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Do you want to make it easier for others to book time with you or maybe you want to make sure that you understand all of your Calendly settings? Well, in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know to get the most out of your Calendly account. 

‍Calendly account settings

Now, before we go ahead and create our first or new event, I want you to come up here to your account settings and select profile.

‍Profile picture & name

There's a couple of things I want you to change or edit First. Number one, make sure that you've included a profile picture when it comes to your booking page. This makes it a lot more professional and will appear on your booking screen, so make sure that you've got a nice clear headshot to include within your profile. 

‍Account branding & logo

Next, we want to come down to branding, and I would also encourage you to upload an image such as your logo here within the branding section. Once again, when someone clicks on your booking page, you want to make sure that your visitors know that they are in the right place and that they're connecting with the correct business or the correct brand.

‍Calendar sync & connect

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, let's come all the way down to our account settings and select calendar sync. This is the place where we can connect multiple calendars where Calendly will check for conflicts, but will also place the correct bookings on the correct calendar.

Here in the first section, we can select this add calendar account button, and whether you use Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, or Apple iCloud calendar, you can easily and quickly connect your calendars. You can connect a maximum of six calendars per Calendly account.

Then down at the bottom of the screen is where you have the opportunity to match or select which of the above calendars will be checked for conflicts. So for example, I've included both my business calendar and my personal calendar to my account, and I want Calendly to check both of those calendars for conflicts.

So for example, if I have a dentist appointment on my personal calendar, and of course I'll have a number of other events and meetings on my business calendar, I want to make sure that I am never double booked. So in this example, Calendly will be looking at both of those calendars and then down below we have the option to select which calendar new Calendly events will be added to.

In my case, I want all new Calendly accounts to be added to my business calendar, so that's where they will appear based on this selection. Now let's return back to the home screen by selecting the Calendly link in the top left-hand corner. 

‍Availability & schedules

But just before we go ahead and create that next new event, there's one other place

that I want us to visit and it's important that you visit this area first. That's a section called availability. By clicking on this, we have the opportunity to create one or more schedules that will be applied to our event types. Now this is very, very important because you're probably wanting to use the same schedule or similar schedule for multiple event types.

So rather than creating this for each and every event type, you have the opportunity to create it once and then apply it to multiple event types. Let me show you what I mean by default. I have a schedule here called meeting hours, and if I scroll down below, you can see that I've made myself available Monday through Friday 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Now, it's very easy for me to edit these hours.

Let's say on Mondays I only want to be made available until 12 noon, so I can select that option here and maybe I don't want to be available on Wednesday at all. I'm going to come over here and uncheck this box. 

So now I've changed my meeting hours in just one place, but if this schedule is applied to multiple events, I don't have to change it anywhere else. Now in this particular example, it's showing me that it is active on actually zero event types.

This can also be very, very helpful. If I select this dropdown, I can easily check any of these other events which I've created and immediately apply this single schedule to multiple event types. Now let's take a look at these schedules in a little more detail. Number one, if you want to create multiple times in a single day, you can do so. Remember how I changed this from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM Well, maybe I also want to make myself available later that same evening. In order to do so, I'm going to come over here to the right and hit this plus button and it's going to add a new time interval for that day.

So maybe I'm going to say I also want to be available from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM and yes, I can't have the start time be a little earlier. It gave me that warning, but now those changes have been saved, so now I'm available in the morning and also the late afternoon and maybe I want to be available in this exact same timeframe on Thursdays as well. 

Well, rather than hitting the plus button down here, I can come over to the copy button. I can select this and say, let's apply this to Thursday as well. I'm going to hit apply, and now that same multiple time interval has been added here down below.

Now on the right hand side of the screen, we can add date specific hours, so perhaps there's a particular date in the future in which I want to block off or change.

I can do so over here as well. Now if it comes to just blocking off a date, I'm going to recommend that you actually do that within your own personal or professional calendar by just blocking off the date.

Remember that Calendly is always going to be using that as a reference, but let's say there's maybe a date somewhere in the future where I want to make myself available from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM and that's something that I'm not going to do very often. This is where I may want to add that date specific hour.

You'll also notice up above here we can change from the list view, which is listed in weekly hours to a calendar view. It's going to show us the exact same information, but instead of a weekly view, it's going to show us a calendar in real time. 

Now, any of these available dates I can click on and start to edit, but I find that many users get confused and it can be a bit of a hassle to edit things here within the calendar view. So in most cases, I would encourage you to stay within the list view to make your changes. You'll also notice up above it will show you the multiple schedules.

Here, for example, I have three different schedules which I've created, and if I need to create a new one, I can simply come over here and create a new schedule. Lastly here in the availability screen, you will see that there's a tab called holidays. This can be very, very helpful. You can choose the country in which you live in or the country in which you want to see the statutory holidays, and you can enable either all of them or deselect certain ones as well.

This is much easier than removing certain specific dates or making sure that you have them blocked off on your personal or professional calendar. So make sure that you review this holidays tab as well. Now that we've set up our availability and our schedules, let's go back to the home screen and create our first event.

‍Create a new event type

Now you can do it in one of two ways. We can come up to this blue button and select create, and then select event type. Or we can come over here to the right and say new event type.

Now our first option is to choose what type of event we would like to create, and Calendly gives us four different options. One-on-one with one host and one invitee is going to be the most popular, and that's what we're going to use today for our example, but let's look at the other three options available to us.

You can create a group event where there is one host with a group of invitees. This can be really great for things like webinars or maybe an online class. Maybe you want to allow a maximum of five people to join you in a group coaching session.

In this case, you would want to select the group option. There's also a collective event type. This is kind of the opposite of group. This is where you and multiple hosts are meeting with one invitee. 

This can be helpful in the case of a job interview when you and a group of others are interviewing an individual or perhaps if you are having other members of your team join on a group sales call, this can be helpful as well.

Lastly, there's an event type called a round robin where you have a host which rotates with one invitee. This can be helpful if you have a certain process as you're bringing a new client or perhaps a new lead through different members of your team, but the most common one is the one above one-on-one. So let's go ahead and continue with that example.

If you have multiple members as a part of your account, you can choose who will be the host. In my case, I am the only member here, so I will be the host by default. I'm going to select next. And now we are brought to our new event type screen complete with a preview here on the right hand side. 

Add name, duration & location

Now the first thing we're going to need to decide is to name our event. And remember, this is something that is going to be public or is going to be visible to people who both view this booking page, but it may also appear in other things such as a calendar invite and email reminders. So in my case, I'm going to give it a very simple title such as a 45 minutes intro deduction call.

Perhaps I am interviewing a new lead or wanting to get to know a new client to the left. You can also see that we can choose a different color if we'd like to be beside this particular booking type. If I change it from purple to red, you will notice that there is neither purple or red on the booking screen itself.

But if I go to my main booking page where all of my listings are, you can see that there will be a color.to the left of each event type. 

If you would like to create some distinction between your events, you may want to change those colors here. These may also be helpful as you're managing multiple events right here from within Calendly.

Down below we need to select our duration, and if it's a 45 minute meeting, I better make this 45 minutes in length. So I'm going to select that option here. If you need something beyond 60 minutes, you can select the last option here, custom and choose your desired length. I'm going to select 45 minutes, and then lastly, before we hit continue, we need to decide where this meeting will take place. Now by default, it's giving me three options of Zoom, a phone call or an in-person meeting, but if you don't use Zoom meetings, don't worry. Calendly interfaces with Google Meet Microsoft Teams, WebEx and GoToMeeting, so you can connect any one of your video conferencing clients directly to Calendly.

If you'd like to also set a custom option, you can choose that here as well. Now in my example, I'm going to choose a phone call and depending on the location that you choose, you may have some other options as well. 

