From The Complete Guide to Google Wave: How to Use Google Wave
Now that you're up and running with Wave, learn how to manage a busy Wave Inbox.
Once your Inbox is teeming with quickly updating waves, it's time to get good at finding and organizing important information. Wave's search box, tags, folders, follow, and archive controls can help you keep your Inbox under control. Like Gmail, you can move waves out of your Inbox by archiving them, or unfollow chatty waves to turn off their unread content notifications. You can label waves with tags that all its participants can see, or file waves in folders and sub-folders only you can see to organize them in your Wave client. Like all Google products, the search box is front and center in Google Wave, and Wave provides several special search terms that can help you narrow results in useful ways. Once you've crafted your favorite searches, you can save them for reuse and filter waves based on those criteria.
Reduce Wave Inbox Clutter and Unwanted Notifications
Once you're participating in a significant number of active waves, your Inbox gets busy fast. Every time a wave updates, it moves to the top of your Inbox and its subject line turns bold. Wave's instant, real-time notifications are a double-edged sword: wonderful when you're waiting on important updates, terrible when new information you don't care about distracts you. The Archive and Unfollow buttons can help you clean out your Inbox and silence chatty waves one by one.
Archive Waves
To archive a wave, select it and click the Archive button on its toolbar. To archive several waves in one shot, hold down the Shift key to select multiple consecutive waves in the Search panel at once. Then click the Archive button on the Search panel's toolbar.[1]
To "unarchive" a wave and move it back to your Inbox, select it and click the Inbox button on the Search panel.
Unfollow and Follow Waves
Ever get added to an email chain you don't care about—but that just won't stop showing up in your Inbox with reply after reply? In Wave, to stop getting notifications that a particular wave has updated, you can "unfollow" it. Select the wave and click the Unfollow button on its toolbar to do so. An unfollowed wave still updates as participants edit it, but you won't get a notification that there's new content to read. If you search for that wave, its content and all its updates are still available, even though you didn't get every new change notification. Unfollowed waves have a special gray "Unfollowed" label on them when they appear in the Search panel, as shown in Figure 4-1.
In the Wave preview, there's no way to remove yourself from a wave someone else put you on. If someone adds you to a wave you don't care about, unfollow it to opt out of its update notifications.
is:unfollowed operator.
Similarly, if there's a public wave that you want to get new notifications about in your Inbox, select it and click the Follow button. This will have the same effect as if someone added you individually to that wave: any time it updates it will appear as a new wave in your Inbox. Click the Unfollow button on a wave to unfollow it.
Mark Waves Read or Unread
Like Follow/Unfollow and Archive, there is also a Read and Unread button on the Wave toolbar in both the Search panel and on an open wave. When you click the Read button, a wave does not appear bold or with new blips in the Search panel. When you click the Unread button on an open wave or selected wave(s), all the blips in those waves get marked as unread, and the wave becomes bold in the Search panel.
There is currently no way to mark individual blips within a wave as unread. To mark an individual blip as read, select it.
File Waves in Folders (and Sub-folders)
Like most email clients (except Gmail!), Google Wave offers a traditional folder system for filing your waves.[2] To create a new folder, go to the Navigation panel click the + (plus) button next to Folders and type the name of your folder. Your folder name can be as long as you like, and can contain spaces and special characters (such as punctuation).
To create a sub-folder, click the drop-down next to a folder name and choose Add Folder. The sub-folder appears beneath its parent folder and indented, as shown in Figure 4-2. To delete or rename a folder, click the drop-down next to its name and choose Delete. (Know that you cannot delete folders that have sub-folders in them unless all of the sub-folders have been deleted first. The Delete option does not appear on the drop-down menu of a parent folder until its sub-folders are deleted.) From that drop-down you can also customize the order of your folder list, and optionally assign colors to folders.
To move a wave into a folder, go to the Search panel and select the wave. Click the Move to button on the toolbar, and then select the destination folder from the list.
If your browser has the Google Gears plug-in[3] installed, you can drag and drop a wave or several waves from the Search panel onto a folder name.
When you move a wave to a folder, you're transferring it from its current folder to the destination. A wave cannot be in more than one folder at a time. Also, the folders you create are private—only you can see and use them.
If old-school folders are too limiting and private for your purposes, use tags instead.
Tag Your Waves
Tags provide a more free-form way to "file" your waves. Unlike folders, you can add as many tags to the waves you participate in as you want. Also unlike folders, everyone who is participating in the wave can see those tags, add to them, and delete them. Tags do not appear on your Navigation panel. They show up only on the bottom of open waves, and in the Search panel on each wave listed there.
