made its mission to help you organize your email and save you time. Starting today, you'll discover more integrations that make it easier to see what's happening and then act with organized Trello and GitHub project updates and Google Alerts previews. You'll also see updates based on your feedback, including Google Drive integration.


Get organized Trello and GitHub project updates

The Inbox team has worked with Trello, a project management application, and GitHub, a software collaboration platform, to improve email notifications. If you use Trello, you'll get a summary of what's new with your Trello projects, so you can stay up-to-date on the latest updates. And for those of you who use GitHub, you’ll get a summary of code changes and filed issues for each repository.

Stay on top of your Google Alerts

To help you stay in the know on topics you care about, you can scan through your Google Alerts just like a newsletter. New alerts are summarized right in the inbox. If one of them catches your eye, you can click to read more. If not, you can quickly mark it as done.

Enjoy other updates based on your feedback

You'll also see a number of highly-requested features based on your feedback (thank you!):

  • If you use Google Drive, you can now insert Drive links into emails, check and fix permissions for those links, and save email attachments to Drive.
  • You can now drag-and-drop contacts between to, cc, and bcc in compose on web.
  • You can delete right from the inbox just as easily as you can mark as done.


What’s next?

If you're a company that sends emails, and are excited about our Trello and GitHub updates and want to make your emails more useful, contact us here -- we are excited to work with more email senders directly over the coming months.

This is just the beginning: The Gmail team will continue to improve the email experience so you can spend less time dealing with email and more time being productive.


Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1-3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

Launch release calendar
Launch detail categories
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Inbox by Gmail: Evolving the inbox to save you time

Posted by Thijs van As, Product Manager

Staying on top of your to-do list can be a challenge. In order to get things done, you often need to hunt through your inbox to find what you’re looking for, whether it’s info about upcoming events, your next trip, or a news article you want to share with colleagues.

The team behind Inbox has made its mission to help you organize your email and save you time. Starting today, you'll discover more integrations that make it easier to see what's happening and then act with organized Trello and GitHub project updates and Google Alerts previews. You'll also see updates based on your feedback, including Google Drive integration.

Get organized Trello and GitHub project updates
The Inbox team has worked with Trello, a project management application, and GitHub, a software collaboration platform, to improve email notifications. If you use Trello, you'll get a summary of what's new with your Trello projects, so you can stay up-to-date on the latest updates. And for those of you who use GitHub, you’ll get a summary of code changes and filed issues for each repository.
Stay on top of your Google Alerts
To help you stay in the know on topics you care about, you can scan through your Google Alerts just like a newsletter. New alerts are summarized right in the inbox. If one of them catches your eye, you can click to read more. If not, you can quickly mark it as done.
Enjoy other updates based on your feedback
You'll also see a number of highly-requested features based on your feedback (thank you!):
  • If you use Google Drive, you can now insert Drive links into emails, check and fix permissions for those links, and save email attachments to Drive.
  • You can now drag-and-drop contacts between to, cc, and bcc in compose on web.
  • You can delete right from the inbox just as easily as you can mark as done.
What’s next?
If you're a company that sends emails, and are excited about our Trello and GitHub updates and want to make your emails more useful, contact us here -- we are excited to work with more email senders directly over the coming months.

This is just the beginning: The Gmail team will continue to improve the email experience so you can spend less time dealing with email and more time being productive.

Source: Gmail Blog


Inbox by Gmail: a better way to keep track of events, newsletters and links

Posted by Pras Sarkar, Software Engineer

Life can get really busy. Inboxes too. Just think about everything inside your own inbox, from personal messages and trip itineraries to promotional offers and yes, even bills. It's all (mostly) important, but it can be overwhelming to stay on top of everything. And sometimes, you might miss something really important amidst all the rest.

Starting today, you'll discover three new experiences in Inbox—streamlined events, glanceable newsletters and saved links—that help you better keep track of things that matter to you and feel more in control.

