How to select single element with protractor
<p>I am new to protractor and have an angularjs script that I am trying to select the element "Inbox". Which is the second of 3 accordion type drop downs. </p>

<pre><code>&lt;div class="container"&gt;
 &lt;div class="ng-scope" ui-view="" style=""&gt;
  &lt;div class="logo-container ng-scope"&gt;
  &lt;img class="img-responsive center-block" src="images/logo.png"&gt;   
 &lt;/div&gt;
  &lt;a class="ng-scope" ng-click="toggleNav('/inboxes/alerts')"&gt;
   &lt;div class="inboxes inbox-alerts panel"&gt;
   &lt;div class="panel-body"&gt;
   &lt;span class="glyphicon glyphicon-exclamation-sign" aria-hidden="true"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;span class="panel-text ng-binding"&gt;
Alerts
&lt;span class="badge ng-binding"&gt;3&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/span&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/a&gt; 
&lt;a class="ng-scope" ng-click="toggleNav('/inboxes/inbox')"&gt;
  &lt;div class="inboxes inbox panel"&gt;
    &lt;div class="panel-body"&gt;
      &lt;span class="glyphicon glyphicon-inbox" aria-hidden="true"&gt;&lt;/span&gt;
      &lt;span class="panel-text ng-binding"&gt;
      Inbox
    &lt;span class="badge ng-binding"&gt;41&lt;/span&gt;
   &lt;/span&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
 &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/a&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>I was able to do this using element.all, but this returns an array of the elements
    "[ 'Alerts 3', '3', 'Inbox 41', '41', 'Watch List104', '104’ ]”
but what I really would like is to get the specific element. 
Below is my code</p>

<pre><code>it('should open &amp; close the Inbox panel', function() {
    var inbox_elm1 = element.all(by.binding('Inbox')).get(2);
      inbox_elm1.click();
 ]);
}); 
</code></pre>

<p>As mentioned I am using the get(2) to get the second element. But I would like to not use the element.all to get this element.<br>
I have tried other things that are returning a nil such as </p>

<pre><code>var inbox_elm1 = element(by.binding('Inbox'));
</code></pre>

<p>or</p>

<pre><code>var inbox_elm1 = element.all(by.binding('Inbox')).first(); 
</code></pre>

<p>which returns an error. </p>

<p>Now with that in mind, I have successfully selected the Alerts element easy enough since it was the first panel using:</p>

<pre><code>var alrt_elm = element.all(by.binding('Alerts')).first();
alrt_elm.click();
</code></pre>

<p>But repeating this code above and changing 'Alerts' to 'Inbox' just kept selecting the Alerts accordion and not the Inbox accordion. Suggestions?  Sorry for the long read. </p>