Connect events to Keep Notes
Would you like to spend less time managing your calendar? Well, then this video is for you because I'm gonna share with you seven time-saving tips and tricks so you can get the most out of Google Calendar.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's jump right into tip number one, which is one of my favorites.
How often have you organized a meeting or been getting ready for a meeting, but you have some additional notes that you don't want to forget when this particular meeting arrives? So in this example, I've set up a meeting with Kate.
I've told her what we're going to be discussing here, but maybe I have some additional notes, not an agenda, but some additional notes that I want to remember to ask Kate, but I don't want to share them with her in advance.
Well, if you use Google Calendar, there's a pretty good chance that you probably already use Google Keep. And if you don't, this might be a really good reason to start doing so.
When you open up any Google Calendar events, such as this, and you come over here to the Google side panel, if I click on Keep, you can see that I can add a new note.
Now you might think that's not a really big deal. Of course, you can take a note. You can view your other notes here as well.
But watch what happens when I say take a note; I am actually creating a connection with this particular note and this particular calendar event.
So maybe I've got question one, I'm gonna ask about the sales team, something like that, maybe question two, talk about next week's conference or something like that. I'm gonna hit Done.
And what I've got is now a related note to this particular calendar event. Yes, I can take additional notes, and I can access my other notes here, but watch what happens when I close this particular meeting, and let's say I can still see that note here.
But whenever I open up this meeting, that related note is always going to jump up to the very top here, but it gets even better.
What if I'm thinking about adding or editing these questions when I'm not inside of Google Calendar? Well, all I need to do is open up Google Keep, whether it's on my mobile device or here on my desktop.
And here you can see I've got that exact connection with that particular event. In fact, I can even go directly to it.
If I click on that little button there, it's gonna take me directly to this particular meeting event. So a fantastic way to create a connection between your notes and specific Google Calendar events.
Add meeting notes
Now, let's stick with the topic of meeting notes, and in this case, what if you do want to share an agenda in advance, or maybe you just want to take notes during the meeting and make sure that everyone who attends has access to those notes?
Well, if you subscribe to any version of Google Workspace, you can take advantage of a new feature. Here, you can see I've got a Test Meeting, and when I click on it, you can see that there's an option here saying, Take meeting notes.
So what this is going to allow me to do, if I select this link, is it's going to open up a brand new Google Doc, but it has the date of that meeting, it has the name of that meeting, already pre-filled out for me.
I can take note of all of the attendees. I can start to add notes. I can create action items during the meeting itself.
And what's going to happen from here on in is that that agenda is now directly attached to this calendar event. If I go and open it up, you can see it's gonna be listed here under the description.
We can click on that again and immediately open it up. Now, what you should note is that this, unlike tip number one, is not going to be private.
Anyone who is a guest of this particular event will have access to these notes. So this is really intended for more agenda purposes or for people to review those notes after the meeting, but a great and quick, easy way for you to add notes directly to your calendar events.
Add multiple notifications
Now, tip number three on our list has to do with saving time and making sure that you don't forget about the most important events on your calendar.
Here, I have a meeting called Team Meeting. And let's say for this example, it's by far the most important event on my calendar this week.
So not only do I not want to be late for this particular meeting, but I wanna maybe give myself a nudge or a reminder in advance, perhaps even a day or two in advance.
Well, when we are setting up our meetings, we are so used to just using the default notification time. Now we can always go into Google Calendar settings and adjust the default time.
So if I open up this meeting, yeah, my default for all of my meetings on this calendar is to notify me 10 minutes in advance. And if I have notifications turned on, I will receive a warning here within my browser, and I will also be notified on my mobile device.
But this is such an important meeting, I wanna make sure that I'm notified well in advance. Remember, you can always add multiple notifications.
You don't have to just change this first one here. I can come down here and say, you know what? I'd like to send myself an email, maybe two hours in advance, right? Just so I'm prepared.
I've got all of my meeting notes together, and you know what? I'm gonna also send myself an email, maybe two days in advance. So I'm gonna say two days in this case, just to make sure it's top of mind and I'm getting prepared in advance.
All I need to do is click Save at this point. And now these notifications will remind me, one, which is going to be a standard notification either in-browser or on my mobile device.
