Gmail has just launched a new feature - Canned Responses. It seems like it could be an awesome productivity tool for heavy-emailers who work on projects.
Canned Responses is a feature that lets you associate a canned reply to incoming mail based on what's in the email that arrives. So that, for example, if you are expecting a lot of emails to be coming in with the same subject line, such as "Blogging article pitch", you can set up an auto response just for that feature. Like "Ta muchly, I'm spending a week working on this feature and will get back to you next Thursday as I'm expecting like 1,000 emails. You can call my mobile if you want, because this is important to me, even though I don't normally give my number out willy nilly.".It made me think that this would be a great feature for people that need to collect large amounts of information on mini-projects - such as bloggers or journalists researching stories.
I'll be giving it a go to see if it's any good. Email me on drew.benvie @ gmail.com with the subject line Where you at Drew? And I'll tell you. With a canned robot response. Just to see if it works.
Canned Response in gmail is a great feature added. This feature is traditionally available only in Web Based Helpdesk Software like Helpdesk Pilot.
Posted by: Shalin Jain | October 22, 2008 at 09:23 AM
Eh, just like you shouldn't send form letters, I don't think you should send canned responses, unless it's an out of office reply. That's the only instance I can think of where the response could apply to everyone.
Posted by: Melanie | October 22, 2008 at 10:47 AM