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Announcing Gmail contextual gadgets

Back in March, we launched the Google Apps Marketplace and turned Google Apps into a platform for your apps using Google’s Data APIs, OpenID-based identity management, and universal navigation. We also gave you a sneak preview of Gmail contextual gadgets, an extension mechanism that allows developers to intelligently trigger their application within Gmail. Gmail contextual gadgets bring your app directly into the inbox where users spend most of their day, giving your app powerful new functionality and enabling greater user engagement.

We are excited to announce that the Gmail contextual gadgets API is available to all Google Apps Marketplace developers today. You will be able to use our predefined email context extractors to contextually trigger your gadgets within Gmail. In the future, you will also be able to write custom context extractors; sign up here to take a peek.

The contextual gadgets that you write can be bundled into manifests and listed on the Apps Marketplace. Google Apps domain administrators can deploy your gadgets to their users with a few clicks. As with all new APIs, we will keep this one in Labs as we enhance these gadgets.

Several apps featuring Gmail contextual gadgets are launching on the Marketplace today, with more on the way. To check out their integrations and read our full announcement, visit our post on the Google Enterprise Blog. To get started with building these contextual gadgets, visit the developers guide.



We are hard at work adding even more extension points to Google Apps to enable a richer integration experience for developers and a more seamless user experience for Google Apps customers. Stay tuned!

Posted by Umesh Patil, Gmail Contextual Gadgets Team

Update: Docs are now live!