Google has a wide set of products and keeping them working together can become somewhat of a problem. But, seeing as integration has always been one of the search giant's biggest draw, it's good to know that it is still working on this. The company has just introduced a new feature in Gmail Labs which, despite being rather minor, could potentially greatly enhance your workflow by allowing you to preview any Google Docs files inside Gmail.

“Being an avid Google Docs user, I receive a ton of emails with links to documents that my co-workers and friends share with me. From technical design documents at work to my roommate's expenses spreadsheet, my inbox is full of document links that I need to view as I reply to my mail,” Steven Saviano, a software engineer at Google, wrote. “Starting today, you can preview the contents of a Google document, spreadsheet, or presentation right in your Gmail inbox.”

The new tool is available in the Labs section under Settings and will allow users to view attachments from Google Docs inside Gmail below the email. This only works for documents from Google Docs, meaning that you won't be able to preview attachments emailed to you other than the HTML preview already available. Gmail will detect if an attachment is coming from Docs and will notify users that they can view its contents without navigating to a new page. They obviously won't be able to edit the document there but can open it in a new tab directly on Google Docs.

The idea is that users shouldn't be required to leave Gmail to view the contents of their emails and similar functionality has already been enabled for YouTube videos, Yelp reviews, and Picasa and Flickr albums. With these tools, also available in Labs, users are able to view photos from Picasa or Flickr or videos from YouTube directly inside Gmail. The integration between Google Docs and Gmail could be better but the new feature is a step in the right direction.