
Gmail Add-ons - alooPotato
https://gsuite-developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/bring-power-of-your-apps-into-gmail_9.html
======
timvdalen
This is a really big deal. Having recently written an extension that
integrates with Gmail[1], I've found that InboxSDK[2] was a lifesaver.

Having the power to do this with Google's consent _and_ have it be available
on mobile devices is huge.

I hope this solves the problem of conflicting Gmail extensions, I currently
just have too many installed that don't place nice together.

[1]: [https://gmail-message-id-finder.co/](https://gmail-message-id-
finder.co/) [2]: [https://www.inboxsdk.com/](https://www.inboxsdk.com/)

~~~
alooPotato
Agree that its a really big deal. Mobile support is huge.

We actually built the inboxsdk that you are referring to. There are a _ton_ of
extensions built using it and >10M end users using apps built with it. We've
worked really hard to make sure apps built with the SDK are compatible. If you
have any examples of 2 extensions not playing nice, def let me know.

~~~
timvdalen
First of all, thanks for InboxSDK!

Looking at it now, it's actually mostly InboxSDK extensions that are
conflicting with Gmelius and some other custom extensions. Having 10+
extensions all trying to modify the DOM of one site at the same time is bound
to give some problems :).

Curious to see if Streak will switch to this new official way, although it
seems that a lot of the stuff you're doing won't be available to Add-ons.

~~~
alooPotato
Gmelius is actually using parts of the SDK. But they are really aggressive and
do some DOM manipulation. In general we hope that users of the InboxSDK never
need to actually touch the DOM ever. The SDK handles coordination across
extensions. Ofcourse extension don't have to abide by this and hence the
conflicts.

As for Streak, we're planning on a mixed approach. The add-ons from Google
support very few UI entry points (at least for now). Streak's entire UI only
lives in Gmail so we need a lot more integrations. We'll use the Google
sanctioned way when possible and fall back on the extension as we currently
have now for the other cases.

~~~
siva_narayanan
First of all, big shoutout to InboxSDK / Streak folks. Our extension, Fyle
([http://www.fyle.in](http://www.fyle.in)) would've been ridiculously more
difficult without it.

We're having an issue with Gmelius interacting badly with our extension.
Basically, we never enter our messageViewHandler code when Gmelius finds a
tracker. Have reached out to them as well.

------
whizzkid
Sorry to be the one that has negative feelings about it.

Email is one of those rare concepts that is really hard to change or enhance.
I can easily see Google abandoning this feature in 5 years.

People need email service just because of the email function, nothing more
than that.

It's concept clearly has some limitations (attachment sizes, layout
inconsistencies and so on) but it also doesn't have any deal-breaker problems.

Introducing external services integration to email sounds like taking a huge
risk. How people manage their invoices, to-do lists and other stuff is
changing faster than ever. These add-ons will require active development all
the time to keep themselves up-to-date.

As a developer, I wouldn't risk investing in this feature.

~~~
math0ne
I've been panned on here before for saying this, but I really feel everyone
should leave email alone. As a spec its already so immensely complicated and
embedded that any features you add will only be picked up by a tiny percentage
of providers.

~~~
tempestn
Imagine if that advice had been taken pre-gmail though. Not _everyone_ loves
it, but for most people, gmail's conversation view is far superior to the
default way emails were organized before. And it does this while still
interacting seamlessly with other email clients.

I don't see gmail as perfect, but that's kind of the point; it's possible we
could gain from this kind of experimentation.

Afterthought - archiving and snoozing emails are also concepts that weren't
around initially, but can be extremely valuable depending on your workflow.
I'm sure there are other similar improvements and additions to be found.

~~~
vidarh
I've come to dislike it more and more. Gmail hides too many details. Thinks
like precise timestamps. Things like not surfacing subject changes well
enough. Things like a spam filter with immense amounts of false positives. I
keep having to fight with gmail in ways I never have to with other mail
solutions, to the point were I'm getting very close to abandoning it entirely.

