Inbox by Gmail, a new app that represents an attempt by Google to make employees manage their emails better, will be made available next month to a select number of Google's enterprise customers.
Administrators for Google Apps for Work can send applications to participate in the app's early adopter program.
According to Gmail and Inbox by Gmail director of product management Alex Gawley in a post at Google for Work's official blog, Google is looking for companies that will be able to use Inbox by Gmail as the main email client among its employees, have employees that heavily use mobile email apps, and are willing to team up with Google for user studies.
Gawley said that Google is planning to work closely with the companies that are accepted into the early adopter program for Inbox by Gmail before expanding the app's release over the next few months.
Initially launched in October 2014 through a select number of invitations, Inbox by Gmail looks to increase the productivity made in communications sent by email.
"Inbox wasn't created to reinvent email. Inbox was created to help you reinvent the way you get things done," Gawley wrote.
The program is tasked with organizing a user's email into groups called Bundles to make reading the emails more manageable. Inbox by Gmail is also capable of presenting important data included within messages through its Highlights feature.
In addition, the app gives users the ability to make Reminders, which can then be augmented by the software through contextual data that goes through Inbox by Gmail in a feature called Assists. An example of such a feature at work is when an invitation for a dinner party is received, the user would get an Assist through the form of a graphic from Google Maps, showing the exact location and directions to the party.
While a spokesperson for Google refused to reveal data regarding the usage of Inbox by Gmail, the spokesperson said that the company has been very happy with the response made by the software's invited users so far.
A study by the Pew Research Center that was published in December revealed that 61 percent of respondents thought of email as "very important" in their jobs, making it even more important than the Internet, mobile phones and landline phones. In addition, 46 percent of the respondents said that using emails added to their productivity.
Inbox by Gmail then should prove that using the software will even add to the perceived productivity gains. The app makes employees never miss important data that may be embedded deep within emails. With the organization feature of the program, testers will get first crack at seeing whether productivity really is improved or not.
