Motivation
Recent versions of Gmail have seen increased integration between the various applications within the Google ecosystem. Gmail is now integrated with Chat, Meet and Spaces, as well as more tightly integrated with Google Docs and therefore has become an entry point into the Google ecosystem much more so than it ever was before. With this in mind it made sense for Sortd to be more tightly integrated into the Gmail User Interface and allow users to benefit from the updates to Gmail while still being able to access Sortd functionality in a seamless manner.
Sortd 2.0 consequently brings a more streamlined User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) for the modern Gmail UI. It retains the features that Sortd users love, but allows a more fluid experience when switching between modes of operation in Gmail and Sortd. Additionally, many more of the features of Sortd can be accessed from Gmail directly, negating the need to switch to Sortd from Gmail in some cases.
As with the release of anything new and different the UX may require some getting used to, but we believe that for the most part it will feel more natural and intuitive, especially for people who take full advantage of Gmail or who preferred not to work out of the old Sortd fullscreen mode. For those of us who kept Sortd fullscreen mode as our default the change will be a bit more jarring and take some time to get used to, but we believe that as you continue to use Sortd you will soon see the power of the new UX. Unfortunately, as with everything, compromises sometimes have to be made, and there are certain UI aspects that we are not able to completely replicate. Having said that we are listening to our users and will try and make changes and improvements based on your feedback.
There may be somethings that we have omitted unwillingly because of the new Gmail UI, but there may also be some we have omitted intentionally or unintentionally, so let us know your thoughts via team@sortd.com and we will look to make changes and improvements based on your feedback.
Features
This release has been in the works for a long time with most fo the work being focussed on the UX and as such does not see a raft of new features, however for those on the Business Plan, you will see that Contacts are now linked to cards as an experimental feature. You can now also import contacts into Sortd using a CSV template file.
Bugs
We have continued to work on fixing bugs and there are many bug fixes that have been deployed as part of this release, but they are mostly behind the scenes improvements. As with any new release we expect that there will be bugs that you discover that we have missed and we will be working on fixes those in the coming days and weeks.
More Information
For more information see this blog post: https://www.sortd.com/post/introducing-the-new-sortd
or the new Demo video(s) which shows how to get the most fo the new UX from our learning centre: https://www.sortd.com/learning-center