Send Later with Scheduled Send

[pjwalsh]

Fastmail Blog May 4
https://fastmail.blog/productivity/s...scheduled-send

[akorvemaker]

Yayyyyyyyy!!!!

[hadaso]

Yesterday it was still in beta. I thought I'd provide some feedback but now it's out of beta and the link for feedback is gone.


Anyway, I tried it once or twice and it worked fine. I would certainly use it.
However I wish the times on the menu (also on the snooze menu) were customizable, so I put there things useful for my workflow and not have to resort to "custom" every time.


I think an option of "after one hour" (or half an hour) can be very useful in several scenarios.


"Next week" is not Monday morning for me. Our week here starts on Sunday (and Fastmail actually knows this since it's on my preferences).


"This weekend" probably means something like "Friday noon" and not "Saturday morning" here.


Anyway I feel this is one feature I am going to use daily.

[akorvemaker]

Originally Posted by hadaso

However I wish the times on the menu (also on the snooze menu) were customizable, so I put there things useful for my workflow and not have to resort to "custom" every time.

I totally agree. I hope that customization comes sometime (soon), even if it's buried in advanced settings somewhere.

Anyway I feel this is one feature I am going to use daily.

Again, I agree. I've been waiting for this, even if it's imperfect, for a long time (long time).

[xyzzy]

Is this addition not available to basic accounts? That's what I have and see no way to specify a delayed send.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by xyzzy

Is this addition not available to basic accounts? That's what I have and see no way to specify a delayed send.

See:
https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/a...Scheduled-send

Scheduled Send is available for users subscribed to our Standard and Professional plans, and for any user subscribed to a legacy plan with at least 10 GB of mail storage.

Bill

[xyzzy]

Thanks. I guess I skipped over that paragraph. Oh well. Don't really need that feature anyhow.

[sflorack]

I use my FM account only for personal messages (not work), so maybe I will never fully benefit from the send later feature. Can someone please explain why it's useful?

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by sflorack

Can someone please explain why it's useful?

I think it can be useful for many different purposes.

One use scenario: I write a reply, and I fell there's something I wanted to say and forgot. Usually I remember what it is a few minutes after I send. So I waste a lot of time trying to think what it was, then eventually give up and send the reply anyway, then recall what it was...
I can of course not send and save the draft until I recall what it was, but that doesn't work, because I keep trying to remember and cannot work on other things. If I can finish the email and schedule its delivery I can forget about it and go on with other things, and then there's a good chance that I would recall what it was and can get back and add it to the email and send (for some strange reason the human mind works this way: it's easier to recall memories when not trying hard to remember it).

There can be many other reasons why I'd want to schedule a partial reply, to get something off my mind; for example I need an answer from a third person. I send a question to the third person, and schedule a reply that says I'm dealing with it. If the third person replies soon, I just edit the scheduled reply and send. If not the second person gets some response (e.g., friends want to meet sometime, I ask my wife if it's OK. meanwhile I schedule an answer that I'd ask my wife).

I get an email and can reply immediately, and I want to reply immediately and forget about it. but I don't want the sender to get get the reply immediately for various reasons. For example I don't want to reply to my students immediately. Usually if I wait a while they solve the problem themselves. But I don't want their email hanging around in my inbox. so I can snooze it, but usually I already thought about the question to figure up if it needs a prompt reply, so it's more efficient to write the reply and schedule it to be sent later.

Then of course there's sending reminders to myself. I already did these things by sending myself a reminder and then snoozing it to the time I need to be reminded. Scheduled send would do it in one step.

And of course there's sending reminders to others (like reminding friends a few hours before the party what they're supposed to contribute, that is, if they think they will just come to the party and get drunk, they should be reminded that they are in charge of buying the beer).

One other use I thought of: one can schedule a message that would be sent after one dies: but then one needs another message scheduled a bit before the first one one that reminds to reschedule the first one in case one's still alive... So perhaps another useful scheduling option would be "x days after last login".

[n5bb]

I also have many reasons to use the snooze and scheduled send features, including those in the blog post shown in the first post in this thread. Here is how I view these features:

Responding to new incoming messages

• When a new email arrives and I notice it, if I'm not busy I can read it (and any links and attachments) and take actions, which might include filing the message, adding labels, replying to the sender, and forwarding the message.
• But in many cases I don't have time to fully analyze the message and respond immediately. I could just mark the message as UNREAD (click blue dot or use More... Mark as unread or use the keyboard shortcut . u). But that method causes my Inbox to fill up with unread messages which are unprioritized.
• I could move the message to a "follow up" folder or apply such a label. But if I don't look at that folder or label in a timely manner and process all the marked messages, I can get behind and not act in a timely manner.
• Applying Snooze to a message lets me delay my actions until a future time/date when I might have more time or information.

After starting origination of a new message

• Once I start orgination of a new message (reply, forward, or starting from scratch), I have a similar problem if I can't finish the message immediately. I might not have time to finish a long response, or might learn that I need to get additional information.
• If I need to pause the origination process and know that my message is not ready to be sent, I can save my partial message as a draft.
• But what if I forget to complete the draft? To deal with this issue, after saving the draft I can immediatly navigate to the Drafts folder and snooze the draft! This will return the draft at the appointed time.
• If the message is good enough to be sent but I want to delay it until a better time for the recipient to get it (or I want to delay sending the message in case I come up with additional information), I can schedule future delivery. I can edit or delete the message before it's sent, but if I don't get around to that the message will still be sent as I originally wrote it.

Bill