Gmail’s New Priority Inbox

Those clever engineers at Google have been developing a solution to that common workplace issue – email overload. I’ve used Gmail for a good few years now and found that its standard spam filter is already pretty good, so how does Priority Inbox work and build upon this?

It sorts out your inbox to three sections – important, starred and everything else. Gmail classes the emails you read and reply to as important and therefore displays them in the ‘important’ pane. If you need to come back to something later you can star an email which are shown in a separate pane underneath those important ones. If you have time at the end of the day you can scan the ‘everything else’ pane. It’s important in the early days of adding Priority Inbox to check that you aren’t missing any important emails. Emails can be upgraded or downgraded in importance manually too. On paper the more and more you use Gmail, the more useful it will be.

Priority Inbox was tested internally by those at Google and the results were successful. It was found that users spent 16% less time reading insignificant email.

It’s going to be rolled out to all Gmail users over the next couple of weeks, so if you’re a Gmail user please try it out when it becomes available and let us know what you think!