If you haven’t experienced the newest version of Gmelius kanban boards, this article will introduce you to them. And might convince you and your team to give them a try.
If you can see the logic in collaborating with your team and getting your work done without leaving your inbox, where most of your work comes in, keep reading.
Because that’s exactly what Gmelius was designed to do. And it’s what I use it for everyday.
At Gmelius - we use Gmelius. Our teams across departments collaborate smoothly and efficiently and our new boards are at the heart of it. From our success and support teams, to our agile dev team. Sales uses it, and so does our office manager to keep our operations running with ease.
We’re all in. Everyone is aligned and working in unison to serve our users and grow Gmelius. Together.
You and your team can do the same at your company:
- Transform your email conversations into kanban boards
- Manage your clients and projects without leaving your inbox
- Collaborate with your team to manage your pipelines with ease
You can watch this video of our new kanban boards in action. And below are a few specific ways I use our new boards to manage the marketing department.
Manage your departments with Gmelius
The marketing team has tons of things going on! And the last thing I want to do is add another tool into our workflow.
If you’re managing a team and your company has multiple departments - we feel each other's pain.
To Do's, projects, teams, clients, reporting - all driven by responsibilities and deadlines.
I can understand why managers feel they need an overload of tools to get it all done. But that’s not necessary.
I’ll show you how Gmelius tames the beast that is your department and brings your teams together. It makes my life easier and it can do the same for you.
Make email the start of great teamwork!
Most of my work starts with email. Whether it’s putting together joint ventures with other companies, managing our agencies and partners, or communicating with our users…
Email communications inevitably turn into projects. Projects with to-do’s and deadlines.
Here’s how I manage the actions that come from email.
I use a shared inbox to manage our group email - marketing@gmelius. Setting it up took literally three clicks - and that includes adding my team members.
Shared inboxes are not new to Gmelius. Our customers use them to manage their sales@, support@, or whatever else you can think of@ addresses.
What is new, is how Gmelius allows you to manage your shared inboxes with visual boards.
Each shared inbox now has its own corresponding board. Auto-created and auto-organized for you.
Our marketing@gmelius shared inbox takes all the emails within it and turns them into a scalable and flexible kanban board.
For me, personally, this was a game changer.
Gmelius boards give me crystal-clear visibility into everything our department and team has going on.
Managing our group emails is simplified - we do it as a team. And we’re supported by our boards.
Incoming emails as always come into our shared inbox and land in the Unassigned folder, but they’re also turned into task cards and added in the Unassigned column of the corresponding board.
Assigning emails to relevant team members is done with a simple drag. Drop into their column and delegation is done. The email will also go into their “Mine” folder within their inbox view, making accountability clear.
But again, I’m a fan of the board view. If you are a visual person, like I am, you’ll appreciate this. The typical inbox view, with a long list of incoming messages, does nothing for me.
Now this particular shared inbox is really busy. And although my inbox isn’t quite at zero, boards make it really simple to move an incoming email directly into production which is our team’s workflow.
And this goes for any email, whether it came into our shared inbox or not. I can turn them into a task card, add it to my chosen board, assign it to my chosen teammate - and have a clear overview as I monitor it through the stages of our pipeline.
Manage projects in Gmail
Shared labels are the secret to how I manage projects without leaving my inbox.
I create labels by project name and share it with relevant team members. Labels offer me a more granular level of management for cases where I don’t need to share the entire inbox.
Product marketing is one example of our many shared labels. Lina, our Product Marketing Manager, is the board's owner. And we shared it with Adeline, our Head of Design and a few other team members.
And we are on it! Nothing ever gets missed. Our workflow is transparent and streamlined. Allowing me to focus on other things...
Just like shared inboxes - all your shared labels can have their own board view.
Our product marketing board is in a “Get things done” style. You'll have the option of Ticketing - which is great for boards. A blank board to configure as you wish. Each of which can be saved as templates to easily duplicate your upcoming workflows.
