A new system for Drive notifications

Collaborative editing has changed the way we work forever. Yet, with collaborative editing come email notifications. A LOT OF EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS. Not all are equally useful. Here's how you can transform them into your own notification system.

Note: When talking about Drive notifications, for this post I mean the Drive editors (Docs, Sheets, Slides) for brevity, and NOT Drive's sharing notifications ("Holger invited you to comment").

Time to get a handle on those all notifications overcrowding your inbox

The desired end state! All emails remain in your inbox, but with a friendly icon indicating how urgent the notification is (if at all).

Preparation: Categories

I consider three categories of importance:

☝️ Action required. You'll look bad if you don't.
💬 New information. I'll read this, but on my own time.
✓ For your information. Stuff that you need to acknowledge at best ("oh, they closed a task"). Normally they go to the archive unread.

I create 3 categories these icons, as you'll see. Grey background to be easy on the eye, but pick any colors you like.

Also I think these icons look both discrete and nice - feel free to choose other icons! If you prefer, you can also configure fancy stars in Gmail's configuration (search for "star").

Background info: The notifications

These are all existing Drive notifications - here's the importance I give them:

☝️ assigned you an action item in
☝️ mentioned you in a comment in
💬assigned X an action item in
💬 added a comment/suggestion in*
💬 added (action items/comments/suggestions) in*
✓ resolved (action items/comments/suggestions) in
💬 replied to (an action item/comment/suggestion) in
✓ marked an action item as done in
✓ resolved a comment in
✓ accepted/rejected a suggestion in

*These aggregations may potentially contain something an action item assigned to you or a comment mentioning you. I'm good with classifying these only as 💬 - I still check this category, but not as urgent as when I'm singled out. If you're uncomfortable, change the filters below (may be a bit of work)!

Execution: The filter

Taken together and expressed in filter language, the three priority groups are:

☝️ ("assigned you an action item in" OR "mentioned you in a comment")
💬 ("an action item in" OR "added a comment to" OR "added a suggestion in" OR "replied to an action item in" OR "replied to a comment in" OR "replied to a suggestion in" OR "added action items to" OR "added comments to" OR "added suggestions to" OR "added action items and comments to" OR "added action items and suggestions to" OR "added action items, comments and suggestions to" OR "added comments and suggestions to"). Doesn't have ("assigned you an action item in").
✓ ("marked an action item as done in" OR "resolved a comment in" OR "accepted a suggestion in" OR "rejected a suggestion in" OR "resolved action items in" OR "resolved comments in" OR "resolved suggestions in" OR "resolved action items and comments in" OR "resolved action items and suggestions in" OR "resolved action items, comments and suggestions in" OR "resolved comments and suggestions in")

Creating the filter

Open gmail.com (my salute if you haven't got it open)
Go to Settings > filters and blocked addresses
Create a new filter.
Paste the filter above (everything between the brackets, including the brackets) into the field "has the words"
Paste docs.google.com into "from"
Paste the part "doesn't have" into the field "Doesn't have the words".
Click "Create filter" instead of searching
Open the filter menu again (using the "down" arrow)
Check "Apply the label" and "Also apply for existing conversations". (If you prefer stars, select to apply any star you like here.)
Click "Create filter".

Repeat this for all 3 filters. If something goes wrong: Go the label, select all conversations and remove the label from them. No email will be harmed during production!

How Drive notifications work

Nerd alert - not required reading, but hopefully interesting!

Notification rules

Drive notifies you about 3 items: action items, comments and suggestions (in this order of importance).
Each item can be created, commented on or resolved.
Before sending a notification, Drive waits 5 minutes to see if you're done with editing - then it bundles your edits, comments and suggestions into a consolidated email.
Drive sends notifications to the owner or the person(s) that have been plussed into (previous) comments. If you're not the owner, you will receive significantly less notifications.

How Drive decides what the email says

Several actions on the same item count as one (2 comments on the same suggestion, or creating a new action item and resolving it).
Drive doesn't care about singular and plural, so notifications become imprecise. When more than one item is involved, it's always plural: 1 new comment + 1 new suggestion = "Added comments and suggestions".
Creating is more important than resolving (notifications get even more imprecise). 1 new comment + 1 resolved comment = "Added comments".
Drive has special wordings for single actions: assigned you an action item and accepted a suggestion become generic Added action items and Resolved suggestions when there are more than one.

This is obviously scaleable to calendar invitations and other things - material for a follow-up post that has now been written! As always, thank you for reading!

#gmail #docs #drivePublished 2019-05-28 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2019-10-07 by Holger Matthies.Written listening to Andy Dugoid - 7even (listener beware)

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