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Gmail will no longer allow users to revert back to its old design • ZebethMedia

Google announced today that it’s making the new Gmail interface the standard experience for users. The company first released the new interface earlier this year, but allowed users to revert back to the original view. Starting this month, users will no longer have the option to go back to the old interface. “The integrated view with Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet on the left side of the window will also become standard for users who have turned on Chat,” the company said in a blog post. “Through quick settings, you can customize this new interface to include the apps most important to you, whether it’s Gmail by itself or a combination of Gmail, Chat, Spaces, and Meet.” Image Credits: Google Google notes that the ability to customize the new interface makes it easier to stay on top of what’s important and reduces the need to switch between various applications, windows or tabs. It’s worth noting that with this new change, users will no longer have the option to configure Chat on the right side of Gmail. The company’s decision to make its new user interface the standard experience isn’t surprising, but it will likely be a frustrating change for users who preferred the old design.

Gmail to add a new package tracking feature ahead of holiday shopping season • ZebethMedia

Google announced today a small but useful update to Gmail that will allow users to soon be able to track their upcoming package deliveries directly from their inbox. The feature works by looking for emails that include tracking numbers, then using that information to determine the order’s expected delivery date and flagging this for you right in your inbox. That means when you’re scanning through your email list in Gmail, you won’t have to click on your order confirmation emails to see when your package is due to arrive. Instead, this information will be displayed just below the email sender’s name and subject line in the inbox in a small green label. You’ll notice a little truck icon followed by text indicating the order’s status, followed by the delivery date. This label will be updated as the order progresses, with information like “label created,” the arrival date or the delivery date, Google says. Image Credits: Google This feature will save online shoppers a lot of extra steps as typically, consumers have to open their order confirmation emails and then either copy and paste the tracking information into the appropriate carriers’ system, into Google, or click on a provided link to begin tracking the order, for example. Now, all they’ll need to do is look at their Gmail inbox. However, if you do click to open the order confirmation email, it will now include a summary card at the top that offers a bit more detail, including a timeline with checkmarks that shows the current order status — order placed, shipped or delivered — and a link that takes you to the order detail page. Google says the new feature will be available in the U.S. across “most major” shipping carriers in the coming weeks. The expectation is that this feature will arrive ahead of the holiday shopping season when it would be most useful. To enable package tracking, Gmail will first ask users if they want to opt-in to receive tracking updates in a pop-up at the top of the inbox. Users will click “Allow”or “Now now,” depending on their preference. This can also be enabled in Gmail’s settings. Image Credits: Google The system, of course, involves having your email scanned for tracking information, but this is automated — humans aren’t reading your email. Still, some may view this a potential privacy concern, particularly if Gmail chooses to use this data to help inform its various developments in e-commerce and first-party shopping features. The new addition could impact the adoption of popular third-party package tracking apps including Parcel, Route, AfterShip and Shopify’s Shop app — though the latter offers more functionality beyond tracking, like the ability to browse and buy from Shopify merchants. Later, Google says it will expand the package tracking feature to proactively update the label when a package is delayed and bring that email to the top of users’ inboxes to make sure they’re aware.

After selling his last startup to Google, this founder now wants to automate mundane tasks with Relay • ZebethMedia

Some seven years after selling his previous company to Google, Jacob Bank is preparing to launch his next project, this time with a focus on automating mundane, repetitive tasks. Bank was previously cofounder and CEO at Timeful, a smart scheduling app that helped users make better use of their time through automatically prioritizing their various commitments. After selling up to Google in 2015, Bank joined Google’s ranks and set about integrating core Timeful technology into Gmail and Google Calendar, before transitioning into various roles at the tech giant — including product lead for Gmail, Calendar, Google Chat, and Google Workspace. Fast-forward to July 2021, and Bank parted ways with Google to found Relay, which has a self-stated mission to “tackle collaborative workflows” with a product that sits somewhere at the intersection of Zapier and Asana. He also said that he’s managed to hire a number of product, design, and engineering personnel from the Gmail and Google Calendar development team. “From a product perspective, we aim to combine the time saving automations of Zapier with the accountability of Asana, but optimized for repeated workflows,” Bank explained to ZebethMedia. Relay: Automations Image Credits: Relay Automation for the people There are certainly no shortage of workflow automation tools out there, Zapier perhaps chief among them, while newcomers such as Bardeen have also been attracting the attentions of venture capitalists. And it’s this desire to reduce tedious, repetitive tasks that Relay is looking to capitalize on too, with specific scenarios in mind — use-cases that are less about “automated mechanical data flows from one product to another,” as Bank puts it, and more about supporting collaborative activities that may require multiple people to work together. For example, anything that recurs or repeats across the business sphere, such as all-hands meetings, investor updates, board meetings, newsletters, planning cycles, and so on, are within Relay’s scope. As are “function-specific playbooks” such as new-hire onboarding, customer onboarding, or feature launches. It’s basically aimed at reducing time-consuming admin from various business functions, from COO to product management and customer success. Relay sits on top of existing productivity tools such as calendars and team collaboration software, and reduces much of the manual labor involved in organizing a specific event or activity. For example, a monthly all-hands meeting may involve several contributors from different departments, each charged with preparing their own updates — with Relay, companies can preconfigure a lot of the administrative steps such as messaging contributors a few days before the all-hands with the correct presentation template, who are then prompted to add their content, and then automatically create a dedicated Slack channel for that specific meeting. Relay: Workflow automation in action  Image Credits: Relay Using these various productivity tools separately in their own silos, if the all-hands meeting date has to be pushed back a few days at the last minute, this would ordinarily require organizers or management to manually update dates and schedules in Asana, for example. With Relay, any change is reflected up and down the chain. “Maybe the most consequential difference between our product and what’s out there is that we’re going after a class of use-cases that haven’t been explicitly served before,” Bank said. “The operating workflows required to run a great team: all-hands, leads meetings, executive updates, product reviews, business reviews, newsletters, planning processes, onboarding, project tracking, feature launches, customer updates, and much more.” Ramping up For now, Relay remains a closed early-access product, with plans to transition into an open beta phase before the end of the year. While it’s keeping most of its early users under wraps for now, it did confirm Ramp and Lumos as “design partners” as it readies for a wider rollout. “We’re targeting organizations that are between 30 and 500 [workers] in size, and most of our early design partners are tech companies,” Bank said. To help take things to the next level, Relay has also announced it has raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Khosla Ventures, which also invested in Timeful back in 2014, with participation from Neo, BoxGroup, SV Angel, and a handful of angels. “Relay’s vision of understanding the best practices of top-performing teams and creating assistive software to bring those workflows to everyone could transform the entire way people work,” Khosla Ventures’ partner Sandhya Venkatachalam said in a statement. “In Jacob, we have a founder that we have backed before, with a team that has the track record, conviction and talent to execute on this incredibly daunting challenge.”

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