So for example, by choosing a phone call, I need to decide if I will call my invitee or if my invitee should call me. So for example, in this case, I will have to require to ask them to leave their phone number so I know who to call or if I want them to call me, I can choose this option, but don't worry, Calendly will not provide your phone number until after the event has been booked.

In this case, I'm going to say I will call my invitee and I'm going to say update. So here it will be displayed when they are viewing my booking page. They will know ahead of time whether it's a phone call, a video conferencing meeting, or something in person.

At this stage we can hit continue. Our event is technically created, but we have a number of other options available to us and you're going to want to make sure that you review all five of these sections. So first off, let's come back to our event details

Event description & instructions

where we have most of the same information we just selected, but now you will see that we have a description slash instructions area. This can be really helpful to further explain what this event type is all about.

And remember, information such as this can also be included in email reminders, confirmations and on their own calendar event once they've booked the call.

In my example, I'm just going to put something very, very basic here, but you can add additional formatting, you can add additional details including links if you like. Right here, I'm going to say save and close,

Hosts & invitees

and we are brought back to our main screen and we're going to come down to hosts and invitees. Now, there's not a lot of options available to us here, but there is an important one.

Do we want to allow those who book a time here to be able to add other guests? Do we want them to be able to add other email addresses to this booking or do we want to ensure that this is strictly a one-on-one call?

If you want it to be one-on-one, make sure to uncheck this box, or if you're fine with them inviting others, you can leave this checked. There's one other area where we can make adjustments here, but this is probably going to be your quickest way

Scheduling settings

to make this type of change. Next up is our scheduling settings, and it is by far the most detailed and the most important options on this entire new event screen. So first up, let's select our date range, meaning how far in advance can someone book us into the future?

By default, when you are creating a new event in Calendly, it's going to be set to 60 calendar days in the future, meaning that someone could come to this page and see my availability for the next two months.

If that's too far out in advance or not far out enough, we can click on the number dialogue and maybe I only want to make myself available 30 days in the future. You'll notice beside the number, we can also choose between calendar days and weekdays.

Calendar days will count every single day where weekdays will exclude the weekends and only count business days Monday to Friday, so you can choose which one is right for you. 

Now, while this first option is the most common way to set up your event types, you can also choose a particular date range. If I choose this option here and click within the field could say something like, I only want to be able to be booked between April 1st and April 30th and hit apply, meaning that that is the only availability that will be made available in this particular case.

The last option here is indefinitely into the future, and I would be very hesitant to select this option. It basically means that someone could book you anytime into the future, even next year or perhaps beyond.

So I would encourage you to look at one of the first two options. In most cases, these rolling days, a certain number of days into the future is going to be your best option. Now down below we have our hours and calendar settings,

Hours & calendar settings

And this is where that availability comes into play, which we set up earlier. Now, if you already have one or more event types created, you will see a dropdown here called copy from. By selecting this, you will find a full list of all of your other event types where you could select and have their availability, whatever availability they are using apply to this event type.

So let's say this 45 minute introduction call is very similar to my standard meeting. I could simply select that meeting here and the same availability would be carried over, but I can also come down below and select this arrow.

This is going to open up a window where we can choose our availability, which we set up earlier within our settings. So down below you can see that this is the availability that we set up as our default, and if we come up here you can see that it is listed as meeting hours. 

That's the name of our default availability, but if I click on this dropdown, you can see that I have my other schedules available as well. So in just a single click, I can apply that schedule to this event type as well.

Now, while Calendly does give us the ability to make some changes here within this screen, be careful. Sometimes it can be confusing to change your availability and change your schedule event type by event type.

I would encourage you to go back to your settings where we were earlier so that you can manage your availability and your schedules at a higher level. Now that we're happy with our availability here, I'm going to hit save and close and we are brought back to this screen and we want to scroll down a bit to event limits.

Event limits & buffer time

Now, don't ignore these options here down below. The first one is called buffer time, and by default none will be set. Buffer time allows us to give a little bit of room either before or after an event so that we don't have bookings right after one another.

How many times have you had a meeting that was supposed to end at the top of the hour and you have a new meeting starting at the top of the hour, but it goes a little long? This can be both embarrassing and unprofessional when you are meeting with new clients.

So if you want to make sure that you don't have meetings that run right into one another, you can choose to select a buffer time. So for example, if I select 15 minutes, it will make sure that it will never make an available option here if I have a meeting 15 minutes before that time. So you can choose if you'd like to add a buffer time or not.

Next up is our minimum notice, and you are definitely going to want to change or review this setting. This means how far in advance can someone book me

Minimum notice

for this event? Now, by default, it is going to be set for four hours, meaning that if it's 10:00 AM right now my local time, someone could book me as early as 2:00 PM this afternoon. That may be fine in your case, but depending on your needs, maybe that is too soon. Maybe you want to make sure that you have several more hours notice or maybe even a few days.

So for example, I'm going to change this to one and I'm going to say one day, meaning that here in my preview you can see that tomorrow is no longer available because it doesn't meet this minimum.

Instead, the person who is looking at my booking page, we'll have to look out further in advance. So make sure that you review these options here. And then down below we have an option called daily limit.

Daily limit

Now, this may not be applicable to everyone and every event type, but if you want to set a maximum number of events a day, you can choose that here. For example, maybe you only want to allow two consulting sessions per day.

If that's the case, you're going to want to enter in the number two, meaning that if two of these event types are booked on the same day, all of the other event types will no longer be made available.

Again, this may not be applicable to all users, but you may want to experiment with this if you want to create a maximum. Lastly, we want to come down to the bottom and look at additional options.

Time zone display

Now, the time zone display by default will be the invitees, meaning wherever they are in the world, regardless of their time zone, this will be shown in their local time. I strongly encourage you to use this and keep this setting unless you are meeting in person.

If you are having people book you for a meeting at your office or a physical location, then you will want to use your local time zone or the time zone you'll be meeting in. But in almost all other cases, we want to leave this as the first option so that anyone who views this page will see it in their own time.

Start time increments

Lastly, we want to take a look at our start time increments, meaning when can someone book us within the day? If I click on this date of the third, you can see with 30 minute increments, I have options such as 2, 2 33, 3 30, but if I only want to be made available on the top of the hour, I can come down here and select 60 minutes.

You will notice now that I'm available at two, three and 4:00 PM and while this may look a lot cleaner, keep in mind that you may reduce the total number of bookings that you have in a day depending on the increments that you choose.

You have a lot of options here when it comes to those increments. I would say that 30 minutes is the most standard or most common, so I typically leave mine at the 30 minute slot.

Once we're happy with making all of these changes, let's select save and close and move on to the last two sections of this screen. Next up is our booking page options.

Booking page options

So these are a combination of the fields in which we are going to be asking someone, but also the questions which we may ask as well. Now, at the very top of this screen, we have the opportunity to change the link or the URL to this particular booking page.

Don't worry, anything that you change here will not change the name of the event, but for example, maybe I'm going to reduce this to 45 min, meaning that the link that I will share will be calendly.com/simplivity/ 45 min.

That's relatively short. It's also relatively easy to remember, so this is a great opportunity to shorten your links and make it a lot more meaningful.

Booking form questions

Down below we have our questions. Now by default name and email will be required, but we can choose the name format. Do we want it just to be listed as name or do we want them to include their first and last name separately? I try to leave this as name to make it as easy as possible for those who are booking with me.

We also have the option here to allow an autofill if someone has already booked time with us, that information will automatically be input into the form. We also have the option here again to choose if we want to allow invitees to add guests, and it's as simple as a toggle on or off.

This is the same option that we saw earlier, but we can choose to change it here as well. 

Lastly, in this question section, we can choose to ask a default question or even multiple questions before they confirm their booking. 

