Recommended Gmail & Calendar Labs
Google Apps: Recommended Gmail & Calendar Labs
These features are available only if your Google Apps administrator has enabled Labs for your domain.
About Labs
Google Labs are experimental features that you can add to Gmail and Google Calendar to customize and enhance your inbox and calendar. To help you get started, we've put together a list of the labs we think you'll find useful. It's important to remember, though, that a lab can become unstable, stop working, or disappear at any time—they are experiments, after all!
Enable Labs
You can enable or disable a lab whenever you like. Here's how:
In Gmail or Google Calendar, click the Gear icon and select Settings.
Go to the Labs tab.
For each lab you want to use, click Enable. If you want to stop using a lab, click Disable.
Click Save Changes at the top or bottom of the page.
Recommended Gmail Labs
Apps Search
Extends search with Google Docs and Sites results. Apps Search will find the most relevant Docs and Sites and show them below Gmail search results.
Canned Responses
Email for the truly lazy. Save and then send your common messages using a button next to the compose form. Also automatically send emails using filters.
Google Calendar gadget
Adds a box in the left column which shows your Google Calendar. See upcoming events, locations, and details.
Google Docs previews in mail
Shows previews of documents, spreadsheets and presentations directly in the email when you receive any link to a Google Doc. Also gives an option to open directly in Google Docs.
Multiple Inboxes
Add extra lists of emails in your inbox to see even more important email at once. The new lists of threads can be labels, your starred messages, drafts or any search you want, configurable under Settings.
Quick Links
Adds a box to the left column that gives you 1-click access to any bookmarkable URL in Gmail. You can use it for saving frequent searches, important individual messages, and more.
Right-side chat
Move the chat box to the right side of the inbox.
Undo Send
Oops, hit "Send" too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button.
Recommended Calendar Labs
Automatically declining events
Lets you block off times in your calendar when you are unavailable. Invitations sent for any events during this period will be automatically declined. After you enable this feature, you'll find a "Busy (decline invitations)" option in the "Show me as" field.
Event flair
Bring life to your calendar and organize your events with icons for things like flights, vacations, parties and meals. Note: icons added to events you organized will be visible to all attendees. After you enable this feature, click on an event and look for the "Calendar flair" gadget to activate.
Free or busy
See which of your friends are free or busy right now (requires that friends share their Google Calendars with you. How to share a calendar)
Gentle Reminders
Do you like pop-up reminders but hate how they rudely interrupt whatever you're doing? This feature replaces Calendar's pop-ups: when you get a reminder, the title of the Google Calendar window or tab will happily blink in the background and you will hear a pleasant sound. Alternatively, you can choose to use desktop notifications in Chrome.
Jump to date
Quickly navigate to dates in the distant future or past (actual time travel not yet supported).
Next meeting
See what's coming up next in your calendar.
Who's my one-on-one with?
Having a hard time figuring out who scheduled that event called "Lunch" on your calendar? This feature displays the attendee's name right on the calendar if it's just you and one other person.
World clock
Keep track of the time around the world. Plus: when you click an event, you'll see the start time in each time zone as well.
Year view
Planning ahead and want to see the whole year at once? Adds a "year view" button to calendar.