How to Stay on top of Work and Boost Collaboration with the New Integrated Gmail Experience

With the new Integrated Gmail, Google has brought all our favorite apps in our interface to help us stay productive while increasing collaboration. Whether you’re on your computer or your mobile device, the integrated Gmail experience has email, direct messages with one or more people, rooms, and video or audio meetings — all your online communication streams — in one familiar place: Gmail. It’s now easier to navigate from one communication stream to another without changing your screen or leaving your Gmail inbox. With new integration in Gmail, you can:

1. Easy and Fast communication- Get quick and fast communication from within chat and easily communicate with teammates both internally and externally.
2. Collaborate on documents in the context of chat streams — Access docs from the Files tab in your chat for quick retrieval.
3. Create a shared task list — Work together in rooms and follow up with team members on tasks progress.
4. Prioritize and stay on task — Control notifications, so you’re only interrupted by the most important people and messages.
5. Multitask — Reference a Gmail message on the same screen while chatting with a colleague, or take notes and assign action items during a video meeting, or editing a document within Gmail while chatting with your team members both internally and externally.

New integrated Gmail on the Web

When working with a team, you often need to collaborate on files such as documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Rooms are workspaces where you can share these files and everyone can find them. You can access the different file types in the following ways:

• Google Docs — The file opens in the chat window, next to the conversation.
• Other Google files — File opens in a new browser tab.
• Other types of files — The file opens as a preview in full screen. Files not in Drive will download, except PDF and video files which open in a new browser tab.

You can collaborate on a shared Doc file with team members directly in a room while still being able to chat with your team members side by side, the team members must have editing permissions to edit the doc. Open the document in the chat window, next to the conversation, so you can chat or be in a video call while editing.

Working on a document shared in a room

The integrated Gmail experience also includes task management to help teams stay on track and prioritize their work.

creating and assigning tasks in rooms

As a member of a room in Google Chat, you can create and manage group tasks and assign tasks to other room members. You see tasks in the room where they’re created. If a task is assigned to you, you can see it in your personal task list in Google Tasks. When someone creates or updates a task, such as assigning or completing the task, a notification appears in the room.

Create and assign Task in a room

• Open Gmail.
• Select the room where you want to create a task.
• At the top, click the Tasks tab and then click on Add room task.

You might have to expand the room to see the Tasks tab.

• Enter the task title. To add a description or more details, click Add details and enter the additional information for the tasks.
• To add a date and time, click Add date/time, select them, and then click OK. If you add a date and time to your task, you’ll get notifications at the scheduled dates and times.
• To assign the task to a member of the room, click Assign and the name of the person. You can’t assign a task to someone who isn’t a member of the room, you need to invite them to the room first. If the assignee leaves the room, the task remains in the room and in their personal task list in Google Tasks.
• Click Add. After you create a task, a notification appears in the room to let everyone know. And the task is automatically added to the assigned person's personal task list in Google Tasks.