Gmail is improving its summary cards to better summarize and display essential information about a delivery, appointment, event or trip. Practical to avoid digging through emails!
But where did this electronic invoice go? What time is the reservation for tonight’s restaurant? Where is my travel confirmation? Receipts, invoices, package tracking… Important information is often scattered within your emails. And even if Gmail keeps all this information carefully, it is sometimes complicated to find the information you are looking for. Add to that the constant stress of worrying that you may have accidentally deleted the email containing the valuable information.
Until now, summary cards existed, but they were content to condense essential elements, very small, and without particular emphasis, at the top of the messages relating to confirmations, events or other received. In short, not the most practical. But Google is in the process of deploying a new update to bring some order to the mailbox, as the company announced in a blog post.
Gmail summary cards: more readable information
Gmail’s new summary cards are much clearer. In addition, they do not take into account a single e-mail, but all associated messages. Therefore, in case of new information, it updates automatically and in real time. This is for example the case for changes in delivery times.
These new cards also include new action buttons, allowing for example to add an event to the calendar, respond to an invitation, invite other people, schedule a reminder in Google Task, obtain a route or to follow the delivery status of a package.
Ultimately, Google hopes that consulting these cards can replace that of emails in the case of online purchases, events, restaurant reservations, invoices or even travel and accommodation reservations and transport. These new files will be present in emails, Gmail search as well as in a new section which is also appearing.
This section, called “Coming soon”, is located just below the search bar. It displays messages that concern nearby dates and times. If there are no emails of this type, the section will not be displayed. The new Gmail summary cards are starting to roll out now on Android and iOS, but only for online purchases. The other types of cards (events, invoices, travel) will arrive in the coming months, as will the “Coming soon” category.