I think I have wrote about IFTTT in a previous post but just in case…here it is. IFTTT stands for If This Then That which to any programmer out there will recognize as a logic statement. The premise behind the logic statement and IFTTT is simple. You are presented with a condition and if it matches one of the statements then do the action that it indicates. The actions/statements in IFTTT are refered to as recipes.
I have been a Gmail user since late 2004 and have four different accounts currently (2 personal, 2 on Google Apps). Looking back now almost 8 years later it is hard to imagine living life and managing e-mail without the aide of Google. At my work place we just recently migrated from a Microsoft Exchange server for our e-mail over to Google Apps for Education. This migration led me to implementing what I refer to as mad email ninja skills. I have setup filters and lables for e-mail with the goal of having my e-mail filtered and in correct locations prior to reading it. Why can’t I do this for the junk physical mail I receive?
Back on topic…one cool thing within Gmail is having the e-mail skip the inbox and go directly to the label. This works great at keeping a neat inbox but there is a drawback. Gmail doesn’t notify you when you have new messages in a label (if it does…how did I miss that?). Enter IFTTT to the resuce.
I have created an IFTTT receipe that cheks a specified label every 15 minutes for new messages. If there is a new message it will then send a text message to my Google Voice number thus notifying me of a new message. I have only set this action up for the e-mail addresses of other employees within our organization. One thing I feel is lacking though with the IFTTT recipe would be to set a time frame for the notifications. Example: Monday – Friday from 6:30 AM – 7:00 PM notify me of new messages.
IFTTT is free and is pretty cool when you look at all the services it is bringing together and the actions that you can do with it.
www.ifttt.com
