Enable These Email Features and Save Time

An important part of being a good teacher is taking the time to think about, discover, and create new lesson ideas. It can be hard to find that time if you are buried in email and similar administrative tasks. That’s why I’m a proponent of using tools like Google Forms Quizzes, Microsoft Forms Quizzes, and canned email responses. On that topic, enabling the following email features can help you save time when you’re working through your inbox.

Canned Responses & Smart Replies

If you use Gmail or any G Suite-based email account, enable the Smart Replies function. Smart Replies will predict what you want to write in response to an email in your inbox. Using Smart Replies saves me a ten to twenty seconds per reply. Taking an average of fifteen seconds per email for twenty messages in a day and you’ve gained five minutes.

If you’re an Outlook user, you can create canned responses to use to answer frequently asked questions in your email. Here’s a good overview of how to create and use canned responses in Outlook.

Create Email Filters

Not every email needs an immediate response. Not every email needs to be stored in your primary inbox where it clutters and distracts from the task at hand. Create email filters to organize and prioritize the messages landing in your inbox. This video and this video will show you show how to create filters in Gmail and other G Suite-based email accounts.

Outlook users, you have lots of options for filtering your email. Take a look at these rules for creating a cleaner Outlook inbox.

Learn more

We’ll cover many more workflow hacks during the 2019 Practical Ed Tech Summer Camp. Super-early bird registration is available for a few more days.