As more and more of you buy Plus, we’re ploughing ahead with big upgrades to GTDInbox. Let me first say thank you for your early support, it has – and continues to – make all the difference.

With the thank you I must follow with a brief apology – perhaps more an expectation setting… I’ve fallen a little behind with support emails in the last week, and I’m turning to them now. At the moment I’m doing all the development, so it’s a trade off between pushing on with new features for the majority who have no problems, and solving the remaining glitches for those who need it. For the first 3 months of the year we were 100% focused on bug solving, but I believe we’ve reached a point where we can focus on increased utility. When we take on an additional developer – which is a priority! – it will become far easier to handle support and new feature development simultaneously.

New Feature: New Reviews Sidebar

This is a huge stride forward. Perhaps the biggest leap yet for a manageable email system. The first thing you will notice is Pete’s inspired new crisp & professional design. And then…

Pinning Items to the Sidebar
For each section (Statuses, Projects, Contexts, etc.) you can now pin your favourite labels to the sidebar, for constant ‘at a glance’ overview. For example, I’ve pinned S/Next, S/Waiting On, and P/Issues in support to give me both a sense of what must be done, and a constant nudge to do it.

True Nested Labels
We’ve always had an incomplete implementation of nested labels, where the labels were visually displayed in a hierarchy, but did not behave as one. As of today, when you click a parent label, it shows you that label and all its children. For example, if you have (P/Project, P/Project/SubProject1, P/Project/SubProject2), and you want to see all actions for P/Project, it will show you actions for the Project and all it’s children: “label:s-action (label-p-project OR label-p-project-subproject1 OR label-p-project-subproject2)”.

Drilling into Details with the Search Builder Menus
We’ve turbo-charged the sidebar most significantly with drilling. Now you can click any label, and continue to dig into it until you’ve created exactly the view you want. Perhaps you will start with P/Project, then select C/Call, and then selecct S/Action to see all call actions that must be taken for the Project; whatever you need, it’s intuitive and it’s easy.

The Big Surprise! Deadline/Schedule Emails (GTDInbox Plus)

This has much an oft-requested feature, and I always believed it would make a significant difference to email management, but I’ve been taken aback by just how much of a qualitative difference it makes to a sense of control. I don’t think we’ve perfected it yet, but the core elements are in place. I’d love your feedback on it.

How does it work? Any conversation can now be given a deadline. There are buttons in the conversation’s GTDInbox Action Box, and a new ‘Schedule’ dropdown button above the inbox/search-results/conversation (to the right of ‘Labels’).

It fits into the new Reviews Sidebar, so you can see ‘Today’, ‘Tomorrow’, ‘Upcoming’ and ‘Overdue’ items.

If you’d like to try it, please support us and Buy Plus.

Other Thoughts & Notes

This update is not being pushed to everyone just yet. It’s for volunteers only. We believe it’s stable (in fact more stable than the last release, but we’re keen to get your feedback on the feature improvements from you – our core users).

Two weeks into the Chrome version of GTDInbox, and I’m completely hooked. It pains me to return to Firefox, it’s that good. It’s now taken over as our primary development environment, and we then test it on Firefox prior to release.

We’ve finally settled on a rebrand, that we hope to take live in the next few days. More on that when it’s ready, but I will say in advance that I hugely appreciated all your suggestions at the end of last year; they were vital to forming an opinion.

I’m now returning to support to focus on any remaining glitches, expect some service releases by the end of the week.

Installing 3.0.22.3 3.0.22.6

Firefox: http://www.gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_3-0-22-6.xpi

Chrome: http://www.gtdinbox.com/gtdinbox_3-0-22-6.crx
(Important note: please uninstall the previous version of GTDInbox before installing this new one).

If Install isn’t smooth, please download the file to your computer, and open it with your browser… normal addon installation will then start.

Update #1

Uploaded 3.0.22.2 to add additional debug information to some of the error reports you’ve been sending (and to fix the bugs we could identify). Hopefully, 3.0.22.2 will give us the error details we need to fix the remaining issues.

Update #2

3.0.22.3 fixes a conflict with Java6 that many of you were suffering from, fixes the Archive button in conversation (as discovered by Jason below), and adds even more debug information.

Update #3

3.0.22.4 is detailed in the latest blog post, http://blog.gtdinbox.com/2010/04/20/gtdnbox-3-0-22-4-please-update/

I’m so excited about this! It’s taken us far too long (we started the port in December!) due a myriad combination of legacy code, additional security controls in Chrome and, believe it or not, bugs in Chrome But we’re here now.

And wow, is it fast. I thought it wouldn’t really be noticeable, but everything you click is just more assured. It feels instant.

Personally, I’m also thrilled that it should be more stable. (Disclaimer: only once teething glitches are dealt with – this is still very new code!). The major cause of remaining issues we have in Firefox are mostly related to clashes with other addons. Chrome does a wonderful job of protecting addons from each other, so there should be few, if any, conflicts. The result? It just works. Every time. (Double disclaimer: GTDInbox will still break occasionally as Gmail changes, but we’re committed to detecting and fixing those changes within 48 hours).

