Blog » GMail moves one step closer to replacing Outlook

GMail moves one step closer to replacing Outlook

One of the things that has kept me from moving from Outlook to using Gmail as my primary email interface (besides being able to aggregate a bunch of different addresses into a single interace) has been the lack of canned responses.

Well, it looks like this is no longer a problem. According to Google engineer Chad Perry in this posting on The Official Gmail Blog, they have finally added this feature!

If you’re sick of typing out the same reply every time someone emails you with a common question, now you can compose your reply once and save the message text with the "Canned responses" button. Later, you can open that same message and send it again and again.

You can even combine this with filters to set up autoresponders.

image

Gmail already lets you create filters based on a combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more in your incoming messages. Turn on Canned Responses in Labs, and you can set a filter to grab one of your saved responses, create an automated reply, and hit the Send button for you.

The addition of Canned Responses to Filter Actions opens up the door for much greater use of this tool for businesses! If you are using Google Apps and want some help figuring out how to implement this in your business, drop us a line.

As always, your comments are welcome (and encouraged) below!

Michael Gibbs
Stalk Me...
Latest posts by Michael Gibbs (see all)