This video is brought to you by SaneBox more about them a little later in the video. If you use Gmail for email, but you're not making use of the Chrome side panel, you are missing out. So in this video, I'm going to show you four different ways to make use of these side panel so you can be more effective and productive while dealing with Gmail.
Where to find the Gmail Side Panel
Now, first things first, if you don't see these icons here on the right hand side of your Chrome browser, when you're within Gmail, I want you to come down to the bottom right hand corner, and you may see this little arrow here. We want to expand it, and that's going to reveal this side panel.
Google Calendar
At the very top, we're going to have access to our Google calendar, and of course, this is very helpful if we want to glance at our schedule or our day. We have two different views here. We can view it here by day and then just toggle ahead to different dates, or we can come up here to the more option and select, schedule.
Now for me, this looks a little busy, so I prefer the day schedule, but I also prefer the day schedule for another reason. It makes it a lot easier for me to create appointments.
So for example, let's say that I've opened up this email here and it's reminded me that I need to set up a meeting. Well, all I need to do is click on my schedule here. I'm going to drag it out for an hour, and now I can immediately start to create that meeting.
Now, by default, it's going to take the subject line of this email address and put it up here at the name of the event. I'm probably going to change that to something a lot more relevant, but the main benefit of this feature is I don't have to open up another tab.
I don't have to go somewhere else to create that meeting. I can do it all right here from within my Gmail account. Now, next up, we have access to Google Keep.
And of course, just like the other Google apps we have access to, it is a lot more convenient to access your checklist, your notes, your reference material without having to open another tab.
But there's an additional bonus to making use of keep right here from within Gmail.
So once again, I'm reviewing or I'm dealing with this particular email, and maybe I want to come back and reference this information a little later in the future. Well, if I come up here and say, take a note, it will automatically create a link to this particular email, whatever email I currently have open.
Now, you don't have to keep that link. If I just decided to take a note while this email was up, you'll see that there is always going to be this little X if I want to remove this source. But if I want to say, review this email or something along those lines, I've quickly and easily created this note, and whenever I go to access it, I will have a direct link to this particular - Message.
Google Tasks
Next up, let's access our Google tasks. And here we can access all of our different lists. So whether you manage one or a variety of to-do lists, you can manage them all and access them all right here from within your Gmail account.
But just like how we saw in Google Keep, we can make a connection. We can do that here within tasks as well. Now, at this point, you may assume that if I come up here and select add a task, it will automatically add this connection. That's actually not the case.
I can continue to add and edit my tasks here regardless of what I have in front of me here on the screen. But if I want to make a connection, I actually need to come up here to the top of the email and say, add to tasks. Now, here again, by default, the name of the task is going to be the subject line, which is probably not that relevant.
We may want to change this to review the invoice or something along those lines. But regardless here you can see it has made that connection directly to this particular email. So this can be a fantastic way to process your email and deal with email and come back to those important emails in a more timely manner.
Contacts
Last but not least, let's take a look at the contacts option, which is a much quicker and faster way to access and create and manage your contacts rather than having to open up a new tab.
So here you can see I've got a full list of my contacts. I can come up here and search for those contacts. But what makes this even more valuable is that when I am dealing with a particular email message, it's going to show me exactly who is involved in this thread.
Let's say, for example, there's maybe a few other people who are CC'd, and I'm not sure who they are or what my relationship is with them. They will all be listed here within the, in this Thread tab.
And better yet, if I select one of these contacts, it's going to open up their contact information where I can further go ahead and edit it.
But what I think is most helpful is coming down to the recent interactions. By default, it's going to show me the last three emails which they have sent or been a part of.
I can come down here and select more, and it's going to give me a full history, and then I can click on any one of those messages and go directly to them as well.
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