1. Ability to filter contact groups: I think this is such a logical next step for google. If I want to easily email a group of people, I would just as much care to be able to label them if they email me. I want the ability to go into labels and tell it to sort a group, or assign a label to a group from the contacts list.
2. Avoid asking to add myself to contacts. Time and time again, I've ran across this bug. And it is a bug, because I've got a conversation where person A emails me, I reply, and then they reply back, and nowhere in those three emails under the dropdown menus is "Add A to contacts" the only option I get is to add my own email to contacts. I would like to have my information in gmail contacts, but not as a contact.
3. Seeing which of my contacts do not belong to a group. The contacts page needs a lot of revisions; mostly because I'm sick of getting random emails, I only sent to once, getting added to my contacts list. To wade through those people, I enjoy having the groups to separate those friends and co-workers I truly want to talk to and keep in my contacts, and those I do not. I would love to see (right beneath "All Contacts") a choice for people without a group.
4. Finding duplicates... and merging the unknown? What is this? I am afraid to click this as it could possibly mess up some of my contacts and I'd never know. You click details for unknowns, and they are unknown! currently I have 11 unknowns and it asks me if i want to merge them. So exactly how will I merge them, if there are 11 of them, and I have no clue as to which email, name, etc. they will be merged to. The only detail I get for all 11 of them is the single entry unknown.
5. Operate from the "ALL." I would like to set the default of my email from Inbox to ALL. Or something similar. I'd like to be able to see drafts, sent, and inbox on one screen... minus the trash and spam.
6. Notes to myself. First, I like big emails, not the small gtalk tasks box. I keep gmail open all day long, and I've grown accustomed to creating an email with a chore to do, jot down a note to myself, copy and paste a good article or link to myself, I'd want to save, but can't bookmark because I'm working at a terminal computer, etc. So I basically use the drafts category as something for myself. But that isn't the purpose of drafts. Drafts are for incomplete emails. I would like to see the ability to make tasks a full page feature. But even then, I just want this to be a favorites section, its not totally a todo list. BUZZ "almost" satisfies me, but I don't want to publish my notes, I just want to have it close to me, in my gmail.
7. Add label:unread. After discovering quick links in labs, I'd have to say the very first thing I added was label:unread and it has be awesome! This alone, makes quick links worthy to be on everyones gmail page. At the very least, there should be a choice to just view unread emails as a normal setting on the inbox.
8. Add "Mark as read". Again, another great google labs feature. Sadly, I am not a hotkeys user. But I would like to speed up my email management, and just have a button to mark as read my emails. And to make it even better, how about a toggle feature of "mark as read or mark as unread" as the case may be. The ultimate feature would be to let people choose what they have on their icon bars. I rarely archive emails, but I do click spam/delete alot, so out of the three buttons, I'd like to see one of them go to a drop down box. I'd prefer the ability to click mark as read, instead of the two clicks it takes while its in the dropdown. Let the user choose what buttons he/she wants visible and which ones belong in the dropdowns.
9. Adding The Contacts Info. It is very satisfactory, I like it a lot for the purposes it has served me. But there are a few things I wish I could understand more.:
- I'd really like to have two boxes for First and Last names: how will gmail interact with my phone's contacts? how will it export to outlook, thunderbird, etc.? Will I be getting millions of duplicates if i sync my phone to my outlook, which I imported my contacts from gmail?
- There are tons of variables for how people like to enter their names in their phones: first last; last first; last, first; last title, first; it goes on and on. If I enter their email into my contacts for the very first time (as I'm sending them the very first email communication between the two of us) I enter it one way. When they respond, most of the time its something totally different. I would love a feature that would recognize right away I received an email from a contact already in my contacts, but they spell or word their title differently. Practically half my list is physicians and there are a few of them that I would like to respect, and address their emails with their titles accordingly.
- Have "groups" right on the edit menu. Why go through two separate pages? First I have to create the contact, then I have to save the contact, then I have to let the page refresh, scroll and find the contact, then I have to assign them to a group. It could be done faster if there was just another box (like next to the "add" box) that would let me select the group then and there.
- Expand support for importing/exporting. I would like to see more formats to export to as, or import. I would also like to see the ability to add the information from an attachment to the contact. I got an email yesterday, and the sender attached a .vcf file with all of his contact information, and I thought... great, less typing for me! But no. If gmail could identify attachments that are meant for importing into contacts (virus scan... then right next to download, view as html, open in google docs, etc.) and let me choose to import senders info to my contacts, that could save me a step or two.
- Somewhat similar to the above is the ability to attach my vcard or something to my emails. I could include everything in my signature, but why not have the ability just to automatically provide contact information, ready to import into someone's gmail or outlook.
- Recognize ME. Right now I have a group just for me. I want my contact information in gmail, but I don't want gmail to consider me a contact, I want it to realize I'm the owner of the account. I would also like it to recognize alias names and emails. Gmail does a wonderful job at managing all my emails I forward from other emails, allowing me to choose which email to send my mail from. But I forward a business email and a two school emails to my gmail account. So we are talking about 3 aliases that gmail treats as contacts that I would prefer have excluded from my contacts list.
- Birthdays. I have birthdays on gcal for people (and I've used their full names) but do not have their birthdays on their contact. If google can merge duplicate email contacts, is their a chance they can merge the birthdays somehow? I know the other way around is already possible... adding contact birthdays to gcal is a great feature.
- I guess this would require some form of facebook/twitter app, but I would love to see the ability to quickly import twitter and facebook pages into my contacts info.
So if I've said anything here, that can already be done, forgive me, and let me know about it! I think gmail is far superior to outlook or yahoo, and only want it to continue to be improved upon.