So how do you get it? Download gtdinbox_3-0-21-2.crx gtdinbox_3-0-21-3.crx gtdinbox_3-0-21-4.crx and open it in Chrome. There are no automatic updates yet, so you will have to watch the blog to keep up to date (this will only be a short term thing).

Update #1

As Murphy’s Law would have it, especially in light of the bold proclamation that the Chrome version will not collide with other addons, at the remaining possible point of collision, there is conflict! (For some users at least). Thanks to the feedback of Fred and Lalit below, I believe I know what the problem is, and I’ll get it fixed within the next couple of hours. Please watch Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/gtdinbox) for updates.

Update #2

I hope 3.0.21.3 addresses the earlier problem with GTDInbox Chrome not loading… please download and install gtdinbox_3-0-21-3.crx

Update #3

With feedback from your error reports (especially to Dean, Marcel, Chris and Robert), and the help of Mike Crowe and our old friend Paul Thompson, we tracked it down to GTDInbox not working with Chrome 4.x (the ’stable’ release). It works fine for those of you using 5.x. A special mention goes to Mike, whose patience during even the most interminably dull part of debugging, and brilliant flash of insight, was singularly responsible for getting it diagnosed and fixed. (As so often happens, 6 hours of debugging resulted in a fix that involved changing 9 characters of text!).

If GTDInbox has not worked for you yet on Chrome, please try gtdinbox_3-0-21-4.crx.

There are still glitches and issues to resolve, and we’ll continue to roll out small releases until a ‘proper’ release gets sent to the Chrome Gallery in a week or so!

This is a fairly big update (with a very cool reason – more on that in a bit!).

Get it right now from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm

Thanks to Alex Gold’s feedback, we’ve fixed problems with Flock and the Preview Popup showing the wrong message on some search results.

With Erik’s feedback from the far reaches of Africa, we’ve increased the time permitted for Gmail to load before GTDInbox decides it has failed (i.e. it works better on slow connections).

And Jack Nelson provided invaluable feedback – and patience – for solving a bug with Delete+MoveNext in Plus.

Finally, Geoffrey gave us a tiny nugget of technical data that helped us solve a long standing problem with corrupt preferences preventing GTDInbox from loading. GTDInbox can now self diagnose and correct itself without any of us ever noticing!

Now, there is a reason why this is one of our biggest milestones in a long time… it runs great in Chrome! Details in the next blog post, coming right up!

It seems that Gmail released a little change just for Firefox 3.6+ that stops us rendering buttons correctly, so you will see ‘Search in Popup’ and ‘Send and’ as plain text.

In 3.0.20.4 I’ve fixed this. I also fixed a problem where GTDInbox could no longer detect adding/removing status labels to update the count of ToDo items (so the #todos would become inaccurate as you used Gmail).

As per usual, you can grab it right now from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm.

A tiny Gmail change has affected GTDInbox’s labeling box in conversations, which we’ve just fixed. Thanks to Thomas and Bliss for the early notification.
You can download it immediately from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm

Another round of bug fixes, this time addressing some things that have been coming in as error reports (via the Error Monitor) for several weeks, but it was only with the release of 3.0.20.1 that we started receiving enough detail on the problems to solve them. Thanks to everyone who submitted errors.

I suggest you install immediately (although it will also be distributed via Firefox in a few days), http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm.

After pulling a very late night effort chasing addon conflicts down the rabbit hole, hot on the heels of 3.0.19 comes 3.0.20.

If you’re still having any problems with GTDInbox not loading, it’s most likely a tussle with other addons. This takes us one (big) step closer to making everyone play nicely together.

http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm

Thanks to extensive support from Michael Lebor, we tracked down some more loading issues, as well as a some-time conflict with the RememberTheMilk addon.

I also had a little error of judgement in 3.0.18: it was all too keen to give you an irritating alert box if it completely failed to load. That has all been stopped now, and it won’t happen again

I think we’re getting close to all user’s having a normal experience with GTDInbox. The remaining issues seem to be conflicts with other Firefox addons. If it is still not loading for you, please drop an email to support@gtdinbox.com with the behaviour you are seeing, other addons & Gmail Labs settings you have, and any ideas on the cause (as well as keep submitting errors in GTDInbox when given the opportunity). I’ll then work with you to solve them (we’ll aim to work closely with just one person for each identified problem, so please don’t be hurt if it isn’t you! We will keep going until everyone’s GTDInbox is working great).

As usual, either wait for Firefox to auto update it, or download 3.0.19 from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm.

With the help of Uwe Grampe, Loren Silverman, Mike Crowe, Michael Massing, Bruce Stryd, Lance Allen, Susan Penter, Joe Staats and many more, we’ve been able to track down even more errors (so much for thinking 3.0.17 would solve everything! Getting ever closer though). Thanks everyone!

