What: I love using GSuite products but the one I use most often is Gmail. The following features are my favorite for saving time and making my day run as efficiently as possible. You can watch a step-by-step tutorial by Richard Byrne for most of these features by clicking here.
- Schedule Send: I love this feature. I am an avid planner and send emails to students every Monday with notes for the work due during the upcoming week. However, I do not always have time to compose a message every Monday morning. Schedule send allows me to compose a message and schedule it to send it at a later time by simply composing my message (adding attachments, text, and recipients) and clicking the arrow next to the send button. I then choose a specific date and time to schedule my message to send.
- Confidential mode: I often want to send messages to people but do not want them to forward the content or be able to print it (think confidential information like student IEPs, behavior plans, etc). Once a message is composed, click on the icon along the bottom of the message that looks like a lock with a clock in order to enable confidential mode. You will then be able to set the message to expire at a certain time and will not allow the recipient to forward, print, or download the message.
- Canned responses: I often get the same message from students over and over again. Canned responses allow me to save time by not having to write the exact same response over and over. Simply click on settings, advanced, and choose to enable canned responses. Then compose a message, click the three dots in the lower right corner, choose canned responses, and save the draft as a template. Every time you receive an email you can open canned responses by clicking on the three dots in the lower right corner and choosing the desired draft as a response.
- Smart Compose: I love the smart compose setting. If this feature is enabled, Google will auto-complete sentences for you as you type eliminating the need to fully type out every word. Simply open settings and ensure Smart Compose and Smart Compose Personalization are both set to on.
- Preview Pane: I utilize the preview pane mode so that my email is split into three columns, labels on the far left, inbox in the middle, and individual emails open on the right column. This feature allows me to easily navigate between emails because they open instantly on the right. You can enable this feature by opening settings, choosing advanced, and ensuring preview pane is on.
- Conversation Mode: I use conversation mode to keep my inbox organized. When conversation mode is turned on, email responses from the same email are grouped together. When conversation mode is off email responses appear as their own email. Meaning a group email with ten responses will be ten different emails in your inbox instead of combined into one group. To enable conversation mode, click on settings and ensure conversation mode is set to on.
References:
All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.
TLDR (too long didn’t read):
I love using GSuite products but the one I use most often is Gmail. The following features are my favorite for saving time and making my day run as efficiently as possible. You can watch a step-by-step tutorial by Richard Byrne of most of these features by clicking here.
@hollandkaylah