To add a tag to a wave, first open the wave. On its bottom panel, click the + (plus) button to the right of the word Tags, as shown in Figure 4-3. Enter a tag and press Enter. To add another tag, repeat. You can add only one tag at a time, and tags can have spaces in them. To remove a tag, hover over it and click the red X that appears.
Like hash tags on Twitter, or bookmark tags on Delicious, your wave's tags are "public" in the sense that anyone who can see that wave can also see its tags. Already the Wave community is coming up with common tags for organizing public discussions like WaveDiscuss and WaveHelp. Search for with:public WaveDiscuss to see them—and learn about more advanced search techniques like this in the following sections.
Search Your Waves
Google Wave puts a deep repository of live-updating information at your fingertips, but it's a complete mess unless you know how to find what you're looking for. The Wave search box, much like Google's web search box, is the key to getting exactly the results you need. Basic keyword searches return waves that contain those terms, while advanced search terms can pinpoint specific waves based on recipients, tags, and other attributes.
Basic Search Techniques
Common search engine conventions you're already comfortable using in Google and Yahoo web search work in Wave as well. To search for waves that contain a keyword like "browncoat," just enter browncoat into the search box and press Enter. To find all waves that contain the words "Kaylee" or "browncoat," separate the keywords with an uppercase "or": Kaylee OR browncoat. If you want waves that have both the words "Kaylee" and "browncoat" in them, enter Kaylee browncoat. (This query returns the same results as a search for Kaylee AND browncoat. By default, adding words to your query narrows results to only waves that contain all the terms.)
To search for an exact phrase like "I don't wanna explode," enclose it in quotes. This works well for proper names, too: a search for "Joss Whedon" does not return waves with just the words "Joss" in them, or even waves that mention "Joss" in one place and "Whedon" in the other.
The minus sign also excludes waves that match certain criteria from your results. If you want to find waves that mention Firefly but not Buffy, you'd search for Firefly -Buffy.
These basic search techniques get you pretty far. But Wave's real search power comes in its special search terms that return waves based on participants, tags, folders, and other attributes.
Advanced Operators: Find Waves by Title
The format of Wave's advanced search terms is operator:value.[5] Just as you can search the web and narrow results down using a query like site:completewaveguide.com Firefly, you can do the same with Wave. The trick is knowing what operators do what.
By default, a basic keyword search looks in the title and body of the waves you participate in. To limit your search to just wave titles, use title:keyword. Enclose multiple words in quotes. For example, to search all your wave titles for the word "Reavers," search for title:Reavers. To search for all wave titles with the words "space opera," search for title:"space opera".
Because you can associate captions with images in Wave, you can also specifically search the contents of captions. (Read more about adding images with captions to your waves in Chapter 5, Dive Deeper into Wave.) To search image captions, use the caption:keyword operator. For example, to search waves that contain images with "Gina Torres" in the caption, search for caption:"Gina Torres".
Advanced Operators: Find Waves Based on the People In Them
Waves are made of contributions by people, so you want to know how to find waves by the people involved in them. These search operators help you find wave participants based on their role in the wave: whether they've created it, been added to it, or edited it. In this list, name doesn't refer to a person's full name; it's the first part of his or her Wave ID. That is, if the Wave user's ID is zoe@serenity.com, replace name with zoe.
You can also use the keyword "me" to refer to yourself. For example, if your Wave ID is you@example.com, to find waves you created you could use creator:you@example.com, or the shorter, simpler creator:me.
Here is the full list of Wave search operators that find waves based on their participants.
| Search Term | Returns |
|---|---|
| creator:name
from:name | All waves created by name. |
| participant:name
with:name | All waves where name is a direct participant (name may be a user or a group). |
| contributor:name
by:name | All waves where name edited at least one message. |
| to:name | All waves where name is a participant, but not the creator. |
| onlyto:name | All waves where name is the only participant, beside the creator. |
| onlyby:name | All waves where name is the only contributor. |
| onlywith:name | All waves where name is the only participant (name is either your own, or a group you belong to). |
| dfrom:name | All waves with a direct message from name or waves with only two participants, where name is a contributor. |
| dto:name | All direct messages to name, or waves with only two participants, where the other participant is also a contributor. |
| is:note | All waves in which you are the only participant. |
Advanced Operators: Find Waves by Location or Read State
You may want to find waves based on what folder they're in, what tag they have, whether or not they're read, unread, followed, or unfollowed. Here's the full list of advanced Wave search operators that return waves based on location and state.
