

Gmail: Introducing Actions in the Inbox - duckyflip
http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/introducing-actions-in-inbox-powered-by.html

======
planetjones
Hmm.

Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific mail
provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that. Infact I still like to
read my e-mails in plain text.

Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac
devices' mail clients.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Making a universal email message have bespoke instructions for a specific
> mail provider. Call me old fashioned but I don't like that.

Its all using open standard formats, and the specific schemas are open
standards or proposed for standardization (and Google has said that its schema
support may change if the schemas change in the standardization process.)
Other providers could use it as well. This is how progress happens in open
systems. The alternative is either abandoning the open system for new
functionality, or just never getting new functionality at all. And its not the
provider that is key here, but the _client_ (the fact that for many gmail
users the supplier of both the mail service and the mail client is the same
makes it easy to confuse the issue.)

> Also, I dare say, not so useful for the many of us accessing gmail via Mac
> devices' mail clients.

Yes, features in the Gmail client that aren't included in other clients aren't
useful to people using the other clients. I'm not sure why this is noteworthy.

~~~
Smudge
They may be open formats, but you can't just throw Microdata and JSON-LD into
an email and expect Gmail to display your actions. You have to register with
Google:

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-
with...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google)

------
untog
The fact that this was posted on the Google Apps blog is telling- I imagine
that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general Gmail users.

I'm surprised by the reaction in here- yes, it's an addition to the standard
e-mail system. Do we really want that system to stand absolutely still? If
that's the case, why are we cheering so much web browser development? Surely a
browser from 1997 should be good enough for anyone?

~~~
MrDOS
> I imagine that Google wants to roll this out to Apps users before general
> Gmail users.

That'll be a first. Historically, Google has deeply neglected Apps users. My
Apps account didn't get G+ until almost a year after it became generally
available.

~~~
maratd
> Google has deeply neglected Apps users.

That's a funny way of looking at it. I pay Google money for my account so that
I have, above all, a reliable system to use for my business.

No beta bullshit. And with Google Apps, that's what I get.

Regular users are the guinea pigs and once a feature has proven itself year(s)
later, it's added to Apps. As someone who runs a business, I'm quite happy
with that approach.

I get all the latest and greatest on my personal GMail account, I don't need
it on my business account.

~~~
johnmw
Good point. I think in the days before Google starting charging for Apps, many
of the users were the tech-head-early-adopter crowd. Which is why many were so
disappointed that they got all the new innovations last.

I think everyone would be happier if Apps users could signal to Google they
would like to be a 'new features beta tester'.

------
dmbaggett
Lots of strangely negative reactions here. We (<http://inky.com>) think this
is a positive development and plan to support it as well. We're happy Google
has promoted open standards in doing this.

~~~
planetjones
I don't think the reactions are strange at all. Google have a bad track record
in implementing things and then abandoning them for one.

I want my email to be a consistent experience - not to get some different
behavior if I access through a certain device. Email and its simplicity was
universal - I saw the same text on my phone, tablet, laptop and desktop. Will
every mail sender who makes use of this, include the JSON and an alternative
link to achieve the same result. I think this could get very inconsistent very
quickly. Fragmenting email is not something I like the idea of.

For Google Apps customers' internal mails I think this is useful. For the
wider Internet I don't like it.

~~~
dmbaggett
I see your point, but consistency of email display went out the window with
HTML email. We (and Google, and hopefully everybody else providing mail
readers) put a ton of work into sanitizing HTML before rendering it in the
preview pane. This makes mail display a delicate balance between safety and
preserving the sender's intent. It's already a far from trivial problem, and
is one of the hundred or so non-obvious reasons why making a mail client isn't
easy.

What's nice about what they've done here is that they've required an
additional (but now standard) level of authentication for the senders who want
to include this richer, more actionable content. And they haven't hardwired
this into Google Plus or some other walled garden. That's welcome, IMO.

~~~
m_eiman
Has there been any effort to create a standard subset of HTML that is safe for
email? Seems like a problem worth solving once for everybody.

~~~
dmbaggett
Not that I know of, and in fact real-live HTML emails often contain complete
gibberish (made-up tags, etc.) that doesn't even validate; we have a bunch of
fix-up rules for this stuff.

CSS is a complicating factor as well: some CSS is unsafe and must be stripped,
which requires a real (error-tolerant) CSS parser to go along with your real
HTML parser.

And identifying remote images: you'd think that was easy right? But do you
know how many ways there are to reference a .png image in HTML and CSS?

