New Sidebar Puts You in Touch With What You Need, When You Need It
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As you read email, your sidebar shows you more by connecting you to your calendar, contacts, and email attachments.
Do you ever wish you could schedule an event without switching between your email and calendars? When you’re busy with emails, would it be helpful to know what’s ahead on your calendar as you work?
Would life be easier if you could quickly refresh your memory before emailing people, so you know when you last spoke and what you talked about?
If you’ve said yes to any of these questions, what you’re looking for is context. Good news! Fastmail’s sidebar is here to fill in the gaps by connecting what you’re doing now to related information in your email history, calendar events, and address book.
Get the big picture in one look
Your busy life has many interrelated parts. Fastmail puts your email, calendar, contacts, and email attachments in one place. Your sidebar is there to draw connections between what you’re doing now and the other information you have in all areas of Fastmail.
Your sidebar works by surfacing the information you need as you read or write emails. If you expand the sidebar while writing a new email, you’ll be able to see and search your calendars and contacts. Alternatively, if you open the sidebar next to a conversation, you’ll see your calendar, as well as contacts and attachments related to the thread.
See your calendar as you work
Email messages often initiate calendar events, so it makes sense that you’d want to see your email and calendars side-by-side. As you discuss a meet-up or special activity, you can use your sidebar to add the event to your calendar and avoid scheduling conflicts. You can also use your sidebar to show you what’s happening today as you work.
Your sidebar calendar is more than just a reference point. It is your full-featured Fastmail calendar that you can search, add events to, and use to send calendar invitations. You can also switch between viewing all your Fastmail calendars, multiple calendars at a time, or calendars in a calendar group.
Send invites out for new events and respond to emails faster without leaving your inbox. Take a look at your schedule by the week or by month using the mini-calendar in your sidebar.
Drag and drop contacts to compose new emails
Are you sending out invites to a virtual birthday party? Do you have to remind your team about an upcoming meeting? Group conversations are easy to start with the sidebar. You can view all your contacts, just recent contacts, only your VIPs, or any other contact groups.
When you start writing your new email, your sidebar gives you the ability to drag and drop contacts you want to talk to into your draft.
See what you know about your contacts
Just like when someone you can’t place waves to you at the grocery store, it can be hard to recall how you know someone when you interact with them online. Your sidebar shows you details for the contact you’re emailing, so you can identify them in the world and in your life.
The People tab is where you’ll find the information you’ve saved about the people you know—like what they look like, where they’re based, and what they do.
Now that it’s clear who they are, you can save time by sending more thoughtful emails and event invitations.
Send more personal and perceptive correspondence
You get hundreds of emails; it can be difficult to remember where your conversation left off.
Your sidebar helps to jog your memory when you could use a reminder. Below each contact’s basic details, you’ll find the history of your past interactions with that person ranging from conversations you’ve had to events you’ve shared.
You’ll be able to search these interactions to find what you need so that when you catch up, you can pick the conversation up right where it left off. It will help you ask questions like, “How’s your new baby?” “What college did you choose?” or “Are you still looking for a photographer?”. Details like this show your friends and colleagues that you care or help you win new business!
Find attachments specific to this conversation
No one wants to be scrambling to pull up an attachment, especially if you need it now.
From meeting minutes to contracts to tickets to the show, the sidebar’s Attachments tab collects the files attached to your email conversations. It makes it easy to find the one you’re looking for, without the hassle of scrolling through a long thread.
Work smarter with your sidebar
Your tour of the sidebar has come to an end, but better productivity has only just begun. Go into the world with the power of all areas of Fastmail beside you as you work. With this level of connection to your information, you can be more prepared—leading to faster and more informed communications.
Here’s a handy to-do list for the smartest sidebars:
- Import a calendar (from Google, iCloud, etc)
- Bring in your contacts (from Gmail, iCloud, etc)
- As you use your mail today, open the sidebar in the upper right corner of your account in your desktop web browser to check it out!
At Fastmail, we’re all about helping you streamline your daily tasks. If you’re new to Fastmail, give us a try to see this feature in action.