On this particular board, I use column automation to put assignments and statuses on auto-pilot.
For example, if I drag an email or task card into the Design column - it auto-assigns it to Adeline.
The email is organized into both her inbox view within her “Mine” folder and her board view in real-time. She’ll get a notification on the live feed in her Gmelius sidebar and also on Slack.
Adeline hangs out more on Slack than she does her inbox. Similar to the dev team - the occasional emails that they do get, they prefer to not have to go back into their inbox to reply to them.
Gmelius not only connects teams and departments but it also bridges the gaps caused by disconnected platforms. I'm sure your team has suffered from data trapped in the silos of third-party tools.
Let your teams choose their preferred workspace
I’m considered a true “inboxer,” I prefer to finish my work within my inbox - right where it comes in. I actually can’t remember the last time I had to leave my inbox to get work done.
But many of our other team members prefer to work from Slack or Trello.
Gmelius is a collaboration platform that seamlessly connects your shared inboxes and shared labels to your preferred workspace with our unique 2-way integrations.
For example, all of our departments have their communications connected to Slack channels. Not just a one-way integration, but a real two-way active Gmail to Slack sync they can actually work with.
They don’t have to leave Slack to reply to emails, email notes, change statuses, and make assignments.
You might be getting the picture on how Gmelius empowers not only you as the manager, but also your team to do their best work.
Gmelius translates this efficiency across departments and your company as a whole.
Collaborate company-wide across departments
Marketing is at the center of Gmelius. I would say it’s the one team that has the most touch-points with every other department (on a side note: it’s also the coolest department at Gmelius. Yes, I’m biased ;) ).
We work with the dev team for product releases, success and support teams to serve our customers, we align closely with sales. We’re in direct contact with our CEO & Founder, and also our office manager that keeps everything in order.
Zahra’s the office manager at Gmelius. And she definitely has a lot going on.
Here’s her quick video on why she loves Gmelius, and how she uses it to keep it all together.
In relation to my department, Zahra created a shared label called Billing which is nested under Marketing. I’m sure she probably has one for every department.
She shared this label with me, and we collaborate together to manage the marketing department’s budget and accounting.
Incoming invoices, payment requests, billing orders,... all organized in one place, making both of our lives easier.
If I have an invoice that needs to be paid quickly, I assign it to her and ping her with an @mention email note - right alongside the email. And vice-versa, if she needs an invoice or payment confirmation from my side.
At Gmelius, we don’t do any CC’ing, Forwarding, or emailing back and forth.
This is just one of the many examples on cross-department collaboration within Gmelius.
Now imagine that all of our teams have multiple boards for their department, and all their data is seamlessly synced across the rest of the team’s chosen platforms and all our devices.
Our team’s work is aligned and simplified!
Simplify how your team gets work done with Gmelius integrations
Companies and their teams are forced to use way too many tools to get their work done.
Gmelius provides a scalable and transparent way to get work done. Our users are able to get rid of their help desks and project management tools - that take them away from their inbox. They are able to work from the tools they already use and love, and integrate these tools together thanks to unique 2 way syncs.
No more bouncing in and out of Trello, Slack, or whatever other tool your team is using. Information syncs in real time from one tool to another, reducing data dispersion and team misalignment.
The result of using Gmelius integrations together with our Kanban boards is a team that’s truly aligned regardless of the platform they use - not to mention the time, money and attention-switch costs you'll save from not having to use third party tools.
Get started with Gmelius
Okay, so you can probably tell that I can go on. And on! About our new boards. I didn’t even go into my personal board where I manage all my other life stuff...
Boards were my favorite Gmelius feature even before this new release. So, I was excited to give you a glimpse into how I use them. And I look forward to seeing how you and your team will put them to work.
So whether you’re a small 22-person team like we are at Gmelius or 300+ like many of our users, get started today on simplifying how your team gets work done.
For current Gmelius users, your new boards are waiting for you - neatly loaded into your inbox.
For new users, sign up to Gmelius now - it’s free to get started.
