How to use your Google Mail right to boost your productivity

[theag]

Hey folks

I got a lot a value from reading the forum so I thought its time to give something back. Some people might already be using this but some will hopefully learn something.

Like most of the people active in some kind of online business or even multiple offline businesses etc, I have a lot of email accounts (I have about 15 :smx4. In the past weeks I thought about how to set this up the best way to have the same easy access to all my email accounts anywhere I got, on any computer. Also I want to have all my calendar entries in one calendar.

After some experimenting, I am using Google Apps for Business for this as it is the best service in my opinion. Standard free Google Account or free Google Apps is also ok, but I want read receipts, and just the paid version of Google Apps for Business has this feature.

How to set it up (for free Google Account skip steps 1-5):

1) Open a Google Apps (for Business) Account. Dont host your domain with Google, instead use your own host to be more flexible.

2) Use the Assistant to set everything up. For domain ownership verification, use the DNS TXT entry option.

3) Go to your domain's DNS settings. You find them in your host's admin panel. Add the following entries:


TXT-Record:
The Google verfication code you can see in the assistant


CNAME-Records:
mail.yourdomain.com: ghs.google.com
cal.yourdomain.com: ghs.google.com
docs.yourdomain.com: ghs.google.com


MX-Records (no problem if you cant insert all of them, but be sure to add at least the priority 1 entry):
Priority 1: ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority 5: ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority 5: ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
Priority 10: ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM
Priority 10: ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM


Click save.


You will have to wait some time as DNS entries take some time to update. You see the status in your Google Apps dashboard.

4) In your Google Apps account, go to Settings -> Email and change the web address to mail.yourdomain.com. Do the same for calendar (cal.xxx.com) and docs (docs.xxx.com). Also, if you are using Google Apps for business and want read receipts, go to Settings -> Email -> Email Read Receipts and turn them on.

5) As soon as Google recognized your DNS entries you are all set on the backend side of Google Apps. Next we will set up your Email Accounts.

6) Go to your Inbox (mail.yourdomain.com). Go to mail settings (cog wheel in the top right). Set the General tab up as you like (turn on desktop notifications if you are using Chrome, as with this option active, Gmail finally replaces the need for a desktop mail client, which I recommend highly).

7) Now go to the Labels tab. Set up a label for each of all your email addresses. Name them as you want, e.g. "Private", "RE Business", "IM Business", "Fastlane Forum Notifications" etc. Decide which labels you want to show and hide. I like to have a clean interface so I use a lot of "show if unread". Also decide which labels you want to see in IMAP (e.g. on your smartphone).

8) Go to Accounts -> Send mail as. Add all of your email addresses here. You will get a confirmation email but we will do this later. Make sure to uncheck "Treat as an alias" as this causes problems.

9) Go to Filters. Create a filter for each of your Labels/email addresses. E.g. if you have a private email address you create a new filter, enter [email protected] in the "To" field and click "Create filter with this search". In the next step you click "Apply label" and chose which label you want all messages to [email protected] to have. In this case it might be the "Private" label you created in step 7. I would also recommend to check "Never send to spam". The rest of the options you can set how you like.

E.g. I filter all my notifications from facebook like this:

[COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial]Matches: [/FONT][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial][B]from:(@facebookmail.com)[/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=arial]Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read, Apply label "Notifications/Facebook", Never send it to Spam, Never mark it as important[/FONT][/COLOR]

10) Go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable IMAP for access on your smartphone. Dont use POP as it will mess your archive up and is outdated.

11) Go to accounts. Add each of your email addresses at "Check mail using POP3". This will import ALL mail from your email accounts into your new Google mail account. You can leave a copy on the server for backup purposes. Depending on how much email you have in your accounts this will take some hours. I imported 14000 emails from another gmail account and it took about a day, but its very reliable and automatic.

Now we are finished with your new main mail account.

12) Log in to each of your email addresses and confirm the email that Google sent you after the "Send mail as" in step 8. Move all email from subfolders to your inbox (I'm not sure if Gmail POP import works with subfolders).

13) Redirect all mail from your other email addresses to your new Google mail. If you have another gmail account from which you will forward you will get a confirmation mail sent to your new account. Confirm it, then return to the old account and be sure to tick the box for forwarding mail.

14) Go to "Accounts" in your new main mail account and choose a default address to send email from (you can change the address you sent from while composing a new mail, but a default is useful).

You are done. Congratulations, you now have all your email set up in one central account.

Optional:
Backup account: In your new main mail account, go to "Forwarding and POP/IMAP". Enable POP for all mail (not just new). Be sure to "keep a copy in the inbox". Create another free Gmail account with the same labels and filters. Now go to accounts and "check mail with pop3" and enter the account details of your main account. Congrats, you now have a free backup account with all your email which automatically stores every mail you get.

I hope this is useful for some of you and my step by step instructions are clear. Be free to ask questions regarding this or post your opinion on the best way to handle multiple mail accounts and what you think of my method.

Best regards

 

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[Trevor Kuntz]

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