Now that I’ve switched from Outlook (It makes my stomach turn when I see it open on someone else’s screen these days), I am learning how to use Gmail more effectively. I am very amateur on the true power of Gmail at this point. I am however, getting very good at transitioning small business customers to Gmail and other Google apps. This would include setting up the accounts, imapping old folders, popping multiple accounts, creating labels and other handling other administrative tasks.

I haven’t had enough time to figure out the little tweaks that will I’m sure make Gmail even more efficient and effective. Organizing is much different in Gmail than in say Outlook or web-based email clients. Instead of creating a series of folders, and then moving an email to a particular folder for reference later; Gmail’s labeling system with the use of tags (Web 2.0 concept- I guess, but I could be speaking out of turn), allows users to tag an email with several labels instead of putting it into one folder. Although dragging and dropping an email into one solitary folder is simpler on the surface- and I love simpler- labels in the long run are much more intuitive. Need a for instance- here you go.

Say you get an email of a receipt from your backpack account. Well in my mind I need to label this with a star or with an @ action label, because I would like to print it for my tax file. I also want it labeled accounting. Just in case I needed to reference it by association, I may label it Backpack. Now six months from now if I needed to access this for tax purposes or to correct a bill, then I could by association look in one of two or three places. In the old way of doing it. I would be forced to choose one folder that best associates with the email. Well I probably couldn’t make that decision at that point, so I would just procrastinate and leave it in my inbox.

I’m still getting used to not dragging and dropping files but I can see the benefit in this new method of labels/tags.