Ever wonder how we use Front here at Front? In our Front Tips series, we feature our own team’s best tips and tricks for using Front to work more efficiently.
You’ve probably heard the adage, “cleaning and organizing is a practice, not a project.” We know that keeping our work and living spaces is proven to keep our minds clear — and this applies to our digital lives, too.
Whether it’s your outrageous folder situation, a desktop that’s in disarray, or an overflowing, disorganized inbox, digital clutter can disrupt your work and, more importantly, your sanity.
But fear not! This is one of the many perks of Front. We’ve culled some pro tips from our very own Fronteers to help you keep that inbox squeaky clean.
Spoiler alert! All of these tips are similar, and they’re simple to set up in Front. Scroll down to the bottom to learn how.
1. Subscribe to all the newsletters without crowding your inbox
Newsletters have been making a huge comeback (or maybe they never left 🤔), and they serve as a great way to get relevant news. But the more you sign up for, the more your inbox starts to look like a disaster zone. Front allows you to tag these emails automatically, so you can file them away to read later.
2. Keep your inbox clean by tagging document-sharing update emails
If you often work in Google Docs or Dropbox Paper, this one’s for you! You likely get a lot of emails that notify you of changes made in these docs. Sometimes it’s nice to see when there’s been an update… but sometimes it just clogs up your inbox.
To solve this problem, you can automatically tag any email from these addresses. That way you can quickly scan your inbox and archive what you don’t need to look at.
3. Pull calendar invites into a private tag
Ever open up your inbox to a million Google Calendar invites? You can get these out of your inbox easily with rules and tags – that way you can get to work that needs your attention first and when you’re free, you can click into your private tag and accept or decline meeting invites in batches.
How to set these up (great news — it’s similar!)
For each of these tips, you want to make a rule that adds a tag. The process for setting them up is very similar for each:
First, make the tag you want to add to these update emails.
Then go to Settings > My Rules. Give it a name you’ll remember!
Under “WHEN,” select “Inbound messages.”
Under “IF,” select “Inbox is” and your private inbox and
Next is where these tips differ:
For newsletter emails: Under “AND,” select “From contains” and type in the address of the newsletter your receiving, like “[email protected]”
For document sharing emails: Under “AND,” select “From contains” and type in the address of your document sharing notifications, like “[email protected]” or “[email protected]”
For calendar invite emails: Under “AND,” select “Body contain” and type in a phrase that’s in all your calendar invites and acceptance emails, like “calendar invitation”
Under “THEN,” select “Add tag” and specify the tag you’d like to add (that you made in step 1)
Marie Kondo-ing your inbox? Yes please.
Having a clean inbox helps you focus on work that matters — and it just plain feels good. Try these tips for decluttering your workspace, and let us know if you’ve got any more great tips for keeping your Front inbox neat and organized.
For more tips from the Front team, follow us on Twitter. We’ll be releasing new videos in the coming weeks.
Written by Paul Chalker
Originally Published: 17 April 2020