Going beyond reminders and into project management.
Google’s advanced Inbox email app has picked up a sizable update with features that tie into some of the most-used project management services like Trello and GitHub, as well as new integrations with Google Alerts and Google Drive.
With the Trello integration, Inbox will now automatically group and update your Trello notifications so you simply get a summary of what’s coming up for the day rather than multiple disparate emails. For those using GitHub, you’ll find a rolled-up summary of code changes and issues for each repository you’re a part of. In both cases, you’re looking at reducing what could be dozens of emails in your inbox in the morning to just a single summary with a link out to open Trello or GitHub.
A great combination of altogether new features, and some old basics coming to the new platform.
Going a step further, Google’s adding in better integration with two of its own services: Alerts and Drive. Now if you have multiple Alerts notifications in your inbox, you’ll see them grouped together more like an RSS feed so you can quickly scroll through and see which ones are most important. Tap on an alert to see the several sources that generated the alert. When it comes to Drive, Google has enabled inserting Drive links into emails as well as management of permissions for the links. You can also save attachments from Inbox directly to Drive, which is a feature Gmail has long had available.
This Inbox update shows that Google is continuing to take the app seriously, both in terms of adding entirely new features that make sense in the Inbox world but not necessarily in the standard Gmail interface, as well as bringing in “basic” email features that we’ve seen in Gmail previously but are just now making their way to the new app.
The latest version of Inbox is already rolling out from the Google Play Store.