At one point Facebook emails were even hiding web bugs in BGSOUND tags --
sneaky!

~~~
m_eiman
Huh. I would think that the only ones benefiting from the current state of
affairs are scammers and spammers, strange that the big players haven't gotten
together and done something about it.

------
nwh
I'm expecting "this email designed for gmail" badges soon.

~~~
icebraining
Both Microdata and JSON-LD are open formats.

~~~
makomk
The format may be open, the ability to use it isn't - you need to register
with Google[1] or they won't display actions on your e-mail. This appears to
be necessary for security reasons. Imagine if every e-mail provider did the
same thing!

[1] [https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-
with...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google)

~~~
gcb0
And even if they implement the "open standard" in outlook, who says Google
won't bait and switch (oh the irony) then, like they did with their youtube
apps on windows mobile?

~~~
thefreeman
Give me a break. How is requesting they remove a non-compliant youtube app a
"bait and switch". Is this going to be the new "cool" thing to post now every
time a submission involves google?

------
d43594
Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing and
do it well'. Last thing I want in my inbox. Call me a purist but email is for
emailing people.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Whatever happened to the Unix philosphy? 'Write programs that do one thing
> and do it well'.

Its still a valid and important way of constructing software systems. But
users mostly don't want a separate UI for each of those components, they want
them strung together in a way which provides a simple experience that allows
them to get the things they want to do done.

~~~
d43594
Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications
by bolting barely related features onto them.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Then write a dashboard facility without polluting your existing applications
> by bolting barely related features onto them.

How is automatically recognizing meaning and surfacing action requests from
email a "barely related" feature to an existing email client?

------
cafeconleche
I tried to email the following two examples with a simple SMTP python script:

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-
to-e...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/end-to-end-
example) (The html with my own link)
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-
schema...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/embedding-schemas-in-
emails)

From my account to the same account but it did not render any actions in my
gmail inbox. Did any of you guys succeed in making the buttons appear?

~~~
pornel
Maybe you need to register first?

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-
with...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google)

~~~
dragonwriter
The post you responded to addressed sending an email from one Gmail account to
the same Gmail account. If you read the first paragraph [1] of the page you
link, you will note that this does not require registration, so that does not
appear to be the issue.

[1] _We are excited to see how you plan to use schemas in email. You can start
testing your own integration today. All schemas you send to yourself (from
x@gmail.com to x@gmail.com) will be displayed in Google products. So go ahead
and try it out now!_

------
bigtones
We were one of the companies to support this during the launch announcement
today, and we've been playing with it for the past month or so. It's an
awesome feature for transactional emails that require a quick action to be
performed - we use it for task notification emails where you can check off a
task as complete right within the email client. It's based on an open
standard, and plain old HTTP POST so not specifically tied to Gmail.

~~~
reddit_clone
Again, what is the difference between this and clicking a link? Instead of
showing a link , they show a button is it? Adding a bunch of crap into email
body is worth that?

This is right out of Microsoft's embrace/extend playbook.

~~~
pjscott
Here's a use case:

1\. I book a flight, and get a flight confirmation email from the airline. It
includes a machine-readable version of my flight info in the metadata.

2\. I press a button, and the flight gets added to Google Calendar, or a
flight-status tracking app, or a shared travel calendar service for people who
fly a lot. Note that this stuff doesn't need to be written by Google; it's an
open format.

Sound potentially useful?

------
qznc
Why don't they support a mechanism which works with plain text emails? E.g.
put the JSON stuff into a header field.

Btw how would one suggest something like this officially? There seems to be no
issue tracker or anything for gmail.

~~~
dmbaggett
Statistically speaking, nobody sends plain text email any more.

~~~
qznc
Even if you take the spam out of the statistics?

------
dododo
new tool for phishing. perfect.

~~~
patrickaljord
I guess that's the negativity Larry Page was talking about yesterday, sad
indeed.

