A Gmail Add-On That Makes Integrating with Freshbooks Effortless

Freshbooks needed to create a new experience for their users that closely integrated Gmail and their suite of invoice and accounting tools. With the help of Yeti, the team created a robust GSuite app that allowed users to integrate their commonly used tools of Freshbooks and Gmail, all within the single experience of Gmail.

Solution

Yeti and FreshBooks collaborated together on building a Gmail Add-on that would allow users to create FreshBook powered invoices and line items directly from their inbox.

In a side-pane, users can see information from FreshBooks related to the current email they have open. They can generate new invoices which will then be embedded in the email and can be immediately sent off.

We took an agile and iterative approach over the course of several sprints. As we explored and learned more about the constraints and possibilities of the Gmail Add-on platform we crafted an easy to use first version of the solution that could be given to users so that we could learn more to continue further iterations.

Additionally, the team worked in an agile manner to quickly iterate on design solutions for the available elements and ensure the flow of experience matched how a user typically creates invoices.

The Challenge

FreshBooks had a directive to create more integrations from 3rd party applications into their platform. They wanted to use the external API that they had been working on and start to explore ways in which they can expand the FreshBooks ecosystem. Their goal was to prototype and build a first integration that they could learn from and then, either iterate on or use as a model for other 3rd party integrations.

Additionally,Yeti and Freshbooks needed to utilize the limited set of GSuite visual elements to create a simple experience for users that was in line with the Freshbooks brand.

Results

The first version of the FreshBooks gmail add-on was launched to the marketplace. We're currently waiting to gather enough usage data and analytics to hopefully glean insights for what a next version of the add-on could be.

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