GMail multi-inbox

As much as GMail’s search syntax makes me long for PCRE, there are some unobvious gems laying around.

For example, I get tons of mail about releases. Occasionally, I need to monitor a given release, paying attention to not only the automated progress, but also human generated emails as well. Here’s my current setup:

  • Automated email is marked as read & skips inbox (unless it’s a failure)
  • Any release oriented email is given a special label using a filter similar to “subject:((38.0b1) OR (38 Beta) OR (31. AND "esr")”.

That’s pretty standard. The productivity add is when I use the “multi-inbox” feature in the web ui. I set the top one to be just the unread ones with the special label from today:

newer_than:1d label:SPECIAL_LABEL is:unread

With positioning of “extra panels” to the right side, I get a very focussed look at any issues I need to look at!

Messages:

../../../_images/Messages.png

No Messages:

../../../_images/NoMessages.png

I love seeing that “(no messages)” text!