Google Workspace: Gmail - Extra Features

We’ve got 9 extra features here for you to learn about and use in your work. These are:

Confidential Mode & No Forward
Task specific email addresses / Aliases
Undo sending an email
Canned Responses
Automate your emails

Smart Reply
Smart Compose
Mute Conversations
Newsletters

Confidential Mode

You can send confidential messages and attachments using confidential mode in Gmail to help protect sensitive information from unauthorised access. You can set an expiration date for messages and revoke access to the message at any time. Recipients of the confidential message will not be able to forward, copy, print or download the message.

NOTE – Although confidential mode helps prevent the recipients from accidentally sharing your email, it doesn’t prevent recipients from taking screenshots or photos of your messages or attachments.

Add confidential mode

To add Confidential Mode to an email, follow the steps below:

Click Compose.
In the bottom right of the window, click Turn on confidential mode.

Tip: If you’ve already turned on confidential mode for an email, go to the bottom of the email, then click Edit.

Set an expiration date and passcode. These settings impact both the message text and any attachments.
1. If you choose “No SMS passcode,” recipients using the Gmail app will be able to open it directly. Recipients who don’t use Gmail will get emailed a passcode.
2. If you choose “SMS passcode,” recipients will get a passcode by text message. You need to finish writing, then send the message before you are asked for their telephone number. Make sure you enter the recipient’s phone number, not your own.
Click Save.

Remove access early

You can stop your recipient from viewing the email before the expiration date.

On the left, click Sent.
Open the confidential email.
Click Remove access.

Open an email sent with confidential mode

If the sender used confidential mode to send the email:

You can view the message and attachments until the expiration date or until the sender removes access.
Options to copy, paste, download, print, and forward the message text and attachments will be disabled.
You might need to enter a passcode to open the email.
Open the email.

The steps below will help you reading an email:

If sender does not require a SMS passcode:
1. If you use the latest Gmail apps (web or mobile), you will directly see the email when you open it.
2. If you use another email client, open the email, click on the link View the email and sign in with your Google credentials to view the message.
If sender requires a SMS passcode:
1. Select Send passcode.
2. Check your text message for the passcode.
3. Enter the passcode, then select Submit.

Turn an email in to multiple task specific addresses

We learned a little bit about task specific email addresses back in the Filters section of this guide. With Gmail, you can simply add a + then another word after your username, before the @ sign and emails will still reach you but you can use this to sort your emails easier.

For example, sign up to newsletters by using example+news@barton.ac.uk or get quotes sent to example+quote@barton.ac.uk.

Just like in the Filters section, you can ask Gmail to automatically put these emails in to your own Labels. Get the +news emails sent to a News label. When you’re ready to read them, click the Label to find them.

Follow the steps below to use the task specific addresses with filters.

Open Gmail and in the search box, click the Down arrow.
Add any of the filter criteria that appears.
1. In the To field is where you would want to add the full + email address, such as example+news@barton.ac.uk
Click Create filter.
To automatically move email fitting your filter criteria out of your inbox, tick Skip the Inbox (Archive it).
To apply a label, tick Apply the label, then click an existing label or create a new one.
Click Create filter.
The new label appears in the left sidebar.

Undo sending an email

Make a typo in your email? Forget to add a recipient? Change your mind about sending an email?

Take back an email you just sent using the Undo Send feature.

Send your email.
Click Undo at the bottom of the page.

Depending on your settings, there’s a limited amount of seconds to click Undo before it disappears.

Adjust the Undo Send cancellation period

Click Settings > Settings.
On the General tab, scroll to the Undo Send feature.

Select a different cancellation period and click Save Changes.

Canned responses & Automate your replies

Canned Responses allow you to save chunks of text or a whole pre-written email and bring it all back in just a couple of clicks. Canned Responses are great for a couple of different scenarios, we’ll have a look below.

Firstly, since Gmail only allows you to have one signature set up, you can use Canned Responses to have multiple signatures, for different types of emails.