So by default it's going to ask, please share anything that will help prepare for our meeting, and that might be a perfectly fine question to ask, but if we select on edit, we can come up here and change this question to anything that we want. We can choose if we want to make it required, and we can also choose if we want to change this into a radio button or a checkbox or a dropdown menu. So you have an awful lot of options available to you. Here.

You're also not limited to asking just one question. Maybe you want to ask two or three separate questions as a part of the booking process. You can come down here and select add new question.

Collect payments

Now, below this, you also have the option to collect payments. Now in this tutorial, we are not going to go into the details, but you can connect either your Stripe or your PayPal account if you want to require a payment in order to complete the booking.

This can be very beneficial if you provide coaching or consulting sessions and you want to take payment upfront, but of course, this is not required and in most cases we can say that we do not want to collect payments for this event type.

Confirmation page

Lastly, we have a section called the confirmation page. Now, this isn't the confirmation email that's coming up next. This is simply the page that people will be redirected to once they've completed the booking. By default, it's going to send them to a Calendly confirmation page, but if you like, you can redirect them back to your website or to your own custom thank you page down below.

Last but not least, we can choose if we want to ask them to schedule another event or add a custom link. So if you're expecting people to make multiple bookings at once, you may want to turn this on, or if you want to encourage them to click another custom link, you can add that here.

When we're happy with this screen, we are going to select save and close, and we're brought to the final or the last section within our new event type screen

Communications & reminders

that's called communications. And here we're going to take a look at all of the reminders and also how this event will appear within their own calendar. Let's get started with our first notification, and that is our calendar invitation.

Calendar invitation

By selecting the more buttons and then selecting edit, we can see how this booking will look like within our calendar. It's broken down between title, body and timing. Now, by default, Calendly is going to put in a number of variables.

Anything that has this gray shade around it is going to be pulling directly from our event type. So for example, the title would read invitee full name, so Jane Doe, and well, it's going to be my name, Jane Doe and Scott Friesen, but maybe that's not the title that I want to appear within their calendar.

You can edit any of these variables and include additional text as well. So I'm going to remove this and instead I'm going to click on variables, and I'm going to say I want it to read the event name. I want it to say 45 minute introduction call. And here's where I could include my name as well. 

So any combination that you like. You don't have to include any variables if you don't want to, but this can be very helpful if you do end up changing this event name. It will also change here as well. We can come down to the body and again, review the different things that will be listed here.

I find that the default works fairly well. It's going to include the name, this description, the location, and also any questions and answers which they have added down below. We can't change it, but it will tell us that it will send immediately once it is booked.

And lastly, we can choose if we want to add a cancellation policy and if we want to include cancel and reschedule links.

Email confirmation

Now, before we hit save and close, we actually want to scroll all the way back to the top because there is a switch to email confirmation. I'll be perfectly honest with you, I find that this is very difficult and almost hidden to many Calendly users.

We've been looking at the calendar invitation, what will show up on their calendar, but of course they will also receive an email confirmation. So let's be sure to click this link. And we have a different set of options available to us. So for example, if we want to edit the reply to address, we can do so here. Maybe the subject will be a little different.

The default is going to say Confirmed event name with my name on this - Particular date, but we may also want to change the body of that email as well. So pay special note to this link.

If we want to switch back to the calendar invite, we can do so here, but that is separate and we can't access it from the main menu. When we are happy with that, we can come down and select Save and Close. And next we can move on to email reminders.

Email reminders

Now, I find this is one of the most powerful things with using Calendly or any booking tool. If you want to make sure that someone shows up to your meeting, make sure that you turn on at least one email reminder by selecting edit here.

We can come in here and choose what those email reminders will look like if we want to change the formatting at all. But I think what's most important of course, is the timing.

For example, by default, it's going to include a 24 hour reminder, which I think is great to give people 24 hour notice that this meeting is coming up, but I don't think it is often enough. So here I can select another interval if I want to. So maybe I want to remind them two hours before the event as well.

 Keep in mind this timing will apply to the exact same information up above here. So they'll receive the same subject and the same body of the email, but they will be sent at two different intervals. You can add as many reminders as you like.

I would suggest not adding more than three, but making sure that you have at least one, perhaps one to three hours before your event is scheduled.

And to make sure that this is on, make sure to change the status to on here, and you can choose a different or custom cancellation policy if you like. When I'm happy with those settings, I'm going to select save and close Text Reminders is also an option available to you here.

It's available on a credit system here within Calendly. We're not going to go into those details, but if you like, you can choose this option to edit. And then lastly, we have an option here

Email follow-up

to add an email follow up. So if you'd like to automatically send a custom message or something for them to review afterwards, you can do so here as well. Just take note.

Depending on what this event type is used for, you may want to be careful with how you use this automatic follow up. For example, what if the meeting didn't go well and they don't want to do business with you? Don't create a follow up email that says, here's the next step in doing business together.

So just be careful of if you need the ability to send an email follow up or not. Finally, when we're happy with all of the changes here within communications, we can come down and hit save and Close. We've now created or edited all of the - Components of our new event type.

Sharing your event type

What's next? Well, we want to share this event type. Now, the easiest way would be to come up here and copy the link. If I come up here to my browser and I'm going to paste it into my browser tab, it will bring me directly to this booking screen where people can immediately start to look at my availability and start to book me for that event type.

But you may want to be able to share your booking page with others in a few different ways. For that, we want to come up here and select the share button. Once again, we're going to be presented with that link, so you can copy this link and include it in an email, or you can add it to a button on your website. We also have the option to add times to an email.

This can be great if you only want to offer a few different options.

Here within Google Chrome, there's a good chance that you're making use of the bookmarks bar. It's the easiest way to get to the websites that you frequent very often, but there may be a problem with this setup.

Now, we have an awful lot of tabs we need to manage up top, and the bookmarks bar area can get crowded very quickly. So, let's take a look at an alternative that I think makes so much more sense.

Here in my Google Chrome browser I have something here called G Productivity. You can see that it's listed here within the bookmarks bar, but when I click on it, it's going to automatically launch the three tabs that I want.

Now, that might not sound that impressive, but the better thing here is if I click on G Productivity, it's going to minimize everything within there, and I can move it anywhere that I like.

So, for example, if I want quick and easy access to my Gmail account, my Google Calendar, and my Google Tasks, but I want to minimize it when I don't want to see any of those notifications or any of those tabs, I can do so. 

Now, what I am using here is called grouped tabs. Now, that's not anything new, but what is new is that we can now save those tabs, and add them to our bookmarks bar.

For example, here I am viewing my Gemini account, and perhaps I'd like to include it with this G Productivity group. What I'm going to do is just drag it over, and you can see that red color is now appearing over that tab.

I can put it in the order that I want, and then release it. Now, when I minimize or maximize this group, Gemini is included.

And, remember, you don't have to keep it up here. If I go and say "Hide this group," it's no longer appearing in this tab, but it will always appear here within my bookmarks bar. Let's create our own tab group here.

Maybe I want to keep my social media pages together because I always want to review them at the same time. All I need to do is right click on one of those tabs, and say, "Add tab to new group."

I'm going to select this option here, and I can name it. I'm going to name it "social media" in this case, the default color is going to be gray, but let's make this one blue. 

And, the next step we want to take is to enable this toggle, "Save group." This is that more recent feature that we didn't have available to us in the past.

By selecting this, now, this will be added to my bookmarks bar. I'm going to go ahead and just drag in my LinkedIn and my Twitter tabs here. So, again, we have that same functionality available to us.

And, if I want to go ahead and open up that G Productivity, I can do that. Maybe I prefer to have that in the far left. I have saved so much real estate. I've got a grand total of seven tabs here that I can access them in just an instant, whenever I need to.

But, I'm not distracted by the number of unread messages or other alerts that I may see, but they are so much easier for me to get to.