~~~
tempestn
I agree with you on the spam filtering. It would be VERY nice if you could
customize the threshold, or even better, have a couple of thresholds, so you
end up with a 'definitely spam' and a 'probably spam' box.

I've kind of created that by using spamassassin to filter out really hardcore
spam before it gets to gmail, but obviously that's not an option if you're
using an @gmail address.

That said, I think we take for granted just how good gmail's spam filtering
is. Their ability to 'see' so much email passing through the system gives them
a massive advantage there, which they've used to pretty good effect. They
catch a ton of stuff for me that SA misses, and very few false positives (but
just enough that I can't ignore the folder, unfortunately).

~~~
vidarh
Unfortunately the false positives vary greatly with your mail patterns. For me
the amount large enough that even though it also stops a shitload of spam I'm
starting to think it's too much of a problem. Just checked right now, and
though I've checked my spam folder earlier this month (and emptied the
folder), it now has 40 messages of which 9 are false positives. What's more,
several of them are from senders I regularly get e-mail from and that I have
never marked as spam.

~~~
tempestn
Ha, lucky you. Before I started pre-filtering with SA, I got about 3000 spam
emails per month. I can cut out about 2/3 of those with SA without losing any
of the false positives, so now I only have to wade through 1000 or so to find
the one or two falses. :/

~~~
vidarh
That brutal, but if my false positive rate was that low I'd probably be
willing to just tolerate it. What drives me most crazy, is just how hard it is
to get Gmail to accept that a given type of e-mail is not spam...

------
d4l3k
Does this mean that we'll finally get an easy to use PGP integration in Gmail
web and mobile? Can't wait!

~~~
oh_sigh
Sure, but the hard part for adoption isn't using the tools, but teaching
people how to keep their private keys safe/secure

~~~
arjie
I don't know man. Right now the hard part is using the tools. It's a pain in
the ass. The last I tried FireGPG was the best and it wasn't terribly smooth
flow either (no fault of it's own).

------
imglorp
I don't know, guys.

Inbox was nifty at first but it positively crawls now. Any input action takes
several seconds, at best, to process on a fast machine, sometimes much more.
Loading Inbox is about 30s. It's maybe 20x slower than straight gmail classic.
Plugins will just slow it more?

~~~
rikkus
12 seconds to load fully here (that's 11.90 seconds too long - can't they
store some stuff in local storage or...?) - and of course it's not really
usable until it's fully loaded. You could start trying to type but it'll not
do anything, or stuff will move.

Opening the 'Updates', er, 'section' with 2 emails in it took 2 seconds, which
is silly.

I love the flow of Inbox but I'm seriously considering going back to a local
client. Are there any good ones left these days? I liked mutt, but using it
with an IMAP mailbox made it a bit clunky. I just need to work /fast/, without
crashes, without spam, and preferably with vi keys and programmabil... never
mind the last two, I can live with the speed, stability and spam-free parts.

~~~
77ko
> Are there any good ones left these days?

Not really. I wish the Mozilla Foundation would rejuvenate their email client
once and for all.

I found Nylas N1[0] works well, it's cross platform which is a big plus and
has plenty of kb shortcuts.

[0]: [https://nylas.com/](https://nylas.com/)

~~~
bad_user
I can't trust Nylas because you have to trust yet another third party with
your email, in addition to Google/Fastmail/etc.

AFAIK Nylas doesn't work locally, but through their "cloud APIs". They are not
alone in doing this, for example Outlook for Android does it too.

That's not acceptable for me. The email client should only communicate with
the email provider. Trusting Google or Fastmail with my email is a leap of
faith on its own without an extra third party involved.

I'd also question their business model. If Nylas Mail syncs via their own
"cloud", it means it's not free to operate on an ongoing basis, which means it
will end up either milking users for ads or die.

~~~
qudat
Their newly released free version brings their sync engine to the client so
there is no third party relay anymore.

------
gmisra
Does anybody know what happens when an add-on augmented e-mail is opened
outside of Gmail (or, presumably, Inbox)?

There is a huge difference between:

Google is enhancing e-mail in a way that makes e-mail better for everybody.

and

Google is migrating GMail to be another walled garden collaborative workflow
tool that happens to have a very good e-mail client build in.

