Astro — an email assistant that brings both Gmail and Office 365 together into one app — officially rolled out integrations with Slack and Amazon Alexa, giving you more ways to incorporate email into your everyday life (regardless of how much you’re avoiding answering them).
Astro offers common email features to help manage your inbox, including reminders to answer them at a later time. It also tracks which emails have been opened and schedules others. But the main difference between Astro and other email clients is that it uses AI to track your behavior for a more personalized and tailored experience.
The app also includes Astrobot, which acts as your personal, built-in email assistant. It sends you reminders, detects questions from your emails, and offers insights on suggested emails to get rid of.
With the integration of Slack, Astro now sends your emails in the form of a direct message between you and Astrobot. The interface gives you options to reply, archive, or delete emails without having to exit the messaging platform. You can also interact with the bot by asking it to remind you to answer emails later or schedule phone calls.
Although you can’t send messages to Slack through the Astro app, you can search to find results that combine both your email and Slack history, as well as send emails to a Slack channel or a direct message.
For Amazon Alexa users, the integration acts no differently in decluttering your emails except that it’s hands-free. By downloading Astrobot through Amazon, it can comb through any junk mail and read priority or starred emails to help save time. Even though the bot doesn’t offer custom replies just yet, you can still respond to emails through short phrases on the list of quick replies like “Be there shortly.”
When Astro launched in March, it first set out to dissolve the tricky interface and confusing buttons found in most modern email apps. By adding Slack and Amazon Alexa, Astro is clearly working on integrating software and products used specifically to improve work flows and keep people more organized. The app is free to download and currently available on iOS and Android.
