Would you like to know if the sales presentation you just sent to your boss and other co-workers has been read or not? Now you can if you are using Gmail with the Google Apps for Business edition.

Like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail has enabled email tracking in the Business edition of Google Apps to help users know the exact date and time where their email was opened and read by the recipient(s). Read receipts aren’t sent automatically, unless enabled by the domain administrator, and it for the email recipient to decide whether or not they would like to notify the sender that the message was delivered and read.

The read receipts feature is available in Google Apps for Business. If you have a free Gmail or Google Apps account, you can enable tracking either using a URL shortener or embed a tracking image in your email messages.

How Read Receipts in Gmail Work?

You may choose to send Read Receipts to senders within your organization, where everyone is on Google Apps, or even to external addresses that may be on different email system (like from Gmail to Microsoft Outlook).

Here’s a quick walkthrough on how you can track your emails with  Gmail using Read Receipts.

Step 1: The sender, while composing a new email message, checks the “Request Read Receipt” option.

Step 2: The email recipient opens the message and when he is done reading, Gmail pops-up a notification asking whether or not they would like to send a read receipt to the sender.

Step 3: If the recipient agreed to send a read receipt, the message in the sender’s inbox will be updated automatically with the exact date and time when the message was read.