So, if you want to clean up your bookmarks bar, and group relevant tabs together, be sure to experiment with Chrome tabbed groups, and let me know if you have any further questions in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Are you sick of wasting so much time creating that new presentation?

And do you wish that someone else could take care of all of the design and formatting? Well, with the help of AI, you can create stunning and amazing presentations in a matter of seconds.

And in this video, I'm going to show you how. What we are using is a tool called Gamma. You can find it at gamma.app.

And once you've signed into your free account, you can get started with Gamma in a few different ways.

You can always paste in some text if you already have an outline, or perhaps you want to import a file either from Google Drive or maybe upload an existing Word doc or a PowerPoint file.

But in our example, we're going to use the one-line prompt to create a complete presentation from just a simple set of instructions. So I'm going to click this one in the middle, and my first choice is if I would like to create a presentation or maybe something else completely. 

You can create documents and webpages with Gamma as well. But in our example, we are going to stick with a presentation. Now down below, I can enter in the prompt I want.

I want to produce a presentation that is going to help entrepreneurs to overcome that feeling of overwhelm and help them to simplify their to-do list.

So I've put in that information here, and just before I hit Generate Outline, I can double check the language it is going to be using and I can also specify how many cards it will produce.

Now, Gamma uses the term cards instead of slides. So in this case, we are going to be producing eight cards.

If I think that's too much or too little, I can always adjust this here or I can also adjust it once it has generated the presentation for me.

I'm going to select Generate Outline, and it's going to take that one-line prompt and give me a complete outline of my presentation. 

So if I want to change anything here, I can click on any one of these titles and edit them to my liking. Maybe I don't want to say time management techniques to reduce overwhelm.

I'm going to say to reduce maybe stress in this case. And if I want to reorder them, I can do that here as well. So for example, maybe I want the tools and resources to come first. I can simply click and drag and put this in a better order to my liking.

Remember, nothing we do here is absolutely final, but it can give us a better outline to get started with. Down below, we've got a few other options we can choose from.

For example, we can decide if we want less text per card, if we want a medium amount of text, which is probably recommended to get started, or if we want a lot of detail.

And then down below, we can choose our image source. Now, this is one that you're not going to want to miss.

Now by default, it's going to scour the web and look for appropriate web images, but I really like the AI images feature because it's going to generate original artwork and original graphics specifically for my presentation. 

So let's choose that option and see what it comes up with. I'm going to click on Continue at the bottom of the screen. And our last step is to choose the theme we would like for our slideshow.

And this is where I think Gamma really hits it out of the park, especially when it comes to comparing it to other AI-generated presentation tools. There is an awful lot of themes for us to choose from.

We can filter it by a few different options here, or we can select this shuffle theme and just see if there's a few that stand out to us once we hit that shuffle button.

Now, although I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce this, I kind of like this theme here, a mix of greens with a dark background and light font.

Next, I'm going to select this Generate button and Gamma will start to produce my presentation in real time, taking all of the information that I gave it from a single prompt and put together a complete presentation, which I can start to use right away. 

Now, the reason why I recommend that you start with the AI image generator is that the colors will be spot on with the theme that you choose. I think this is a fantastic background image for the title of this slide "Understanding Overwhelm".

If I skim down below, you can see that this is a very complex image here on the right-hand side, probably fits fairly well with the power of simplification. But again, as the case with most AI images, you may want to double check.

Of course, your presentation is so much more than just the design and the graphics. You can now come in here and adjust any of the text, move things around, remove things if you need to as you refine your presentation.

But wait, the AI doesn't stop here. We can continue to use AI to help us refine our presentation.

On the right-hand side of the menu where we have a number of editing options available to us, at the very top, there is an edit with AI button.

What this will do is bring up a prompt, which we can use to expand on more detail or ask it to change this image, or maybe make this a bit simpler. For example, on this card here, maybe I think that this title is a little boring So I'm going to say, "Make the title a little more exciting," something like that.

It's going to take just a few seconds and give me some options to consider. So do I want to change the color or do I just want to change the title itself? I'm going to go with a suggested one here, but I can always come back in here and change that default color.

 If I want to go back and say, you know what, let's go with the one that is the same with the rest of the slides. Let's do that here. But it's going to give me some suggestions that I don't have to go with, but I can choose before applying to my slides.

Now, when we're happy with our presentation, there's a few different ways in which we can share it or present it to others. We can come up here and select this Share button and send a link either to those we would like to collaborate with on, or we can share the finished product with them so that they can just view it.

But we can also export it to popular tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, or perhaps you'd like to download it as a PDF. We can do that here as well.

But you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. Here, we can select the present button and immediately start to share our presentation perhaps in your favorite video conferencing tools.

Now things get better though when it comes to sharing or presenting your slides. 

Here just to the left of your profile picture, you can actually view analytics for your presentation. So for example, you can see exactly when this presentation was last viewed, but if I come up here and select Card Engagement, I can see exactly how long people have spent on each one of these cards.

So if I'm sending this out to a potential customer or a client, or maybe just someone within my own organization, I can see exactly what is keeping their attention and even if they completed the entire presentation at all.

So if you're ready to make your presentations, documents, and webpages look amazing in a fraction of the time, go to gamma.app to get started for free.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

If you already use Google or Gmail for your business, you know that you can use Google Contacts as a simple CRM. Here in my example, I've got a number of special labels including New Leads, Qualifying, and WON.

Special Labels

However, there are some limitations here. For example, if I want to change Blair to a qualifying lead, I could take his name and just drag it into Qualifying, but it actually just adds that label. It will never remove the New Leads label. I've got to come over here and manually remove that as well. You will also see, if I go over to the Qualifying area and click on Blair, I'm pretty limited with the history and the amount of information that is available to me.

Why Sync 

That's why I recommend syncing your Google Contacts account with a true CRM system such as Pipedrive. So let me walk you through how you can sync your contacts from within Google Contacts, so that they will show up and appear here within Pipedrive.

How to Sync

Inside your Pipedrive account, we want to come up to the top, right-hand corner, select your profile picture, and then select Personal Preferences. And on the left hand side, we want to come down to about the fourth option called Contact sync.

Now it's true, you can sync your contacts with other platforms, including outlook.com or Microsoft Office 365, but in our example, we are going to sync it with Google.

To get started, we can select this Add New Account button, and all we need to do is enter in the email address of the account we would like to connect. I'm going to select Continue here, and next, we will be presented with the standard Google sign-in screen.

I'm going to choose the correct account here. I'm going to give it the permissions that it is requiring. I'm going to select Allow, and then we are brought back to our Pipedrive account.

Sync Settings

Now, before it can start syncing with your account, we want to take a look at two particular settings. The first one is which group of contacts would we like to sync with Pipedrive. By default, all contacts will be selected, but perhaps you don't want to sync all of your contacts.

n my case, I only want to sync those that are new leads. So I'm going to come over here, select this dropdown menu, and we will see all of the labels within our Google Contacts account. I'm going to select New Leads in my example, and then next, we have a choice in terms of the sync direction.

We can choose a one-way sync, where Pipedrive will only receive new contacts that are added within Google Contacts, or we can choose a two-way sync, meaning that contacts that we create within our Pipedrive account will also be synced with that account. 

In our example here, I'm going to select One-way, but you can choose which one is best for your case. At the bottom, I'm going to select Start syncing. It will give me a brief warning that Google does have a limit of 25,000 maximum contacts.

If you are anywhere near this number, please let me know in the comments, but for most users, this is a pretty healthy maximum. I'm going to select Enable contact sync, and immediately, Pipedrive will start to sync those contacts between your Google account and here within Pipedrive.

Now, depending on how many contacts you are syncing, this could take up to a minute, but in our example, it is pretty small. Here it's telling me that the last sync was a few seconds ago, four total contacts are in sync, three were added today, and one was updated today.