~~~
bvdbijl
Yeah. There are so many positive possibilities yet a large group of people
still choose to focus on the negative side. I hope this can change one day

~~~
crdoconnor
So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by
having the user click on a link.

And he's right, it does make phishing easier.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So many possibilities? There is nothing here that couldn't be achieved by
> having the user click on a link.

Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options
available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without
a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action.

> And he's right, it does make phishing easier.

Well, that depends on what the requirements are to have the client present the
actions from the schemas: the current Google requirements, I would say, do not
make phishing easier. You must _register_ with Google for the schemas in the
email you send to be recognized in Google products (e.g., Gmail) [1], and the
registration is per-set-of-emails, and fairly specific as to the content, and
appears to be manually reviewed [2].

[1] [https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-
with...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/registering-with-google)
[2] [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-
vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhy...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1PA-
vjjk3yJF7MLPOVKbIz3MBfhyma2obS8NIZ0JYx8I/viewform?pli=1)

~~~
imissmyjuno
>Because its machine parseable, it makes a lot of presentation options
available that aren't available when you rely on a standard hyperlink without
a data format with a standardized identification of the requested action.

You're right: this addition turns email into a data or event queue of sorts
with standardized actions that can be performed on it. I like it. Given that
email is one of the few non vendor-locked communication technologies we have
and we already have a lot of infrastructure to deliver it reliably, this seems
a promising evolution path.

I'd like to see something similar for IM: currently SMS is the only open
standard for instant messaging, and any other option locks you into either a
platform or a specific client, which the other person will probably not use.

~~~
dragonwriter
> currently SMS is the only open standard for instant messaging

XMPP is an open standard (through IETF RFCs and related standards) for
messaging and presence whose motivating use case was instant messaging:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP>

~~~
imissmyjuno
Right. My comment is more on the adoption rather than availability of open
standards.

~~~
pjscott
XMPP is also used, behind the scenes, with Google Chat and Facebook Chat. It
has a fair amount of adoption; you just don't really hear about it much.

------
yread
I don't get it, wouldn't an html email with a form element do the same thing?

~~~
pfg
Some html elements (like forms, form elements, ...) won't work in emails/get
stripped by (web-)mail clients. The same goes for JavaScript and a lot of CSS
features.

Probably would be a security nightmare.

------
robspychala
super cool. we are doing something similar with Birdseye Mail's Smart Actions
<http://www.birdseyemail.com/developers> ... we opted to reuse open graph tags
in favor of creating a new JSON / JavaScript syntax

Still really great that Google signed up partners for the rollout. It's a bit
of a chicken vs. the egg problem for technologies like this and it seems they
have some cool email providers on board to help with the adoption.

Regardless of the outcome, this is great for consumption of emails and for
users who have trouble dealing with their high volume of email.

------
orangethirty
How long till gmail us turned into a hybrid private messaging/gmail system
tightly integrated with G+ (more so than now)? Gmail as we know it seems to be
on its last legs. Too bad, because it is a good product.

~~~
pjscott
That's a remarkably dramatic response to Google announcing that (a) you can
add structured event metadata to emails in a straightforward open format, and
(b) G+ will use this metadata.

------
swah
Is there any way to compose them in Gmail?

------
QuantumGuy
Just need to make sure I am getting this. Actions will make things happen once
you open the email right? I am rather confused by this whole concept.
Furthermore when will Google give me more control over my inbox like a builtin
ifttt system? I mean filters does alot but I want more and not just for gmail
but for all Google services. Example certain days I go to the gym but I only
go if it is not raining. I wish I could tell calendar schedule gym if not
raining. Is that what actions is?

------
udfalkso
How about an "action" to let me archive/delete a message with just one click
without opening it?

~~~
sisk
You can accomplish both of those with keyboard shortcuts. "e" archives it, "#"
trashes it. They also work in the list view if you select the messages you're
concerned with ("x" to select).

------
barapa
Can the response include who is clicking the action? For example, if you want
to take a quick poll from within an email that is sent to multiple people, can
you identify who is voting for what?

~~~
navan
This is usually done by generating different URLs for different emails. The
URLs need to carry access token parameters. See
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/actions/limited-
use-access-tokens).

------
dirkdk
awesome!

so how many other clients will support this? Gmail is pretty big, but if
functionality is limited to Gmail it won't take off

~~~
richbradshaw
It's cool for companies using Google Apps.

~~~
dirkdk
yep, thought that too. As Exchange has an easy way to send calendar invites

------
yarrel
To be removed in 3..2..

------
emilymainzer
It was very nice interface !

------
notatoad
can we expect this data to start feeding into Google Now?

~~~
dragonwriter
You can expect it to feed Google Now [1] and Google Search [2]. That's a
rather major part of the point.

[1] <https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-now> [2]
<https://developers.google.com/gmail/schemas/google-search>

------
logvol
Sounds like Google's response to Facebook messenger & open graph.

Definitely agree with most of the commenter's. Sounds like a huge helper for
google apps and the SaaS apps built on there.

