Gmail Guide

At ACLED, we rely on efficient communication tools to streamline our operations and enhance collaboration among our staff. One such tool we utilize is Gmail, Google's email service. 

All ACLED full time employees receive an ACLED gmail account with the domain @acleddata.com. Starting in February 2024, ACLED made the decision to provide all of their researchers with ACLED gmail accounts as well. The domain for ACLED researchers is @acledcoding.com. 

It is very important that you check your ACLED inbox regularly! Gmail offers a host of features and benefits that align with ACLED's needs for effective communication, productivity, and security. Below, we highlight some of the useful features available.

Creating Multiple Inboxes

If you are using Gmail for your private emails as well, you can merge multiple Gmail accounts in one inbox. When using it, you can view several inboxes as panes on your screen in Gmail's default view. See two examples on how that looks like below:

Important: You can only set up multiple inboxes with a computer.

1. On your computer, go to Gmail.

2. At the top right, click Settings (gear icon).

3. Next to "Inbox type," select Multiple inboxes.

4. To change multiple inbox settings, click Customize.

5. Enter the search criteria you want to add for each section.

   • To search for starred emails, use: is:starred

   • When you search a person’s email address, the results in that section will also show emails from their alias. To limit the search to only the original email, the search should be enclosed in double quotes. Example: "from:john.doe@gmail.com".

   • When you search “from:email", the results will also return Drive sharing notification emails from when that person shared a file with you.

6. Under "Section name," enter a name for the section.

7. Next to "Maximum page size," enter the number of emails you want to view in the section.

8. Next to "Multiple Inbox position," choose where you want to place the sections.

9. At the bottom, click Save Changes.

Forwarding your Email

While forwarding work emails to personal accounts is prohibited for full time ACLED employees (those using the @acleddata.com domain), researchers, who are contractors, are permitted to do so to streamline their work communications. It should be noted here that all emails for their ACLED work must be sent and received via their ACLED Gmail account. 

To set up email forwarding, please follow the steps below:

1. On your computer, open Gmail using the account you want to forward messages from. You can only forward messages for a single Gmail address, and not an email group or alias.

2. In the top right, click Settings  (gear icon) > See all settings. 

3. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

4. In the "Forwarding" section, click Add a forwarding address.

5. Enter the email address you want to forward messages to.

6. Click Next > Proceed  > OK.

7. A verification message will be sent to that address. Click the verification link in that message.

8. Go back to the settings page for the Gmail account you want to forward messages from, and refresh your browser.

9. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.

10. In the "Forwarding" section, select Forward a copy of incoming mail to.

11. Choose what you want to happen with the Gmail copy of your emails. We recommend Keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox.

12. At the bottom of the page, click Save Changes.

Note: When your new messages are forwarded, messages from spam won't be included.

Set up different Chrome profiles

You will only have access to the drives and ACLED Net using your ACLED email account, so you need to make sure you are using the correct account when trying to access these. If you are using Chrome as your browser, a reliable method to manage multiple Gmail accounts at the same time without connecting them to each other is creating separate Chrome profiles. By creating separate user profiles in Chrome you can open one Gmail account in one profile and the other in the second profile and use them simultaneously. It further keeps all all your Chrome info separate, like bookmarks, history, passwords, and other settings.

How to automatically add a google meet link to any new google calendar event?

The operations team created a special google group titled: ''Calendar Link - Opt In'' which you can freely search and join. By doing so,  this will automatically add a google meet link in your new calendar events without having to manually create a link. This is very useful since adding the google meet link can often be forgotten.

Now you may be wondering how do I find the google group in question?  Start by typing Google groups in a new google search window. This will redirect you to the google groups link. When you open the google groups page you can then use the search bar to type :''Calendar''. This will pull up the ''Calendar Link - Opt in'' google group which you can join. And that's all you need to do.

Check out the screenshots below!