~~~
ucaetano
If you look at the examples, they all look like adding extra functionality to
your inbox, not to the content of the emails you send.

So it doesn't sound like "I'll send you this email that you can only access if
you have gmail AND this specific add-ons", more like "when you open an email,
the add-on shows relevant information from your internal CRM system as well as
canned responses".

------
ino
When is google adding missing useful functionality such as "schedule email
send"?

~~~
alooPotato
Probably soon - they already added snoozing an email to Inbox

edit: if you want it now, we offer that functionality in gmail and inbox soon:
www.streak.com

------
narsil
This is awesome. I developed Chrome/Firefox browser extensions that connected
Gmail attachments with cloud storage in the past, and hacking through Gmail's
DOM always threw any SLA we could provide out the window.

It's even better that this will run on Android and iOS as well, which truly
makes all the "Gmail extensions" from developers such as myself production-
ready.

------
josteink
And _just_ as I completed a WebExtension based integration. Awesome! /s

Seriously though: I was considering using Gmail contextual gadgets, but it
seems google has just dumped those, left the tooling and admin panels not to
work and the documentation to rot at least 3 revisions earlier.

Looking into it was a complete waste of time, and seeing this now, I'm going
to guess soon to be deprecated.

I wonder how long until Google repeats the history with this one. I'm honestly
not sure I'd dare jump on another Google tech like this.

~~~
icebraining
_Seriously though: I was considering using Gmail contextual gadgets, but it
seems google has just dumped those, left the tooling and admin panels not to
work and the documentation to rot at least 3 revisions earlier._

That's in line with my experience. We had a gadget working a few years back (a
button to create a ticket, for our support teams); a year and half ago we had
to make an update, and the gadget simply never came back - even after we
reverted. And the tools are useless to identify these problems.

------
amelius
I'd rather Google made this an open standard. Because right now, I'm feeling
it starts to sound a little too much like "embrace, extend, extinguish".

~~~
joshuamorton
(disc: googler) How could you make an open standard for this? Do you mean an
open standard for apps-in-email? Or an open standard for doing things in
gmail?

~~~
amelius
I meant an open standard for apps-in-email, but then again, interoperability
between apps is something that probably should be handled more generically at
the OS level.

Coming back to my remark, email is one of the great federated protocols of the
web, and I would really hate it if a big company would ruin it by adding
proprietary extensions.

~~~
icebraining
This seems to be extensions to the client, not to the messages themselves.

The extensions to messages they did was Email Markup, and they do use
standard/open formats from schema.org (which is developed by multiple orgs,
not just Google).

------
martin1975
A PGP add on built into gmail would be nice .. They have been promising it for
years now, seems they have trouble delivering it.

~~~
forgotpwtomain
> seems they have trouble delivering it.

More like seems it's not good for their core-business to deliver it?

------
siva_narayanan
Anybody know when the developer preview / early access for Gmail Add-ons is
likely to happen?

------
zzbzq
Seems like a lot of posters here not catching on, this seems to be a parity
thing with the new cross-platform, HTML-based MS Office Add-ins which are
pretty sweet and have been out for a while. Unusual for Microsoft to be out in
front of this since usually they like to follow examples.

------
shp0ngle
I still like Google's Inbox. Which seems like a forgotten and abandoned child
sometimes.... But it works great for me. Makes it easier to wage through the
tons of stupid mails.

Talking about Mobile version here. The web version is not good.

~~~
euyyn
> Which seems like a forgotten and abandoned child sometimes

Isn't it first to get features like Smart Reply?

------
neotek
Did I understand right that add-ons also work in the iOS app? How are they
implementing that, especially since Apple recently said you're not allowed to
load custom code on the fly? Sorry if this comes across as ignorant, but I
have no app dev experience whatsoever so I have no clue how any of this stuff
is done at the moment.