Keep up with Google Calendar events
Events can be hard to keep track of in your inbox because details—and people’s plans—may change. Inbox now gathers emails from a single event together and shows you what's changed at a glance. When you tap on an event, you'll see a comprehensive overview, all in one place.
Stay on top of your favorite email newsletters
Similarly, it’s now easier to preview the newsletters you read often and click through to the articles that interest you most. And once you've taken a look at the latest, newsletters will minimize to save space in the inbox.
Store links to remember with "Save to Inbox"
Lastly, your inbox is much more than just the emails sent to you. Chances are you've emailed yourself a link or two (or three)—to an article you want to read later or a recipe you want to try. Now instead of sending yourself a bunch of separate emails, try the new "Save to Inbox" feature to easily save links for later.

Simply share the link to Inbox on Android or iOS, or use the new Inbox by Gmail Chrome extension on web. When you check your email, you'll see your saved links grouped together in one place.

With these updates, Inbox helps you organize and access the information that matters most, saving time and reducing email overload. Take these new features for a spin by sharing to Inbox on mobile, installing the Chrome extension, subscribing to an email newsletter or scheduling an event.

Source: Gmail Blog


Express yo’self with emoji in Smart Reply

Posted by Balint Miklos, Software Engineer

When someone emails you asking to schedule a meeting, there's a good chance you're thinking, "Aw ? ." Or, when you get that 17th update on that topic you stopped caring about 10 emails ago, you just wanna say ? . Or maybe your friend just emailed you photos from Vegas, and you get inspired to stand up and ? . Whatever you want to say, emoji can say it better (obvs). So we figured we'd take the deep neural network behind Smart Reply, and make it more sassy.

The result is emoji suggestions in addition to (or instead of) really boring text replies. In our testing, we've also found that emoji do a better job of plumbing the emotional depths of one's soul, so we're optimistic that today's update will encourage more open and honest email conversations.

Looking ahead, Smart Reply will actually get better the more you use it, so you'll be able to strike just the right balance between written responses, and ? ? ? ?.

PS: Smart Reply is only suggesting emoji. We are investigating. Pardon our dust.

PPS: We are happy to report that our deep neural network had quickly learned that when given a choice, you, our users, always pick emoji. Smart Reply adapted so quickly that we thought it was a bug. Thankfully, Smart Reply will continue to show the three most perfect replies, which happen to always be emoji.

PPPS: ??????

Source: Gmail Blog


Top ways to save time and #maketime with Google Apps

Posted by Matt Charman, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Today we’re launching the #maketime website, which builds on the movement to hold uninterrupted time on our calendars during the hours when we’re most creative. The website helps you prioritize time for the things that keep you inspired, over the things that just keep you busy.

Did you know that we spend 2.25 hours a day on average answering emails and 86 hours a month on average in meetings? The workplace is changing. We have the freedom to work and collaborate across any device and the flexibility to finish tasks and create from wherever we are. But we’re also more accessible.


Use the #maketime website to look at how you spend your work hours, so you can stamp out needless time takers, and not just save time, but #maketime for the things that are important to you.

Here are a few ways you can save time to #maketime with Google Apps.

Save time with Reminders in Google Calendar


Use Reminders in Google Calendar to combine an evolving and editable to-do list with your scheduled events. See the items on your list that you haven’t “checked off” yet at the top of your calendar each day, until you give them that triumphant swipe “complete!”

And Reminders sync with your contacts, so you can add phone numbers and addresses. When it’s time to call in dinner reservations at a favorite restaurant, dial directly from the Reminder.


Save time with machine learning and Inbox


From Inbox, use Smart Reply to respond to emails without typing out the reponses yourself. Machine learning recognizes emails that can be answered with short replies and creates natural language responses instantly — often with a few versions to choose from.

Save time by researching and collaborating in Docs


Switching between tabs and tools costs incremental time that adds up. In Docs and Slides, you can use the Research tool to do a quick Web and file search for terms you need to gather more info on. And now you can do the same on the go within the Docs app on Android.

From Docs, Sheets and Slides, you can also use the instant comments feature on the Web or your Android or iOS device to add teammates to the conversation by simply adding their names (just start typing names and contacts will appear in the comment box). So when you’ve got some great feedback on a line of text or a table of data, you can add a note right next to it that sends an email. No need to go back into Gmail to draft an additional note.

