Gmail is one of my core productivity tools for getting things done. However, did you know that you can add some superpowers to your Gmail account to make it much easier to manage all of those emails?
In today's video, I'm going to show you three of my favorite add-ons for Gmail, three add-ons that I simply couldn't live without. Today we are going to get things started with Boomerang.
Boomerang
Boomerang is an add-on that is available for both Gmail users and Outlook users. Here I am, about to send a message, in particular, I'm about to send a question to someone.
This all looks pretty standard at this point. At the bottom of my dialog, I've got my send button, and I can discard it and that type of thing.
But you will notice down below, I have some additional features, some additional functionality. This is what Boomerang can provide to all of your emails.
First, I have a red Send Later button. So if I would like to send this message into the future, I can do so.
Think of how often you may have stayed up extra late, and you're crafting that email at, I don't know, let's say 2:00 in the morning. But perhaps you don't want the person who's receiving that email to know that you're crafting that message at 2:00 in the morning.
No problem. I can hit the Send Later button and schedule it to arrive at 7 or 10, or whenever I want it to be.
How about the scenario where you know the person who's receiving that email, and you know they don't usually read their email until 1:30 in the afternoon? I can schedule my email to arrive at that time as well.
But you know what my number one favorite feature of Boomerang is? It's the one next to it, this little checkbox here.
Let me explain how it works. Think of how many times you've asked a question of someone.
Here I'm asking, Can you please send me a copy of the team notes? I'd really like to receive these in the next two days.
But what do I do after I send this email? Do I give it a particular label? Do I set a reminder in my calendar so I follow up with this person?
I don't have to do any of those things with Boomerang. All I need to do is check this checkbox here, and then I can determine the length of time that I want to go by before I get an automatic reminder.
In this case, I'm going to wait a maximum of two days. I'm going to say two days.
What's going to happen is that after I send this email, if I don't get a reply from the person I'm sending it to within two days, Boomerang is going to automatically bring my original email back to the top of my inbox. That will be my reminder, my trigger, or my cue that they still haven't sent me those team meeting notes.
Then I can either send another email, make a phone call, or determine what happens next. But the great thing about Boomerang is that if this person does reply within the next two days, I do not get a duplicate email.
Nothing further happens. Boomerang knows that I've been sent a reply, and therefore I don't get anything extra in my inbox. This is the core feature of Boomerang that I use literally on a daily basis.
Now that's not all that Boomerang provides. In fact, one of Boomerang's most basic features is bringing a message back into your inbox if you just don't want to deal with it right away.
You could just hit Boomerang, and you can determine when you'd like that message to reappear. But this one right here, the Boomerang or bring back if someone does not reply, I absolutely love.
Alright, let's move on to add-on number two, and I've got another example set up here. In this case, I am wanting to meet up with someone.
I want to set up a phone call with someone else, and you sort of know how this goes, right? You're wondering if we can set up a time for a phone call later this week.
What happens? You send a message proposing a time, and they say, No, can't do that. How about this? And you say, Sorry, I'm busy, and there's back and forth, back and forth, trying to find the right time.
Assistant
Well, my next favorite add-on is called Assistant, and this is how it works. It allows you to propose several times where you are available, and then the person you're sending that email to can select which one works for them.
Here I've just supplied a simple question, I'm wondering if we can set up a time for a phone call this week. What I'm going to do next, you can see in my lower right-hand corner, I have the Assistant icon.
All I need to do is select this icon, and it is going to open up a new dialog box. It looks very similar to a meeting dialogue here, right?
I've got the title of the meeting here, which it has pre-populated with both of our names. Of course, I can edit this.
I can say Scott and Scott Chat. Location, I can say phone, and I can include my phone number if I want to here.
Let's make it a classic movie 555 number. Invitees, here's where I can paste in the email addresses of those who I'm inviting.
I'm just going to use my test account here, and then I can put in a description, anything else that you would find standard within a meeting invitation. But the real power comes down below.
Let's say I want to make the meeting length 30 minutes in length. I'm going to select 30 minutes, and here are the next three days available to me.
I can see that I'm actually fairly wide open, so I'm going to give this person a few different choices. I can click here, I'm going to say 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. later today, maybe 4:30, and let's say 1 o'clock on Thursday.
I'm going to give them one more time on Friday at 2:00 p.m. So here, you can see I get a snapshot of my calendar.
