Accessing Gmail using a web browser will allow you to take full advantage of all of the features that set Gmail apart from other email services. This section will introduce you to many of the features and show you how to use them. You can also click on the Gmail Overview button below for an interactive tour of the Gmail interface.

We all get emails that we know what to do to with it before we even read it or email that always get organized the same way. In some cases, the sender's email address is all we need to know in order to determine how an email will be organized. An email from a professor, for example, might always have the label, "School." Instead tediously labeling the message and/or moving it out of the inbox why not automate the process? Gmail's filters allow you to create rules for your incoming messages. Label, archive, delete, star, or forward your mail, also place an email into or keep it out of Spam based on a combination of keywords, sender, recipients, and more.

Labels are a new way of organizing your email. You can move email to a specific label just like you can a folder. What makes labels special is the fact that you can apply multiple labels to a single email. Suppose you received an email from your boss. Where would put it? It might go into a folder called "Work". If you received an invite from a friend to a party you might put that in a folder called "Personal." What if your boss sends you an email inviting you to a party? You could argue putting it in the "Work" folder or in the "Personal" folder. Would you know where to find it 6 months from now?

With Labels, you can apply both a "Work" and a "Personal" label to the email and move it to either label. When you need to find the email later, it will appear in your list of "Personal" and "Work" emails. Don't worry, it still counts as one email. Labels are simply a way of organizing your email by categorizing them so you can find them quickly when you need to.

Google Groups are a great way to hold a discussion on a specific topic. You can share Google Docs, Google Calendars, and keep a record of everything that gets said. People can sign in to the group to see whats going on or they can follow the conversation through their email. If you are a group administer you can invite people to the group and set options on who can post.

Auto-created groups are created for every class section in every term. Students and instructors are added to these groups automatically using PeopleSoft data. You can communicate with these groups via email, as well as share Google docs and Google calendars with the group. Each group is automatically populated with students that are in each class. In order to be granted instructor access in an auto-generated Google Group, you have to be registered as an instructor for the associated class section in PeopleSoft.

Strictly speaking, contact lists are not a feature of Gmail. This is because your contact list is an effective tool when using many of the apps in Google Apps for Education. You can use your contact list to invite people to calendar events, share documents with, add to your chat contacts, or even share exclusive access to content on your Google site. Organize your contacts into groups to make managing multiple contacts easier.

One of the big benefits of moving to Google Apps at the University of Alberta is that we will be able to more effectively collaborate. Planning meetings and organizing your life has never been easier with Google Calendar. Click on the Using Calendar button to learn the basics of this useful tool.

Got a conference room, office hours, or a projector that you want to make available to others? Google Calendar makes it easy for you to share your available resources with the "Auto-accept invitations" feature. Use this tutorial if you want to set up a resource calendar in Google Apps.

This tutorial will show you how to set up a mail merge using a template in Google Docs. You can create a custom message and can send it to up to 476 people at a time.