Also in Sheets, Explore deciphers your data for you and automatically creates charts and insights that illustrate trends. The time cost on your end: seconds.


Save time by converting image text


One of the coolest recent innovations in Drive for Work is the Optical Character Recognition that converts text in images into text documents to collaborate on. You can take a photo of a whiteboard brainstorm or an inspiring message on the other side of the subway window and turn that photo into a shared doc.

We can’t stop the clock — or to a large degree control the number of emails that flood our inboxes or the amount of traffic that slows our work commutes. But we can find ways to make more minutes meaningful.

Smart Reply comes to Inbox by Gmail on the web

Posted by Taylor Kourim, Software Engineer

Today, we're bringing Smart Reply to Inbox on the web.

Just like in the Inbox mobile app, Smart Reply saves you precious time by suggesting up to three responses based on the emails you get. Selecting an option starts a reply, ready for you to either edit or send:

10% of all your replies on mobile already use Smart Reply, so we’re excited to bring this same convenience to the web. It's particularly helpful when you're jamming through lots of emails on your laptop.

Keep the feedback coming using the "Help & Feedback" link in the app.

Source: Gmail Blog


Inbox by Gmail: Saving time with Snooze

Posted by Michael Landry, Software Engineer

Snoozing emails is great because it helps you focus on what you need to do now instead of what you can put off until later. Starting today, Snooze is getting a new look and two time-saving improvements — all based on your feedback.

First, Snooze is getting two highly-requested snooze times: Later this week and This weekend. These new options should hopefully save you some time, and decrease the need to use custom snooze.
Snooze’s new look

Second, just like you can set your preferred morning time to receive emails, you can now choose the weekend days that work best for you.
New weekend setting

This feature is especially useful for people living who live in places where the weekend spans different days of the week.

Look for these new options in Inbox over the next week. And don’t forget to continue sharing your feedback, so we can keep working on your top requests. Enjoy your snoozing :)

Source: Gmail Blog


Sharing travel plans and memories with Inbox by Gmail

Posted by Victor Anchidin, Software Engineer

The holidays are full of traveling, get-togethers and sharing memories. Now Inbox is making all of these things a bit easier, with an update to Trip Bundles and mobile attachments.

You've told us how much you love that Trip Bundles summarize all of the important info about your trip. So, starting this week, you'll be able to share those summaries with friends and family with one tap.
You can also add emails to a trip (a top feature request!) using the Move to... menu, and view trips offline—perfect for when you're on a plane or using spotty WiFi.

While you're traveling, you might end up taking a lot of photos. Improved mobile attachments give you quick access to your recent photos, and let you attach multiple photos at once.
These new features will be rolling out over the next week. Happy holidays!

Source: Gmail Blog


Computer, respond to this email: Introducing Smart Reply in Inbox by Gmail

Posted by Bálint Miklós, Software Engineer

With the holidays approaching and emails coming in at a furious pace, we can all use a little help. Inbox is already on hand assisting you with the next step, organizing your trips, and even suggesting reminders.

But when you're checking email on the go, it can be cumbersome and time-consuming to reply to all or even some of them. What if there was a way for your inbox to guess which emails can be answered with a short reply, prepare a few responses on your behalf and present them to you, one tap away?

Well, starting later this week, Inbox will do just that with Smart Reply.
Smart Reply suggests up to three responses based on the emails you get. For those emails that only need a quick response, it can take care of the thinking and save precious time spent typing. And for those emails that require a bit more thought, it gives you a jump start so you can respond right away.
There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes to make Smart Reply work. Inbox uses machine learning to recognize emails that need responses and to generate the natural language responses on the fly. If you're interested in how Smart Reply works, including how researchers got machine learning to work on a data set that they never saw, you can read more about it on the Google Research Blog.

And much like how Inbox gets better when you report spam, the responses you choose (or don't choose!) help improve future suggestions. For example, when Smart Reply was tested at Google, a common suggestion in the workplace was "I love you." Thanks to Googler feedback, Smart Reply is now SFW :)

Smart Reply will be rolling out later this week on both Google Play and the App Store in English. If you've got a lot of emails on your plate, now's a great time to try Inbox and get through them faster than ever.

Source: Gmail Blog