Getting canned?
As far as I know Inbox bundles are a unique feature and one I could not do without.
Folders and filtering rules never worked for me because they gave me multiple "to do" lists. It's vital for managing complexity to have a single queue to work through. If you want to use your inbox for that - then traditional email clients fall short.
If something is filtered out of my inbox then I usually end up forgetting about it. If I can't group things in my inbox then it becomes overwhelming.
- The mobile app arbitrarily doesn't allow labelling something and keeping it in the inbox.
- It puts emails in the inbox under a folder when labelled by a filter, which usually ends obscuring important messages.
- It doesn't have something equivalent to inbox sections (I use the crap out of these as my inbox has multiple different streams of things to action in it from multiple email aliases - personal, business, opensource, travel, bills, etc).
- As others have mentioned, Inbox is not very information dense.
Google sure had a challenge updating Gmail, since there's so many people using it in different ways. It'd be really interesting to see their top usage patterns summarised.
I tried to create a basic app a few months ago and it is extremely limited and feels very much beta.
An example: extending compose functionality in any way is impossible.
Add ons are limited to when the user opens an email, that's pretty much it. Try for yourself and see.
If you want to do something fancy then I highly recommend using the InboxSDK (inboxsdk.com).
But for basic functionality the add-ons are pretty sweet. Native mobile integration is huge, alongside massive a great distribution channel. Not sure if you've noticed in the new Gmail but they put a + button below the list of Calendar/Keep/Tasks icons that brings up the Add-On installation modal. That's pretty major.
I will eventually monetize the app I build but won't go down the path of using Google's own addon platform. It will likely be InboxSDK as you point out.
The sad thing here is with InboxSDK being limited to Desktop but brilliantly feature rich, my adoption will be curved by desktop use only. I imagine businesses will be much more inclined to use Google's addon market place because the ease of deployment to users, rather than a Chrome extension etc.
How have your Enterprise users deployed your app to users?
I haven't noticed the + yet, I'll look out for this next time. Thanks for your suggestions.
That seems like a non solution. I frequently compose multiple documents full screen, while multitasking between different items of work. Judging by the upvotes before your edgy comment I'm not the only one.
Other apps maintain state being used in multiple windows, gmail should do the same.
This reminds me of the joke where, upon realizing that normal pens don’t work in space, the US spent millions of dollars developing a “space pen” that will work in zero-gravity, while Russia just decided to use pencils.
Sometimes I write and review a long email in one tab over the course of an hour or so while still responding to shorter emails in another tab. Just yesterday I had to out together a small report with some log examples and network graphs.
So there's 2 tabs open. Sometimes I'll also have older emails open to refer back to them. Easily brings that to 3, 4, 5 tabs.
It also doesn't properly update the mobile app or notifications, and I have one coworker who shows up as a different name whether I'm using the desktop or mobile app.
Of course, that's not what anyone means when they repeat this nonsense, and the entire point of the story is to create a narrative that the US government is bloated, wasteful, and stupid.
In just the past 6 months we've seen native Gmail add-ons (that work across web and mobile) and now confidential mode, Calendar/Keep/Tasks sidebars, and Material look and feel.
It's more work for us working on the InboxSDK, but I'm gladly willing to make the tradeoff of some extra work for a more robust and vibrant underlying platform.