How to Inbox Zero with Flowr

Inbox Zero is a popular productivity strategy that involves clearing your inbox so you can focus on critical emails. It might sound daunting, but it’s easier to achieve when you have the right tools for the job. That’s why we want to talk about how you can use Power Automate to sort your emails!

Flowr, our Power Automate Connector, can save your bacon when it comes to an overwhelming inbox. You can use Power Automate to organise your emails automatically. How? We hear you ask. It’sIt’s simple! It uses smart filtering to move unread emails into separate folders based on the message type — all without requiring manual effort.

Check your inbox every day.

You should check your inbox every day. If you can’t, do it as often as you can or have time for. You will be surprised at how much time you spend on the emails sitting in your inbox, waiting for a response. 

If you want to send an email back out again, don’t worry! Just mark the message as “unread”. When you’re ready to send an email, click on “view all unread conversations”!

Organise emails into folders.

Create folders for each type of email, such as “Personal” or “Work.”

Use folders to keep emails organised and easy to find. Use the same folder structure for all your accounts (if you have more than one). If you don’t already have a folder set up, create one!

Don’t leave unread emails in your inbox.

One of the worst things you can do is leave unread emails in your inbox. You know the ones: messages from a friend, a colleague asking for help on a project, or even an email you need to reply to but have no idea how. Even though these may all be essential communications, they will clutter your inbox and make it harder for you to find other important messages. Instead of leaving them in your inbox like this, move them into separate folders that are designated only for those types of messages (for example, “Friends” or “Important”). Having your unread emails in different folders will allow you to keep all the communications related to one thing together. It’sIt’s all about making your emails easier to manage.

Unsubscribe from mailing lists.

If you’re an email subscriber, you can unsubscribe from mailing lists in your settings. I subscribe to emails constantly, and if I don’t get any value in the first week, there’s no point staying on the list!

If you have a specific list that you want to unsubscribe from, there will be an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of every email sent by that list. Clicking on that link will remove you from the mailing list and stop future emails from coming into your inbox.

Automate your email folders.

Once you’ve set up your Flowr account, it’s time to start automating the processes of your inbox. Here are a few examples of automations that will help you reduce clutter and stay on top of your email:

• Create an automated workflow for when someone emails you with questions about specific tasks and projects. A flow will allow them to send their inquiry directly into a project folder, where they’ll receive an auto-response (and hence no need for further communication). Creating a flow like this is something you can do in standard Power Automate!
• Have all meeting invites automatically sent to Calendar. This way, no matter how busy you are or how many meetings or conferences are happening at once, there’s no excuse for missing one!

Use Flowr to you achieve Inbox Zero.

Let’s be honest, your inbox is probably a mess. And no judgement here. Mine was too, before I started using Flowr. It’s probably filled with emails from companies and coworkers, updates on the latest news and trends, and notifications about social media accounts—and those are just the ones you can see. There are probably even more unread messages that aren’t in your Focused section.

The good news is an easy way to eliminate all that clutter: Flowr!

Flowr is a Power Automate connector that lets you automate email workflows. You can use Flowr to automatically:

• Convert specific emails into PDFs and save them to a SharePoint folder.
• Convert, merge and save attachments to a SharePoint folder.
• If someone is sending images, you can convert and compress those too!
• OCR your PDFs for easy searching.

For a more in-depth look at automating emails, check out these blog posts.

Flowr is an excellent tool for helping you achieve Inbox Zero, if we do say so ourselves…

Want to give it a go? ⚡️ Start your free trial today!

UPDATE: We’re excited to announce some significant updates to Flowr for Power Automate! As of October 2024, we’ve improved by updating action names and splitting Flowr’s central Power Automate connector into nine specialized connectors. These changes will make your workflow faster, smoother, and more efficient. The new action names are more precise and intuitive, saving you time, while the focused connectors enhance performance and flexibility. This update also helps future-proof the platform for even more powerful features. Check out our updated action names blog.