Feature: Show folders with new mail in the Inbox

[snaggen]

Having used Google Inbox, I realize that their handling of mailboxes with new mail is really great. When a new mail arrives and is sorted in to a subfolder, the folder itself is listed in the Inbox, showing both the folder name and the latest mail subject. This makes it easy to discover and saves a click.

[x80486]

...are you asking for something similar to what's described in #234?

[snaggen]

No, that seems to just ask for a counter. I ask for the folders to get a entry inside the Inbox, so that you can see the folders with new mails when you look at the Inbox. Simmilar to what Google Inbox does.

[charlag]

Hey, that's an interesting suggestion but kinda defeats the point of mailboxes in my opinion. Would be great if you could attach a screenshot as an example

[snaggen]

The point would be that a folder would only take up one slot, and only show info about the last mail.

[snaggen]

I realize that this could be seen as an alternative to the traditional inbox, and be seen more as a dashboard (dashbox?). This dashboard view would show all mails from the Inbox, one single slot slot for folders (only listing the most recent one), and pinned (ongoing?) mails. This is mostly what Google Inbox does (well they also read all the mails and doing AI stuff, but that is not desired... so this is the good and relevant parts.)

A quick mockup https://imgur.com/WzaCl29

The mockup lists first two regular mails, an entry for the Development mail folder showing the last unread mail, and then two important mails the user have pinned to easily keep track of them. I realize that Google Inbox keeps all folders listed in this view, regardless of there are unread mails or not. They are however sorted as any other entry in the list, so if there are no new mails, they are being pushed down the list. If there are new mails, they are bolded as normal new mails are (still only showing the last mail). The folder entries just acts as a shortcut in to the folder, so clicking on the folder entry would just take you to the regular folder view.

Having a view like this will make the "Inbox" (dashboard) the central view, and you feel like you never leave it only temporarily expanding a folder.

[snaggen]

Note that the regular sidepane with folders should still be there, for easy access to the folders if you want to browse them.

[charlag]

From what you're saying it seems like there are a lot of things needed for this (pinned emails, loading emails from different folders etc). We can come back and re-evaluate this idea later, right now it's just not feasible.

[vladimiry]

Is it about introducing tags in addition to folders? So "pinned" could be one instance of a tag.

But I think the more comprehensive idea would be the following:

• Introducing advanced filter/search feature: full-text, by tag, by conversation participants address/name, by date (range and limit like hour/day/week/etc), by conversation size, file name/size, state like read/unread, etc. Including the option to use AND/OR.
• Each filtering criteria can be saved as a preset.
• It's then possible to link saved filtering presets to the "smart/dynamic inbox" which would then dynamically/reactively apply all the linked presets and show the relevant data only. The custom list sort order option would be helpful here.
• Nothing stops you from adding more than one "smart/dynamic inbox". So that would be like "views" in terms of SQL.

Going such way would allow to greatly improve the search feature and at the same time introduce new "smart/dynamic inbox" feature.

[charlag]

We have some of this functionality, but most can come only after #590 . E.g. putting query into quotes will search for words in this order. There are some difficulties with encrypted index when we have to query things separately and then merge it which makes the process longer. I believe that this functionality (or at least parts which are feasible to implement) would be really great for power users.