~~~
btown
My understanding is that on the fly code loading is still allowed if (1) the
loaded code is written in, or compiled to, JavaScript, and (2) no native hooks
it can call allow it to call arbitrary native functions by name, which was
being misused to access hidden/proprietary APIs that could break during
updates. Which makes sense if Apple wants to guarantee "our updates won't get
blamed for broken apps as long as our public APIs are backwards compatible."

------
thetrumanshow
I'll probably setup a Slack channel for those interested in talking more about
this. I'm not part of the program yet, but very interested in it, and I'd be
happy to meet you if you have similar interests. btwelchy_gmail

------
gameshot911
A little off topic, but anyone else find those example gifs exceptionally
fluid and intuitive? I really liked the way the blue dot indicated movement,
clicks, etc. A very elegant solution for demoing a touch-based system.

~~~
OJFord
I found it a little disingenuous - in reality, half that screen is going to be
taken up by an on-screen keyboard, and typing is nothing like that quick; that
little blue dot would be moving from key to key to key to key.

------
yitchelle
I read that Google is trying to engage developers and allowing them to market
their add-ons via the G Suite market place. Has anyone had any financial
success via developing these type of add-ons?

~~~
tyingq
I doubt much direct revenue would come this route. But, if you sell CRM
software, or trouble ticket software, the integration might swing a potential
buyer.

------
fiatjaf
Someone should really develop an app that was just the add-ons, without the
email part.

Some personal dashboard from where you could receive notifications of all
sorts and perform actions on them.

~~~
dyu-
You mean like igoogle? They killed it even though it had decent number of
users.

------
IanCal
This happens very regularly for me, Google's own internal links are terribly
broken.

I'm on an android device, using chrome. I'm clicking a link on a Google site,
a call to action to sign up.

I get a page that's not a signup page but another overview, and has a broken
image in.

Usually it's broken links on help pages but this is just useless. How do I
sign up? I want to build on your platform! Please stop making the first
interactions I have with you broken!

------
soheil
So two things come to mind:

\- this reminds of the ancient Labs feature in Gmail where you could add stuff
like favicon that shows unread email count

\- is there going to be a Gmail plugin store?

~~~
fiatjaf
You didn't click the link, that's clear.

But hey, Gmail Labs is still there!

~~~
OJFord
That's hardly fair: the linked page doesn't mention Labs once.

> _But hey, Gmail Labs is still there!_

I'm not even sure what makes you say that like there's no chance of it
changing as a result of this?

------
mericsson
Will it support both iOS Google Inbox and Gmail apps?

------
jfkw
Would this API support manipulation of message composition format? I would
really like a gmail add-on that eliminated quoted text in replies by default,
with a button to "reply with quoted text" for the rare occasions when it is
wanted.

------
mericsson
Very neat, reminds me of Salesforce Lightning -- customizing UI across devices
in client side Salesforce apps.
[https://developer.salesforce.com/lightning](https://developer.salesforce.com/lightning)

------
Animats
Are you allowed to write something that removes Google ads?

~~~
true_religion
Nope, but you could always pay Google for GMail and go without ads.

------
nthcolumn
I'd just like it stop telling me my chromium is not up to date. :/

------
secfirstmd
I wonder how this might work for easier PGP with something like Mailvelope

------
ncr100
Exciting. I wonder if this is related to the 'instant app' tech?

------
Nullabillity
What about people using Gmail outside of Gsuite?

------
calcsam
Great feature, only a few years overdue...

------
newtown2017
What if my customer is not G Suite User ?

~~~
askvictor
They just use email. These add one augment the email client (Gmail) not the
email messages themselves.

------
johnsmith21006
This is a great idea. Google is like on Aderall lately.

------
misterbowfinger
This is like, 5 years too late, and it's arguably the reason Slack is
succeeding in killing Google Hangouts & Gmail as communication tools.

~~~
ecaroth
There's still a shit ton of companies whose products live extensively (or
exclusively) in Gmail - not to mention the examples they give are use cases
that you would not use in slack. Slack is certainly winning as an external
communication tool, but email/gmail dominates external (and customer)
communication for gSuite-using companies.