And if I ever need to come back here and change my settings, for example, if I want to change to a two-way sync or to add other labels, I can do so here, or I can choose to stop the sync as well.

New Contact

Now, when we come to our contact section here within Pipedrive, we have a few extra contacts that are being brought in here from Google Contacts. Let's go ahead and create a brand new contact just to see how quickly this sync is working. So I'm just going to call this one New Contact just so we can find it over in Pipedrive. And let's make sure we have that New Lead label, because remember, that's the only label that's going to bring that contact over.

Save

I'm going to go up here and select Save, and of course, it may take a few seconds, but if I go ahead and even just refresh this page here, now you can see that that new contact that was created in Google Contacts is listed here. And once it's in Pipedrive, I can add detailed notes. I can add activity and track that activity. I can even go ahead and email and manage all of my email conversations right here from within Pipedrive. So I have so many more options available to me, so I can win this deal and keep generating more business.

Conclusion

Now, if you're not already a Pipedrive user and using these powerful Google integrations, I’ve got good news for you. You can get started for free, and Simpletivity viewers get an additional 20% off of their first year. To learn more and get started, click the link in the description down below.

Thank you so much for watching today's video, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

With just a few simple add-ins, you can make your PowerPoint slide shine and also make your life a lot easier. So in this video I'm going to share with you 5 PowerPoint add-ins every user should know. Let's get started with add-in number one. 

Add your own QR codes

And this has all to do with making it easier for people to go directly to a website or a URL. How often have you had a slide like this where you are inviting people to go to a particular form or a survey or a website?

And even if you create this as a link within your PowerPoint deck, it does no good to your viewers because they can't click on this when they are watching your presentation, whether it's in person or even if they're watching it online.

Well, if we come up to add-ins, we are going to make use of a tool called QR4Office, which makes it quick and easy for us to add a QR code to any of our slides.

So in this example, all I need to do is come up here and type in the name, or maybe I could copy and paste the name of the URL where I want people to go. So I'm going to type in Simpletivity.com/streamline. 

Now, down below, we do have a few additional options. If I want to match my own branding or change the color, I can do so here, I can select that blue. And then I would recommend adjusting the size here, not the image that it's going to produce.

When it comes to working with QR codes, you want to make sure that these pixels, these shapes are as accurate as possible so that everyone can access it from their phone. When we're happy with our color and our size, all we need to do is select insert,  and it will immediately be inserted into our slide. 

Create amazing timelines with Office Timeline

Next on our list, let's take a look at making timelines so much better. Now, here within PowerPoint, you may be familiar with the ability to insert a simple chart or insert smart art. And, yes, there are a variety of different timelines which we could include, but they are all very, very basic.

And even once you've set up your timeline, like the example I've got here, if I want to adjust this review date, if I go to drag this over to the left, oh yeah, everything is separate. These are all just individual elements. I got to come down here and separately drag the text for that.

And this April 15th, if it's actually April 1st, I'm going to have to manually change that as well. Well, what if you could create a timeline that looked like this, that had a lot more detail, that was a lot more visually engaging, or maybe a timeline such as this?

To create these types of timelines, I'm using an extension called Office Timeline. And best of all, I can go into this timeline and start to adjust things any way that I like. Let's take a look at this executive decision here. And let's say I need to move the date into May. I'm going to click and drag it.

And not only is everything staying together, but do you notice that the date is changing as well? Even if I need to move it way over here closer to the executive review, it will automatically raise it up so it's easy to read. And best of all, I can do this with any element within that timeline.

Maybe I want to highlight this final release, but I want to bring it down here within the product development space. Everything is brought together, the text, the images, everything on screen. And if I want to dive into the data, I can come up here and select the data tab. And here I can change the text, I can change the shapes, I can change the colors.

I can come in here and change the dates. And better yet, I don't have to type it in. It gives me a nice convenient calendar as well. But perhaps the biggest time saver with using Office Timeline is that you don't have to create this at all. You can let it do the work when you upload your own spreadsheet or your own data.

I'm going to come up here and select Import. And here you can see a variety of tools which you can import and sync with directly. And if you don't use one of these tools, almost everything will export into Microsoft Excel. Meaning, that you don't have to continually update your data in two different places.

You can update it once in your spreadsheet and make sure that it is represented right here within your slides. To learn more about Office timeline and any of the add-ons in today's video, be sure to check the link in the description down 

Build a presentation with ChatGPT

Now, the third add-in in our list today is going to help prevent you from staring at a blank slide. And for this, we're going to take advantage of AI. ChatGPT for PowerPoint allows us to give a particular prompt or just a few set of instructions and create slides in a matter of seconds.

To get going, we can either start from our own topic, or if we already have some text or an outline, we can go and paste that in here. But I'm going to use this create from topic in our example today. Here within the prompt area, I'm going to say "Highlight the pros and cons of waking up extra early and its effect on your workday."

Now, we have a limit of 250 characters, so I could put in a lot more description if I want to. And then down below we have two other choices available. 

We can choose the language in which we want the slides to be produced in. And then we can also choose the number of slides. I'm going to leave it at the default of seven and select continue.

What it's going to do first is create an outline so I can review this before it goes ahead and produces the entire presentation. So here you can see here are the titles of each of the slides, early wake up pros and cons, this is probably going to be a title slide, the benefits, the challenges, the impact, healthy morning routines, tips for successful early rising.

Now, I can go in here and change any of these titles if I want. I can also come here to the left and change the order as well. So maybe I want healthy morning routines to come at the end before the conclusion, so I can add items if I want or remove them. But let's leave them as is, and I'm going to select Continue.

Lastly, we can choose a particular template. Now, the templates are fairly basic, but remember, you can swap these out with any of your PowerPoint templates here as well. I'm going to choose the first one and select Continue.

Now, it may take a few seconds depending on how many slides which you have asked it to produce, but really this will probably produce my slides in, oh, a little less than 15 seconds. Here you can see it producing it for me live on the left-hand side, and it's even incorporated pictures as well.

So I've got my title slide, here's the benefits, here's the challenges, appropriate images, appropriate bullet points. Of course, I would never just go ahead and produce this as is, but this gives me a great framework to go on.

So if you are stuck or want to get ahead just a little faster, you may want to check out ChatGPT for PowerPoint.

Create word cloud images from text

Next, let's take a look at how we can make our slides that much more engaging and useful for our audience. In this example, I've collected a number of responses. Maybe I surveyed my participants in advance, or maybe this is just some user data and I just have the raw outcome here.

These are the answers that people gave, but this isn't very engaging, and it's actually kind of hard to see what were the most popular responses. Well, I'm going to produce a word cloud in just a few seconds, and it's also going to give me a lot of helpful options along the way.

For this, we're using something called Pro Word Cloud, and all we need to do is select what kind of font we want to use. Maybe I'm going to use this telephoto font here. I can choose from a variety of different color schemes if I want. I'm going to keep things pretty simple here. I'm going to choose this celebration one. 

I can change the case layout or my case preferences. I can even limit it to a number of words, If I have more than 100 in my list here. The one thing I would make sure that you do is actually increase the default pixel size I'm going to put 1000 by I think 800 in my example here, just so it takes up most of my slide.

And then the last thing that we to do before selecting this button is to actually come over and select the words you want to use in that word cloud. So I'm going to come over here, I'm going to select create word cloud, and instead of putting it directly within my slide, it's first going to give me that image up above here.

And this is helpful in case I want to tweak any of the design options down below. But when I'm happy with the result, all I need to do is click on the image, it copies it to my clipboard and now I'm going to say paste here within my slide.

Now, I've got something which is a lot more engaging, a lot more useful. We can quickly see that joy and peace were the two most popular words, and things like success and abundance were much less popular in this particular poll.

