Gmail and filters

As part of my company's transition to Google Apps for managing our email, I've needed to take a closer look at the filtering capabilities of Gmail. It has been my personal email client of choice for nearly five years now, but my personal email doesn't need anywhere near the amount of sorting and labeling as my work email.

Unfortunately, Gmail's filters are pretty weak, especially when compared to Thunderbird or Outlook. And Gmail's Conversation-based organization can make some things difficult, too.

I receive a lot of emails from automated processes. These processes often have the same subject line, so they are constantly being added to the same conversation. Occasionally, someone else might rely-all or forward one of these status emails, asking for clarification or pointing out an issue. In Thunderbird, I can create filters such that the automated messages will be automatically marked as read and tucked away, but any forwards would pass though and hit my inbox. Usually matching the subject exactly or using the "starts with" limitation will accomplish this.

In Gmail, I've got two problems. One, there's no way to limit subject searches by "starts with", so if I filter everything by, say, "[Error Report]" that will also match "FW: [Error Report]". Two, when that comes in, it's added to the end of a GIANT conversation of completely unrelated messages; until this forward, there WAS no conversation. The metaphor breaks down in this case.


Today, I found info on some undocumented gmail filter options that helped me with that. Specifically, the deliveredto: operator that lets you match messages based on the email address that actually received the message (as opposed to the to: address).

This worked for me because I receive all my automated messages at an alias account for historical reasons. Everything going to my mjones-debug@ account can easily be filed away, but if it goes to my actual mjones@ account, it should stay in my inbox.

Of course, that doesn't solve the conversation issue, but so be it.

This is just one small aspect of my recent adventures with switching to Gmail in order to manage my work mail. Perhaps some time I'll post about my musings on the label vs folder conflict.