Email is one of the oldest things on this side of the Internet, and yet very little has changed in decades. It is normal that you always find there some application that tries to reinvent the wheel and implement some new way of using email to be more productive.
We have seen cases like those of the late Mailbox that tried to turn the mail into lists of tasks. And something similar does Google with Inbox. If you’re not convinced of those alternatives, and you’re looking for something to try and streamline your inbox, you might be interested in trying Drag App.
Drag is an extension of Chrome that integrates completely with Gmail and turns your inbox into a Kanban style board. We could call it Trello for Gmail.
Kanban in your email
If you do not know how Kanban works, it is an organization method whose fundamental principles are to visualize the workflow, to limit the time of what is done at the moment, and to apply constant changes to end the saturation.
To do this, a board is usually created in which tasks are organized into cards, and these cards go in three main columns: what needs to be done, what is being done and what is already done. Drag adds that structure to Gmail so you can organize your emails according to those three priorities.
Using Drag, a draft version
The app is still under development, but we have gained early access and we have been testing it. The first thing is to give access to your Google account allowing the popup window to appear. Once this is done you will see the Drag logo to the right of the inbox and you can activate or deactivate the boards in a click.
Drag automatically creates Drag To Do, Drag Doing, Drag Done and Drag Archive tags and applies them once you start moving mails from one column to another. Unfortunately, at the moment it does not work perfectly, moving an email from one column to another sometimes has lag.
The loading of the boards is not immediate, when you select emails, the archive or delete buttons do not always respond, and miss some functions such as being able to label emails directly from the inbox. Things that we hope will resolve over time and be polished for the final version.
However, it is an early release and during this time they will be receiving feedback from early users who requested early access to improve the extension. According to Nick Timms, responsible for the application, there are more than 18,000 early adopters registered so far and they will not want to be disappointed.
Today they plan to launch an update to improve loading times and login. As might be expected, this app requests access to your Google account and can read and manage your emails from Gmail, otherwise it would not work.
Drag will collect user data like the IP address, type of browser, the pages you visit through the service (i.e. the links you open from Gmail with Drag active), the time you spend on those pages, etc. Something that Google itself and many websites with their cookies already do.
In their privacy policy they explain that they can use this data to trade with advertisers, but they do not include personally identifiable information. It is up to you to decide if you are willing to accept those terms by installing your app, we comply with alertarte.
Drag has an interesting approach, if you’re a fan of the Kanban method or you’re familiar with Trello, maybe you’d better bring that organizational methodology to your inbox. Of course, if you want something that works at 100% and you do not like to be betatester of anyone, better wait for the final version.
The public launch will be on May 27, but if you want to request early access to try it already, you can do it from its official website.
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