October 22, 2020
Posted by Jon Harmer, Product Manager, Google Workspace
Google Workspace Add-ons can already do lots of cool things in Gmail. In addition to providing a way to interact with the other apps that you use every day, from the right hand sidebar as you read a Gmail message, Google Workspace add-ons can also provide another integration point: when you are composing new messages or replying to existing ones. This allows Google Workspace add-ons to make it easier for you to work with multiple applications when you are working on your daily routine of reading and responding to email.
Previously, the only way a developer could modify the draft of a message in Gmail was by inserting content at the user’s cursor. But we have enhanced this functionality, and now you can enable your add-on to modify the To, CC, and BCC fields, the Subject Line, and you can insert content into the top or bottom of the message the user is composing.
This opens up a number of interesting possibilities. You could use the add-on to BCC your CRM, which allows you to log that message to the appropriate CRM record. Or you could insert a footer to the message or a tag in the subject line depending on who the message is being sent to. You can even insert message templates into the top of the email and help users to compose messages in order to give them a nicer look and feel.
These enhancements to Compose Actions are a new feature of Google Workspace Add-ons, which means the moment you authorize action with the feature, they will work in Gmail across mobile and web. Google Workspace admins can also easily allowlist the add-ons they want to enable for their organization.
Google Workspace and Gmail users can check out the Google Workspace Marketplace to find and install add-ons, with more compose actions coming soon. Developers can also consult our documentation to build their own.
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