It actually shows me my other events here. You can see some of the other events that I've had today, so I don't have to open up my Google calendar.
In this case, I've selected five different times, and what I'm going to do is select Insert times into email. What Assistant does is that it pulls that directly into my email.
Now here's some standard text that Assistant includes. I'd like to set up a 30-minute meeting. Click on the meeting start time that works for you.
Down below, we have that information, and when they receive this email, all they have to do is glance at their calendar and say, You know what, I can do Thursday at 1:00. They're going to click this link, and immediately, that's going to create an invitation for them.
That's going to book it on my calendar because I've already said I'm available. It's going to book it on my calendar, and now we're set.
That meeting is set up in just a single email. This is a fantastic tool when you are dealing with individuals.
It's not necessarily meant for groups of people to determine one particular time, but it's fantastic when you're trying to set up a meeting with another individual. They just have to click once, and you don't have to do anything at all beyond this step after you send this email.
You just have to wait for their reply, and it's automatically going to be booked into your Google Calendar. Of course, if none of these times are available, they can just select None of these times work for me.
That will send you a notification, and you can propose some new times if you like. One thing I would point out is that it will show it in your default time zone.
So if you are sending this to someone outside of your time zone, you may want to mention that in your note up above or just point out that there is an opportunity for them to view it in their own time zone. By default, they're going to see it in your default time zone.
But this is another tool that I use almost daily when I'm setting up meetings with someone else. I know what my availability is. I really have no idea what their availability is, so I use Assistant to help us both out.
AutoTextExpander
Now, the third add-on I want to share with you today is called Auto Text Expander. It's not limited to just Gmail.
You can use Auto Text Expander anywhere that you put text in online. It could be a forum, it could be a document, it could be some other place.
But I wanted to include it here because I find it most useful when it comes to writing and replying to emails. What Auto Text Expander does is it allows you to create some shortcuts, shortcuts of perhaps some phrases or certain words that you use frequently.
You'd rather just type in a few keystrokes rather than type in a full paragraph or a full sentence. Let me give you an example here.
Here I'm asking someone a question, and when I ask a question, I often sign off with a very similar phrase, a very similar phrase followed by a Thanks in advance. Now it's only about a sentence and a half, but you know what? I would much rather just type in a few keystrokes.
So I'm going to type in the letters LFR, and as soon as I hit the letter R, it inputs this string of text which I've already set up in advance. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Thanks in advance.
So this again is a common sign-off. I don't use it for all of my emails, but I use it often enough that I would rather just type in a few characters, and then I can have this
populate immediately within my email.
Let me show you how it works. When you install the Auto Text Expander Chrome extension, you will get a screen that allows you to create the shortcut.
Here you see my LFR example. Here's the shortcut, a string of letters or characters, and then on the right is the text that I want it to automatically input.
Let's try another example, and I'll show you here at the bottom of the screen. Here I have one where the shortcut keys are TBNI.
That makes a lot of sense to me. It might not make any sense to you, but those basically stand for Thanks but not interested.
Once in a while, I may receive an email from someone who's obviously put in a lot of thought, effort, or time into getting to know me, and they want to share something with me. So I will reply to those emails.
I don't reply to all emails that are offering me an opportunity, but in those cases, I might want to just send them something. Hey, thank you for sharing this with me, but I'm just not interested in learning more at this time.
Instead of writing out those two sentences, I would rather just hit these four keystrokes. I can even test this out at the top of the screen.
You will notice it gives you a little demo area. So I'm just going to type in the letters TBNI, and as soon as I finish hitting the I stroke, it inputs that text.
Let's go back to Gmail and use our example here just to make sure that you understand that it works in all areas. There it is, TBNI, and now that string of text is immediately within my email.
You can use this within Gmail, and you can use this in a variety of other places. I just find that I most frequently use it when I'm replying to an email or maybe I'm answering a standard question, something that I get quite frequently.
Hey, why don't I just set up my standard response over here, and then I can use those shortcut keys within Gmail. So there you have it, my three favorite add-ons for Gmail, Boomerang, Assistant, and Auto Text Expander.
If you would like to try out these add-ons, I've included links to them in the description below. As always, I would love to hear from you.
What are some of your favorite Gmail add-ons? Perhaps I can highlight them or review them in an upcoming video.
Thank you so much for watching today's video. I encourage you to give this video a like, share your comments below, and make sure to subscribe.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