Add free stock images by color

Next, let's take a look at making it easier to add images to our slides without having to copy and paste from different websites or traveling to other tabs within our browser. For this, we are going to use the free Pexels add-on.

Now, Pexels has been a very popular site for getting free stock photos, but instead of minimizing and maximizing your PowerPoint slides, we can search all of those photos directly from within PowerPoint.

So, for example, maybe I want a picture of a computer. I can type in that search, and then I can preview all of those images here right from within my application.

But the feature that I like the most is that I can color match my images. So here on the left-hand side, you can see I've got this very dark background with this purple theme going on in the left and right lower corner.

So within the Pexels add-on, I'm going to select this color picker, and I'm going to select this purple, which happens to be the same purple as the one within my slides. 

And maybe I want to look at something like a monitor screen or something along those lines. I'm going to type in the word monitor, and what it's going to do is bring back a number of images that are related to a monitor, but that have that type of shade or that type of tone within it.

So as I browse through these, I can see that all of these are going to fit very, very well with this slide on the left-hand side. I'm going to select this image here. I can choose from large, medium, or small. I'm going to go with medium. I'm going to say insert photo. And maybe all I need to do here is say send to back.

And that looks great, and it fits very, very well with the other colors and the other themes that I have on screen. So if you want to quickly find the right photo for you, be sure to use the Pexels PowerPoint add-on.

Now, I would love to hear from you next. Which of these five add-ons were your favorite? And do you have any that you would like me to feature in a future video? 

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

How do you archive Trello cards and lists? And perhaps more importantly, where do you go to find those archive cards and return them to your board? In this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know. Now there's a few different ways in which we can archive our cards.

Archive Cards

Number one, you can open up your card and scroll near the bottom and you can see that there is an archive button here, which we can select. By selecting this button, we can scroll back to the top and we have this identifier telling us that this card is archived. If we want to return it to our board, this is synonymous with unarchiving a card. I can select this option. You can see that that label is now removed and this card remains on this board.

Fast Way

Now there's a faster way in which we can do this. From the front of our card, we can select this stylus, and here you can see there's an archive button here as well. But the fastest way to archive your Trello cards is to use a shortcut key. If you hover your mouse over a particular card and select the letter C key on your keyboard, that will instantly archive that card. 

Undo 

Now you'll notice down below we get a warning where we can actually undo that action if we want to. This can be very helpful if you accidentally hit the C key on your keyboard over a card when you didn't mean to archive it, and you can select Undo.

Now, while it is common to archive cards one at a time, there may be some cases where you will want to archive an entire list. A good example of this would be a completed list, a finished, a done, a published, any list that may be accumulating a large number of cards that you don't really need to see anymore.

Well, at the top of any list, we can select these three dots, this more menu, and come down to the bottom. Here, we can choose to archive all the cards in this list, but notice that we also have an additional option with a very specific distinction.

The last option here is to archive this list, meaning archiving not only all of the cards, but the list itself. If I go ahead and choose this option, it will remove that entire list from this board.

What is Archiving

Now, at this point, you may be asking yourself what exactly is archiving and why should I consider doing so? Now the good news is, is that by archiving any of your cards or lists, it is not the same as deleting, nor does archiving put it in a temporary state where it will be deleted in 30 days.

The most common use case for archiving cards is when you no longer need something viewable or no longer need something here within your Trello space.

Searchable Cards

Every card that is archived will remain searchable, so you can go back and find it and reference it at any time. If I come up here to the search bar, I'm going to type in the words meeting minutes 'cause I'm looking for a particular card with that title.

Here you can see at the top, I have found the card I'm looking for. It's from this board and it's telling me that it has been archived. By clicking on this result, it will open up that archive card, which is completely preserved with the way that I had it before.

So I can go through and reference and look at this information, and if I want to return it to my board, I can come down here and select send to board. But what if you don't know the search term? What if you want to see all of the cards which you've archived within a particular board?

Archived Items

Well, in that case, we can come up to the board more option and the third option down within the menu is archived items. By selecting this, you will see a complete list of all of the cards which you have archived.

You can scroll down and find the one that you desire, you can immediately send it back to the board if you want here, or you can choose to permanently delete by selecting the delete link. Now, what might be more helpful is to use the search feature here at the top.

This search field is only going to search archived items for this particular board, which differs from the global search up here, which will search all cards, lists and boards within your Trello account. But while we're here within the archive area, you'll also notice that there is a switch to lists button. 

By selecting this, it will show us all of the lists in which we have archived and we are only one click away from sending them back to the board.

Remember this waiting for list, which we archived a few moments ago? I can come over here and select send to board, and not only is the name of the list restored, but all of the cards that were within that list when it was archived will be returned as well.

So now that you know everything about archiving cards and lists within Trello, what other Trello questions do you have? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Big thanks to SaneBox for sponsoring this video. 

Using multiple inboxes here within Gmail is a great way to highlight your most important messages or to make sure that things that get labeled don't get buried here on the left hand side. So how can you add multiple inboxes and configure them for the way that you want to? It's actually a lot easier than you think. 

Here in the top right hand corner of the screen, we can click this gear icon, and if we scroll down, you'll notice that we have a number of different ways to view our inbox.

Now you're probably most familiar with the default view where we have all of our messages listed here in a linear fashion. But we have several views to choose from, including the last one here called multiple inboxes.

In my example, you can see that I have two of my labels, "Action Required" and "Waiting for Reply" displayed here on the right hand side.

And the great thing is that whenever I need to add a new label, so for example, maybe I'm going to select this message here and I'm going to say that yes, I need to deal with that, it's immediately going to appear here within this action required section, not get buried over here and force me to have to remember to come and click and select this label.

I also have a second one here called "Waiting for Reply". So these are perhaps messages that I've sent and I want to make sure that I follow up and don't miss their replies so I can see them here as well.

Now the nice thing is that we can continue to minimize these sections if we don't want to see them as well. Maybe I only want to see "Action Required" and not "Waiting for Reply".

Well, we can do that as well. And if we hover our mouse here between the divider, we can adjust the size and the display. But let's go back to our setting here.

We're going to come down to multiple inboxes, and once you have this selected, we want to come here and select Customize. Now, this is where we can decide what will appear within our multiple inbox section. Now note, you are limited to a maximum of five different sections.

You can customize how they are named, and we can even choose in terms of how many conversations will be displayed at a given time, because depending on the label or the search query that you choose, you probably don't want all 125 messages displayed on the multiple inbox section. 

So by default it's set to five. I'm going to leave it at five here. And we even have a choice in terms of where it is displayed on the page. But what's most important to remember is how you can add a new section.

It's not quite as simple as just clicking into one of these fields and selecting a label. And the good news is that you're not limited to labels either. So how can you add your own labels or other search criteria? Well, let's go back to our inbox.

And when we click on any of these labels, you'll notice that at the top of the screen within the search bar, it is actually displaying the search criteria. So let's say we want to add the newsletter label to our new multiple inbox section.

I'm going to click on newsletters. And here you can see, all I need to do is come up here and copy this search criteria. And then we're going to go back to multiple inboxes and select customize. And all I need to do is paste it here within section three. 

Now, lastly, we can give it a name. You don't have to, otherwise it's going to say this as the section label, but I'm going to continue with my pattern of adding an emoji. I'm going to add a newspaper emoji, and I'm going to say, "These are newsletters."

Let's keep it nice and straightforward. Now, don't forget, don't just click to your inbox at this point. We want to make sure that we scroll down to the bottom and select save changes.

Now I'm brought back to the newsletter label because that's where I was last. Let's go back to our inbox. And here you can see I now have my new section called "Newsletters" right here.

If I want to minimize that, I can, and this is also a good example of where it's instilling that five message limit. I've got over 700 newsletters within this label, but it's only going to display the first five.