Secondly, if you regularly send an email with the same text in then you can save it as a Canned Response and the next time you need to send it, you don’t have to type it out. You can then send it in just a few clicks.

And third, you can use Canned Responses with Filters to automatically reply to emails that contain certain information. This can also be used as an alternative to an Out of Office message, you can use a filter to automatically reply to a person with your out of office message and use that same filter to forward the email to a colleague to action.

Enable Canned Responses

Click Settings > Settings.
At the top, select the Advanced tab.
In the Canned Responses (Templates) section, select Enable.
At the bottom, click Save Changes.

Create canned response

You’ll need to write the email or text you want as a canned response before you can create it.

Click Compose.
In the Compose window, enter your text and format it.
Click More > Canned responses > New canned response.
Enter a name for the canned response and click OK.
Continue composing and send your message, or close the Compose window to use your another time.

NOTE – It’s worth noting that saving a canned response will save all the text in an email, including your signature. It is recommended to remove your signature from the Compose window before you create your canned response, this is because when you next come to use the response, your signature will appear in the new email and then it will be added again when you add a canned response.

Send email with canned response

Click Compose and compose your message.
Click More > Canned responses, and under Insert, choose a saved canned response to insert in your message.
Click Send.

Automate your emails

To automate your emails, you’ll need to use Canned Responses with Filters. You would need to write some Canned Responses that are replies you send regularly, then create and apply a filter to send that response each time an email comes in that matches the filter criteria.

In the search box, click the Down arrow.
Enter your search criteria, then click Create filter.
Tick the Send canned response box and select one of your saved canned responses.
Click Create filter.

Smart Replies

If you get an email that needs only a simple reply, choose one of Gmail’s suggested Smart replies.

Smart replies are based on the text of the email you received. For example, if you’re asked to attend a meeting at a certain day and time, you can choose options such as:

“Sure, that works.”
“I’m not available at that time.”

It’s simple to do,

Click the email thread you want to reply to.
At the bottom of the thread, suggested phrases appear.
Click the phrase you want to add.
1. You can then edit the email to add more text if you want.
Click Send.

Smart Compose

Smart Compose suggests complete sentences in your emails so that you can draft them with ease. Because it operates in the background, you can write an email like you normally would, and Smart Compose will offer suggestions as you type. When you see a suggestion that you like, click the “tab” button on your keyboard to use it.

Smart Compose helps save you time by cutting back on repetitive writing, while reducing the chance of spelling and grammatical errors. It can even suggest relevant contextual phrases. For example, if it’s Friday it may suggest “Have a great weekend!” as a closing phrase.

Mute / Unmute Conversations

If you’re part of an email conversation that’s no longer relevant to you, mute the conversation.

Muting keeps future responses to that thread out of your inbox so you can focus on important messages. You can still find them by searching for them but they won’t be shown where you don’t want them.

Mute Conversation

Select the conversation you want to mute.
Click More and select Mute.

After you mute a conversation, it’s removed from your inbox and archived. You can still see the conversation in All Mail with a Muted label applied.

View muted conversations

Follow one of these options:

In the search box, type is:muted. Your muted conversations appear with a Muted label.
Select All Mail on the left. Your muted conversations appear with a Muted label.

Unmute muted conversations

Open the email and choose one of these options:

Click Remove label X next to Muted.
Select the email and click More > Unmute.

Newsletters

Creating a Newsletter is more of a Google Docs thing, but you then use Gmail to send it.

In Google Docs, click Template Gallery.
Click the newsletter template you want to use.
Make any changes to the template and add your newsletter text.
Tip: You can personally address your newsletter to each recipient so they see their name, such as Dear Cassy. In Google Docs, click Add-ons > Get add-ons and then search for mail merge.
Click Edit > Select all.
Click Edit > Copy.
In Gmail, compose a new message and paste in your copied newsletter.
For the recipients, enter the emails you want to send the newsletter to.
1. Sometimes, for data protection reasons, it may be more sensible to add your recipients email addresses in to the Bcc field of the email and then in the To field, use your own email.
When you’re ready, send your email.

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