Posted by Alex Gawley, Director of Product Management, Gmail and Inbox by Gmail 

Have you ever felt like your inbox was someone else’s to-do list? Requests, project updates and action items stream in all day. You move between your computer and the phone in your pocket to try to manage, and instead of focusing on the most important things, you find yourself focusing on the most recent things. No matter the device, email should feel like a time saver, but instead it feels like a chore.

This is why we created Inbox by Gmail, to help you focus on the things that matter to you. Since we launched five months ago, one of the biggest pieces of feedback we’ve received is that Google Apps customers want access to Inbox at work. That’s why were excited to kick off the next phase of our journey: collaborating with you to bring Inbox to work.

Even before the first invitations went out to use Inbox for your own email, Googlers have been using it to get more done at work. Whether it’s snoozing the expense report notification until after the big presentation, or adding a reminder to schedule lunch with a favorite client, Inbox helps put email on your terms. And since Inbox was built on the same infrastructure as Gmail, it meets the same high security standards you expect from email.


Of course, every company and every person is different, so we want to get more input on how Inbox will work at your company. Starting next month, we’ll begin enabling Inbox for a small group of Google Apps customers to learn about their needs, challenges and use cases.

  • Do you want to use Inbox as your primary email at work?
  • Are employees at your company heavy mobile users?
  • Most importantly, do you want to partner with Google on user studies to help build the new work Inbox?

If you answered “yes, yes and yes!” then email inboxforwork@google.com from your Google Apps for Work administrator account to apply for an invitation to the early adopter program. To start, we plan to work very closely with the early adopter companies, so not everyone that applies will be accepted right away, but the program will continue to expand over the coming months.

Inbox wasn’t created to reinvent email, Inbox was created to help you reinvent the way you get things done. This means we need to understand more about how things get done (or don’t) today. And with your feedback, who knows, we could reinvent the way people work.

Note: Only the Google Apps administrator can apply for entry to the Inbox for work early adopter program.