| Term | Results |
|---|---|
| is:read | Finds all waves where all messages within the wave (including all private replies) have been read. |
| is:unread | Finds all waves with at least one message that has not been read. |
| is:filed | Searches only waves that have been filed in your folders. |
| is:unfiled | Searches only waves that have not been filed (and are either still in:inbox or only in:all). |
| is:unfollowed | Searches only waves that you've unfollowed. |
| is:followed | Searches only waves that you are following. |
| has:tag | Finds all waves with any tag. |
| tag:name | Finds all waves with the tag name. |
tag:cwg search, it was easy to see if any updates on book-related waves had occurred.
Advanced Operators: Find Waves by Attachments
To narrow down your search results to waves with file attachments, use these advanced operators.
| Term | Results |
|---|---|
| has:attachment | Finds all waves with an attachment. |
| has:document | Finds all waves with a document attached. |
| has:image | Finds all waves with an image attached. |
| has:gadget | Finds all waves containing any gadget. |
Advanced Operators: Find Waves by Language
Although it's not documented in Wave's official search documentation, Wave can also search waves by what language they're written in with the lang:XXX operator. For example, lang:en returns waves written in English. To see only public waves not written in English, use the with:public -lang:en operator. Use this operator with caution: since it is undocumented, its behavior could be unpredictable (especially with waves that contain different languages).
The more you use Wave, the more you'll notice that advanced searches for waves are baked into its interface. For example, your Inbox is the results of an in:inbox search. The Trash is just results for an in:trash search.
You can even see recent conversations with a specific person by clicking the Recent Waves button on the Contact pop-up—that displays results for a with:name search, where name is the contact in question.
Combine Wave Search Operators into Useful Recipes
Wave's search capabilities are most powerful when you chain criteria together to see custom lists of your waves. Here are just a few useful Wave search recipes you may want to try.
- Search public waves with
with:public: To find public discussions about almost anything, search using thewith:publicoperator, which returns waves in whichpublic@a.gwave.comis a participant. For example, to search all public waves for the word "browncoats," usewith:public browncoats. - Create an only-to-me Inbox with
onlyto:me is:unread: See unread waves in which you and the creator are the only participants. This is a great way to find waves you probably need to respond to. - See "Sent" waves with
creator:me -is:note: See all the waves you've created and added others to participate in; this set of results creates something loosely akin to an email program's Sent box. - See waves you've created for private use with
is:note: Even though Wave is a collaboration tool, you can still create waves and add no other participants, whether you're in the process of drafting something to share later, or just keeping some "notes to self." Theis:noteoperator returns only waves you've created, and in which you're the only participant.
Once you tweak your favorite searches to your needs, you can save them for reuse.
Saved Searches and Wave Filters
Once you've saved a search, it appears on the Navigation panel under Searches (just above the Folders list). Like folders, you can click the drop-down button next to a search to edit the query or its name, move it up or down the saved searches list, or add a color to it. Also like folders, you can create a new Saved Search by clicking the + (plus) button next to Searches on the Navigation panel.
Filter Incoming Waves Based on Search Criteria
The Save search pop-up also contains another interesting and powerful section: Filter Actions. Like email filtering rules, here you can tell Wave to automatically perform actions on waves that meet the search criteria in the Query field.
In the Wave preview, there are only two available filter actions: Mark as read and Archive. By checking the Archive box on a saved search, you're telling Wave to automatically move any waves that meet the search criteria out of your Inbox. By checking the Mark as read box on a saved search, you're telling Wave to mark those waves as read. (Automatically checking a wave as read has a similar effect as muting a wave in that you're suppressing unread notifications, except that the state of these waves is read, not unfollowed.) Checking both boxes means new waves that meet your search criteria are both archived and marked as read.
With only Mark as read and Archive, the Wave preview's filter actions are very limited right now. Hopefully a fuller set of actions will become available and wave filtering will be as robust as Gmail eventually.
Mastering its search capabilities is a major part of getting the information you need out of Wave. In the next chapter, Dive Deeper into Wave, you'll learn how to make rich waves worth searching for.
References
- ↑ Google Wave Help: How do I use the toolbar to manage waves?, Google.com
- ↑ Google Wave Help: How do I use folders to organize my waves?, Google.com
- ↑ Google Gears, Google.com
- ↑ Google Wave Help: What's the best way to search for waves?, Google.com
- ↑ Google Wave Help: What are the advanced search terms for Google Wave?, Google.com