For your delectable pleasure, these include:

* A problem where the conversation labeling buttons would not appear if you used Multiple Inboxes on the right hand side

* Draft conversations generating lots of minor error warnings

* GTDInbox not loading if you have 3rd party cookies disabled in Firefox 3.6

* ‘Recent Labels’ no longer being hidden in the navigation bar because of a Gmail change

* If you expand/collapse labels in the dropdown (in a conversation), it would add/remove the label

* If you create a new label, it would not show it in the normal Gmail ‘Labels’ dropdown until you changed views

Get it now from http://www.gtdinbox.com/gettingstarted.htm, or wait for Firefox to update it automatically.

Ever since our inception, a steady stream of users have enquired about the difference between a Next Action and an Action.

I think it’s finally time to figure this out and find the optimal process.

The Current Workflow

As a quick reminder about where we are right now. There are 5 standard Status labels: Next Action, Action, Waiting On, Some Day and Finished.

The core workflow is, if an email can be done in under 2 minutes, do it and Finish it. If you’re waiting for a response, set it to Waiting On. Otherwise it’s an Action. And, if it’s the highest priority thing in a project, it’s a Next Action.

The Tedious Part of the Workflow

The problem with this is, I don’t care about S/Action. To me, everything that isn’t “Finished” is an action.

The other Statuses are useful modifiers. Next Action is high priority, and Waiting On is delegated/awaiting-response.

But the hassle involved in setting each important email to S/Action is too great to make me do it 100% of the time. I’m lazy and GTDInbox doesn’t support me, and therefore there are now holes in my system (email that isn’t categorized).

A Major Technical Limitation for any New Solution

The rub – the reason we cannot just replace the Action label with something more lightweight (like “-label:s-finished”) – is sadly entirely technical. When people first install GTDInbox, in all likelihood, they have 1000s of emails in their inbox, none of which have the S/Finished label. To be quick, and to know how many emails there are within each Status, GTDInbox downloads all Statuses. Therefore, for new users, if there was no S/Action label, the search for Actions would be “-label:s-finished”; which means GTDInbox would have to download 1000s of emails to maintain its current functionality. That is simply not feasible.

Possible Solutions for a Better Way to Action Emails

One solution is to make S/Action irrelevant (and for Actions to be “-label:S-Finished”) and overcome the technical limitation by creating an Install tool. So when you install GTDInbox for the first time, it would process the inbox and archive all emails, and add S/Finished to them. (Arguably, whatever we do, this would be a useful tool). The weakness with this is that a) it would be slow, b) the user might skip it, and we’d still be left with 1000s of emails to download. I’d have no confidence in this solution.

Another solution is to fully automate the addition of S/Action to all newly arrived emails with a Filter. This achieves the desired result: every new email is an Action until it is Finished. However, it may quickly become unwieldy as all spam, all mailing lists and everything else would be given the S/Action label. The solution here is for the user to tweak the filter to exclude mailing list messages. Perhaps a more serious problem is that the filter will also apply S/Action to all replies. So, if you had changed a conversation to S/Waiting On, and you get a reply, it’s automatically changed to S/Action. Which may be fine for some people, but I believe it’s a problem as I like to manually decide whether I’m no longer Waiting On a response (i.e. the response may be insufficient, or a simple acknowledgement that they will do it in the future). It’s an even bigger problem for S/Next, where a high priority email will be returned to normal priority as soon as a reply comes in. So sadly, we have to rule the Filter option out.

If you’re wondering what would happen if we restructured GTDInbox so that it does not need to download all Actions… well it would result in a serious drop in functionality and efficiency. GTDInbox would no longer know which Projects (and Contexts) have actions. So, you would not be able to scan your Project labels to see which ones need your attention.

As the root of the problem is the hassle involved with adding the S/Action label, we could semi-automate this. For instance, as soon as you view a conversation (which you would not do for an uninteresting mailing list item), it is automatically given the S/Action label. (This would be a preference). Using the “Send And” button of Plus, your newly Actioned email could be Finished as soon as you reply. My only concern here is that you might feel that GTDInbox is oppressing you – a Pavlovian response that makes you fear opening an email because it’ll become an Action – a burden! I hope this wouldn’t be such a big problem with a prominent “Finished” button. We could also make it so that when you remove the S/Action label (in the Gmail conversation header) GTDInbox automatically adds the Finished label — another way to complete a conversation. (We could even revisit the Filter idea, by watching emails that arrive in the inbox ourselves, and adding an S/Action immediately if it has no other Status – but this takes us back to automatically Actioning mailing list items and other unimportant email, so it’s not desirable). Another (more manual) alternative is a new button that would “Action, Archive and Move Next” – although this isn’t watertight so we’d still be prone to forget.

Summary – and your thoughts?

I believe I’ve covered (perhaps a little too exhaustively ) all the possible solutions. To me, some solution built around the last option (i.e. automate adding S/Action) is the most desirable.

If you’ve managed to stick this blog post through the end, then, well, congratulations Your thoughts about the most how best to Action emails (and your own workflow) would be most welcome in the comments.