Whenever you want to quickly access all of the messages within your section here, all you need to do is select the number here on the right hand side, and that will take you directly to your labels or whatever that search criteria is. 

So let's choose a search criteria for our last section because you don't have to add labels. Maybe I want to create a new section here that are all of the messages sent from a particular individual.

I'm going to come up here and select this show search options just to remind you that you can create a very complex filter if you want. In my case, I'm going to insert this particular email address.

I want to see all of the messages that are coming from this sender, but I could add other criteria such as a key subject line in terms of a size, or maybe I just want to highlight all of the messages that have an attachment.

Maybe that might be helpful to you. But I'm going to keep it simple in this example.

I'm going to say search, and yes, it's going to go ahead and find all of the messages from this sender, but all I have to do is come up here, select it, select copy, and then you guessed it, we're going to come back to multiple inboxes customized and under section four, I'm going to paste in that search criteria. 

Over here on the side, let's continue with my theme. I'm going to choose this envelope, and I'm going to say, "From Scott." I'm going to keep it nice and simple.

These are all of the messages from this particular sender. Once again, I'm going to come down here and hit save changes. Let's go back to our inbox, and now we have that new section down below. I'm seeing one of five of many.

Yes, there are many messages from this sender, but now I have access to them directly here from within my inbox. 

Now, if you are still feeling overwhelmed when it comes to your inbox, I suggest that you check out SaneBox. With AI technology, SaneBox prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, SaneBox will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders.

Best of all, SaneBox works with any email provider. To get started, click the link in the description to get your free 14 day trial.

Is Google's new and improved Gemini AI really better than ChatGPT?

Well, if you're a Google user, the answer is yes. Before you get started with Gemini, come on down to the left hand side and click on settings and then select extensions.

And there's a number of Google extensions that we can enable, but the one that you want to make sure you have toggled on is Google Workspace, because we can do a lot with our email, with our files and folders, even with our specific documents. So let's take a look at an example.

So with my cursor in the prompt area, I'm going to add the at symbol and here you can see we have access to our extensions. Now this is going to help Gemini realize where or what we are trying to do. I'm going to select Gmail.

I'm going to say, review all of my unread email from the past two days and identify the first three that are most important. Maybe I'm coming back from a vacation or several days away from my inbox, and I just want to zero in on what needs my attention now.

What Gemini will do is connect with my Gmail account and quickly identify what it thinks is most important. Now of course, keep in mind, this is AI. It's not going to be perfect, but it can really help us to sort, find, summarize, and do an awful lot with our email. 

So here it has come back with the three emails it feels that I should review first, but better than just giving me a summary of its title and its contents, if I scroll down below, I am one click away from actually opening up those emails and responding as well.

So it's made it that much more actionable if I want to. Let's take a look at another example. This time I'm going to hit the at symbol and we're going to select Google Drive and it can often be frustrating to search for the exact file that you're looking for.

Well, in this case, I'm going to ask it to find the Kanban file from last year. I'm going to specify that it is last year, not this year. And let's say, summarize its details in five bullet points.

So there's two things here, right? We are finding, we are searching, a particular file but then I want it to do something with that file as well. 

Just like we saw before, it may take a few seconds depending on the complexity of that request, but this was actually a lot quicker. Here are the details. It found the file. Here is the summary of the contents of that document.

And once again, I have direct access. It's showing me exactly the particular file so I can click on it and do more with it. But it gets better because under every single response, you can see we have this share and export button.

Here, I can export this information back to Docs or I can take anything here within Gemini and draft a Gmail in a single click. Now, if you're wanting even more Google and productivity tips such as this, you should join the Simpletivity newsletter.

Just click the link on the screen now and join me at Simpletivity.com.

I love to save time, but I also love to save money. That's why in this video I'm going to show you how to save both by combining meeting scheduling with your customer management. 

You're probably already familiar with scheduling tools such as Calendly. It's a very popular service used by many. However, it's going to cost you something additional and it's also something additional for you to manage.

So what if you could take all of the functionality here and combine it with a powerful CRM System? Well, Pipedrive, one of my favorite CRM tools, has done just that.

Not only is Pipedrive's Meeting scheduler easy to use, but I feel that the user experience is actually better than Calendly and integrates directly with your contacts and your deals.

Better user experience

Now, before we get into the setup, let's take a quick look at the look and feel because what I love about the meeting scheduler within Pipedrive is that it's big, it's bold, and I think the navigation is even easier for your users.

So here at the top, you can see that we have the title of the meeting. We have the location, and you can add as much detail within the description as you like.

And then down below, rather than having Calendly's default full month calendar, we've got something that I think is a lot easier to navigate. So whether I want to book a time for this week or next week, it's easier to go back and forth.

I'm going to select this Wednesday, and also things stay on the same page. So let's see, maybe 1:00 PM works well for me. Now I can enter in my information and confirm that booking. 

Meeting scheduling in Pipedrive

Let's jump back into our Pipedrive Account and see how we can add further schedules and manage our existing ones as well. So here we can find the meeting scheduling option in a variety of different places.

Here I am within my calendar and it will always be available at the top of the screen. If I jump over into one of my deals, let me jump into this deal here. Remember, we can email any of our clients directly from within Pipedrive. And from within my email, I can always add my meeting scheduling link here as well.

And if I happen to be viewing some of my contacts, once again, I have access to that meeting scheduling link because we can email from a variety of different places right here from within Pipedrive.

Creating your meeting link

So I'm going to come here and select Manage availability. Here is the Discovery Call that I set up already, but let's go ahead and create a new scheduling link. So our first option here is how long should this meeting be?

And let's say I want to make this 30 minutes in length. I'm going to choose that option here. When is this availability going to be active?

I can either set a future date or say that I want it to be active from right now, and I can either put this out indefinitely or maybe I only want to make this particular meeting, this particular call available from now until the end of April.

Again, you can always come back in here and edit any of these options. 

Then thirdly, we can choose what days of the week. Do we want to be made available for these meetings? Well, I'm going to come down here to Tuesday and unlike Calendly's somewhat complicated way of specifying times and dates, I can simply just click and drag.

Maybe I want to make myself available, 9:00 to 12:00 in the morning, and then once again from 3:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon. So I can do that here.

And rather than hit save and go to another day of the week, right from this same dialogue, I'm going to say I want to add it to Thursday as well. I'm going to hit Save. And now I've got my schedule. I've got my availability listed right here.

Now, before we select Continue to meeting details, it's important for us to select our Buffer and time settings. Now, there's a couple of defaults in here already. We may want to add some buffer time before or after the event. 

So if you want to make sure that you have perhaps 15 minutes before your very next event or afterwards, you can choose that here. Here you can choose if the invitee can select times in different intervals.

Now, for me, I prefer things on the half hour. I don't want people booking me at let's say 3:15 or 9:45. But if you have a different preference, you can make that selection here as well.

Then the last two are very important, so don't ignore these two options. The first is the shortest notice to book you. Meaning, if you shared this link right now, could they book you 30 minutes from now?

Well, that might be too soon for a lot of us. So I'm going to say I want a minimum of four hours notice before they can book me.

 Meaning, if I sent them the link right now, the earliest they could book me would be about 2:30 in the afternoon, my local time, because it's currently 10:30 AM. And then lastly, how far in the future can someone book you?

Now, unlike Calendly, we have a number of default options here, but I think that this might actually be easier. Do you really need 27 days, or 32 days, or 56 days or a particular number of weeks? We have between one, two or three weeks or a month, two months, or six months in advance.

So maybe the most I want someone to be able to book me out in advance is one month.

Adding meeting details

So I'm going to select that option here. I'm going to select Continue to our meeting details. And this is the final section. This is the last page that we need to configure. The first thing is to give our meeting a name.

