Advanced redesign of Gmail service rolled out last week

Of all the things that the Internet has given us, being able to send and/or receive emails is arguably the most important from productivity standpoint.  Even when I don’t make more than a couple of phone calls a day, I do communicate generously via email. This article you are reading now was sent by email […]

Of all the things that the Internet has given us, being able to send and/or receive emails is arguably the most important from productivity standpoint.  Even when I don’t make more than a couple of phone calls a day, I do communicate generously via email. This article you are reading now was sent by email to the editor of Daily Trust. Well, just imagine sending the document by Post Office mail, now famously referred to as “snail mail.” It will take forever to arrive in Abuja from New York, cost me tons of money to send, not to mention the anxiety.  On the other hand, emailing is fast – it arrives in seconds, dependable, and basically free. In particular, with over 1.2 billion accounts – which is the lion share among email service providers – Google’s Gmail service has really simplified our lives in ways that are difficult to over-emphasize: the multiple accounts, the generous memory provision, the zero cost, the dependability, the bells and whistles; you name it. Between Gmail and YouTube, I would say Google has contributed significantly to our improved quality of life. 

So, it must be exciting to welcome the new redesign of Gmail service, the rollout of which started last week Wednesday; 25 April 2018. I’ll summarize the highlights of the enhancements.

Automatic Unsubscribing from Mailing List: Most of us receive emails from unsolicited parties; usually entities that want to sell you stuff; advertisers basically. You ask to be removed from the mailing list, but then a week or so later, you are placed back on this list. The new Gmail will join you in the fight by helping you to automatically unsubscribe from mailing lists. Using artificial intelligence (AI), Gmail will find out the number of emails you receive from a particular sender and how many of them you actually read. Unsubscribe suggestions are then presented to you. 

Nudging Emails: If you are like some of us, you are receiving tens or scores of emails every blessed day. It could feel like a full-time job keeping up. So some mails fall through the cracks, so to speak. The new Gmail will give you a nudge if it reasons that you’ve let an important email slip. The feature basically moves the message further up the inbox to bring it to your consciousness and remind you that the particular email needs some actions from you. Signals such as the email sender and contents are used to decide whether or not to nudge a particular email.

Smart Reply: With this capability, Gmail allows you to quickly answer an email with an automatic response that you select from a list of options. Because your email is read, Gmail provides options it considers to be relevant to the contents of the particular email.

Attachment Tapping: This capability allows you to tap into email attachments directly from the inbox without opening up the conversation.

Email Snoozing: The snooze function disables a message until a set time. Basically, you tell Gmail to put an email message to sleep, to be woken up at a later time that you set. Note that in snoozing mode, an email is actually deleted, temporarily of course, from your inbox until a set time. The message will then reappear in your inbox, once the “wake up” time is up.

Confidential Mode: Sending highly sensitive messages? Take control of your email via Confidential Mode. With this, you can stop recipients from forwarding selected emails, as well as preventing recipients from copying, downloading, or printing the contents of an email. You can set an expiration date for a sensitive email or revoke the email entirely. This capability is possible since the content is not sent directly to the recipient. Rather a link to the content is sent. The contents reside in your mailbox and can be accessed by a recipient with a code via their Gmail account or https (if they are not using Gmail). At any rate, the sender determines how long the recipient can access the message.

High-Priority Notifications:  This capability will notify you of important messages and the emails you can afford to set aside for later. 

Security Redesign:  New Gmail’s security redesign is focused on preventing phishing scams. To accomplish this, Google’s AI algorithms are running safety checks on every new message received. Huge color-coded alerts are displayed, with a call to action for you when Gmail detects a potentially dangerous message.”

As stated above, the rollout of Gmail upgrade started last week; but the process is currently being done slowly. However, Google says you could start using the new Gmail features from last Wednesday, 25 April 2018, though some features may not show up until the next few weeks. To get started using the new features, open Gmail and go to Settings and click on “Try the new Gmail.” If you want to revert to the previous version of Gmail, you can go back to Settings later and select “Go back to classic Gmail.”

The value-addition quotient of tools like Gmail is unquestionably quite high.