So maybe this is going to be a 1:1 Call or a 1:1 Meeting. Here under location, we can either specify where it's going to be a phone call, a Zoom meeting, or in person. Maybe you want to add an address here.

And Pipedrive does integrate with the three most popular video conferencing tools. So whether you use Zoom, Microsoft Teams or Google Meet, you can use that integration here. Here you can adjust the company name. This is being pulled over directly from my Pipedrive account.

And then lastly, we can choose what is required when it comes to the fields? Now, just like with Calendly and other popular scheduling tools, name and email is going to be required.

You can choose if you want to require a phone number, but you can also choose to add as many additional fields as well. So for example, do you want to add some specific questions, maybe some things for them to consider ahead of time or just collect some more information.

You can add those details here as well in addition to adding your own custom footer. Then on the right-hand side of this screen, we have two additional helpful options. These are only visible to you, so this has to do with how this is tracked or recorded within your Pipedrive account. 

So do you want to record this as a call, a meeting, a task, a deadline, an email, or lunch? In most cases, you're probably going to choose one of these first two, or maybe it's a task depending on how you manage your customers and manage your projects within Pipedrive.

And then lastly, you can add a specific note.  So if you want to add a detailed note specific to this meeting type, you can add this here and it will be included in that user's record.

I'm going to come down here and select Share as a link. And now I can go ahead and copy this link and share it with anyone that I like.  But better yet, now that this new availability is saved, I can share it anywhere here within Pipedrive.

Scheduling example

So for example, maybe I need to setup a time to meet with Phyllis here. I'm going to, of course, give a subject and give a nice message, but when I'm ready, I can come up here to the Meeting scheduler and say, "Hey, let's put in this 1:1 Meeting."

See my schedule and book a time here. Now they have a direct link to that booking calendar, and I didn't have to write in any of this text. But let me show you perhaps the best reason for integrating your meeting scheduler with a CRM. Here I am back with that Discovery call that we looked at earlier.

But this time I'm going to pretend that I'm someone who is filling out this form. I filled out all the details here, and I'm going to say, confirm that booking. As the potential customer, I'm brought to this confirmation screen. 

And of course, I've been emailed that scheduling link and it has been added to my calendar as well. But if I jump back into my Pipedrive Account, and if I look at my contacts, (sighs) look at this.

At the bottom of my list is my brand-new contact, and I didn't have to enter in any of this information. I have the name, I have their email address and their phone number.

And when I click on his account, here I have all of that information available to me, including here is our discovery call listed here so I can keep track and keep record of this customer engagement.

There is no copy and paste, there is no complicated integration that I need to make with Calendly or some other tool. I have it all here directly from within my CRM. 

So if you'd like to save time and money and make it easier for both yourself and your clients to book time, click the link in the description down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Would you like to collect more detailed information about your users?

In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a form so that you can ask questions and then send them to specific additional questions depending on the choices that they make. This is sometimes called conditional logic or branching, and it's a lot easier than you think. So let's get started. 

Adding sections to your form

Here I have a very simple form where I am asking them for their name and their email address, and then I want to know what is their biggest pain point right now.

But depending on which of the three selections they make, I want to send them to ask them further questions about that selection. So in order to do this, we first need to create our additional sections.

Here on the right hand side, you may be familiar with selecting the plus button to add additional questions, but we want to come down all the way to the bottom and select add a section. So here we have section number two.

I'm going to continue to select this two more times because I'm going to have three sections for each of these three answers. 

So now we have section two, section three, and section four. At this stage, it's also going to be important that we title each of these sections so we can keep track of where we are sending people depending on their answer here.

So I'm going to title section number two, procrastination. I'm going to come down here, and I'm going to call section number three, email management. And then section number four, we will title this work life balance, just like the questions that I am posing in the very first section.

You're going to see why it's important to label these, maybe not necessarily exactly the same as your question up above,

Send to section based on answer

But so that you can match them together. Now, let's go back to our first question where we are going to branch them off depending on their answer. The very first thing to keep in mind is that there are only two question choices in which we can use this type of logic or this type of branching.

One is multiple choice, the other one is if we wanted to choose a dropdown menu, these are the only two that we can use for this branching.

My personal preference is multiple choice, just because everything is visible, it seems to be a lot easier for people to engage and make their selection with multiple choice.

Now, the very next step is to come down to the more option here, and we want to select go to section based on answer.

I'm going to select that option here. And here you can see we are presented with an additional dropdown beside each of our choices. So beside procrastination, you can see that it is currently set to continue to next section.

Now, that's okay because the next section happens to be the procrastination section. But just to be safe, I'm going to select this dropdown and say exactly where I want it to go.

Section two, and here is the title of that section, And I'm going to do the same for the next two. I want this to go to email management, and if they select work-life balance, I want them to select that as well.

This can be very, very important because we may not be done adding sections, and in fact, once they get to procrastination, maybe I want to branch them out into other subsections, or other areas of my form.

So having these labels and matching them appropriately are very, very important. 

Adding additional questions

Next, let's go down to our email management, for example, and add further questions. Remember, at this point, we have no other questions in this area, simply the title.

So I'm going to come up here and let's ask an additional multiple choice question. What email issues are you facing right now? And I've given them three additional options.

This is going to give me so much more valuable information than if I just left my form with this basic question at the beginning. And remember, I could come down here and say, go to section based on answer and continue to branch out.

So for example, when it comes to folder organization, I could create a section where I'm asking them, what type of email client are you using? 

How many folders do you currently have at the moment? Go into so much further detail in an effort to find out if I'm the right fit to solving their problem or get them that much closer to a solution. In this case, I am going to turn that off.

You can see that you can toggle that on and off as needed, but this is going to be maybe the last question that I give them. Now for our example, I'm not going to add further questions for section two or for section four.

But what I am going to do is add one more section here below this email management section. And in this case, I'm going to give it the title of email solutions. That's going to be the title of this section.

But maybe here in the description, I could write something like, Hey, I've got a great solution to help you with your email problems. Or maybe something like, I'll be in touch with you shortly so I can help you with your email management. 

Something that is personalized based on the fact that they chose the email route or the email path. Now, I'm also doing this to show you a few other things that you want to keep in mind. Number one, the importance of these labels.

Remember this work-life balance used to be section four, but it is now section five of five. But if we go up to our original question here, you can see that we've already kept that connection.

Because we connected it to work-life balance, it doesn't matter how many additional sections we add, it is not going to come out of sync.

Ending your branching form

So that labeling can be very, very important. But you also want to pay special attention as to how you end your form. Here you can see, even if I give them a comforting message to say, I'll be in touch with you shortly to help you with your problems, it's going to continue to the next section.

Yes, you can see that there are options here at the bottom of each of our sections. In this example, I'm going to want to select this dropdown and select submit form.

Meaning when they get to this area, I don't want them to go to any other section, I want them to finish the form at this stage.

And remember, another best practice is whenever you are branching off within your form, you may want to make sure that that particular question is required, just so that they don't end up in some other section if you haven't set these quite correctly. 

And don't forget, at any time, I highly recommend that you preview your form and test out some of your scenarios just to make sure that everything is working properly.

So in my example, I want to select that email management option, and it should take us here to these options here, and then to this final email solutions page. Let's see if we've set everything up correctly.

So here is our preview form. I have not made my name or email address required, but I'm going to say my biggest pain point is email management.

I'm going to select next, and perfect, it's brought me to my email management option here. I'm going to say I have not enough time to read my emails. I'm going to select next. And here is that email solutions header.

We didn't actually add the description, but here is either where we could give a comforting message, we can include a link just before they go ahead and submit that form. 

So now that you know how to create conditional logic and branching questions within Google Forms, I'd love to hear from you. What other questions do you have about form design or optimizing your Google forms? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Thank you so much for watching. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.