And these next two will be sent to me via email. Keep in mind, these notification settings are for you, the organizer, and will not apply to the guests you've invited to your event.
Now, something else that can save you a lot of time and also save you a lot of effort is if you need to transfer ownership to someone else for a particular meeting.
Change event owner
Let's stick with this team meeting example where I've got only two of us invited at this point, but maybe, let's say for our example, we have a number of important stakeholders in this meeting.
Well, I know that perhaps I have a meeting that might run late, or maybe I just can't make this meeting at all. And I wanna make sure that things can still be updated in my absence.
All you need to do is come up to the top and select the More actions button. And near the very bottom, we've got the option that says Change owner.
Now, in this case, I don't have to just select someone who has already been invited. I can actually select any email address.
I can invite anyone here to be that new owner, and it gives us a standard message here, but I can change this and say, listen, I'm gonna be running a little late, or I'm gonna be off for the next two days. Can you be the owner of this meeting as changes happen?
So this can be a quick and easy way for you to change ownership rather than just delete the meeting and have someone else create it from scratch again.
Enable working hours
Now, the next tip on our list is gonna save you time from telling people that you can't meet or that something is outside of your working hours. Note, this particular tip only applies to those who have subscribed to a Google Workspace account.
So in this case, let's say that you are working in between the hours of nine and five, Monday through Friday. However, if you don't set your working hours here within Google Calendar, someone else within your organization could book you for 7:00 PM or two in the morning or something well outside of your working hours.
So in order to adjust and apply your working hours, come up to the gear icon, select Settings. And then on the left-hand side, under the General menu, we wanna come down to Working Hours, and here you can choose to enable or disable working hours, choose the days of the week, and then those specific times.
And remember, your schedule may not look as standard as this. Maybe on Wednesdays, for example, you only work until 3:00 PM, so you can adjust it for your specific needs.
You don't have to hit Save on this page, you can simply go back to settings. You will note that this will visually do nothing for your calendar.
However, if someone else is attempting to book you within your organization, they will get a warning, telling them that it is outside of your working hours if they try to book you outside of those windows.
Add events from Gmail
Now, the next tip on our list is gonna save you so much time because you're not gonna have to use your keyboard almost at all to book another event. Well, specifically, if that event is originating from your email.
Let's take a look at this example here. Let's say that someone has emailed me and they want to meet later in the week. They've even given me a particular day.
So it sounds like I could probably go ahead and book this individual for a meeting on Thursday. Now, typically, you would have to open up Google Calendar and find the selected time and add that individual and give it a name and everything else that goes on with creating a brand new event.
But since we have most of those details here, and maybe we want to even keep the information here, why don't we just create an event directly from Gmail?
Now, yes, we could do so by using the side panel up here, but you can also do so by coming up to the top of the email. If we select the More option, we can select Create an event.
This is going to immediately open up Google Calendar and create an event with the subject of that email. The person who sent the email or who is included in that email will automatically be added.
And even the body of the message will be included here in the description. Now, in most cases, you're probably going to want to change the name, right?
Because the subject of that email is probably going to be somewhat unrelated or maybe confusing. So I'm gonna say meeting with Scott in this particular case.
But it can be such an advantage to have all of this information right down here so we can include this or maybe review this when it comes to the meeting itself. So a much faster and easier way for you to create that meeting directly from within Gmail.
View multiple time zones
Now, speaking of saving time, I often waste a lot of time trying to convert the time zone of the people that I'm wanting to meet with or planning to meet with in my local time.
Here, by default, Google Calendar is going to show you your local time here on the left-hand side of your screen. But what if you work with others, whether it's colleagues or clients in different time zones, and you want to make sure that you can see exactly when that meeting is scheduled?
Well, if we come up to settings and then click Settings, here within Google Calendar, we have the option to adjust our time zone. So under Time zone, we can create our primary time zone.
We can even change the label if we want, but we can also display a secondary time zone. So in this case, maybe I want to show Eastern time in addition to Pacific time.
And again, I can change the label if I want. Currently, my primary is labeled as Home, but maybe I want to change that. I wanna call that Local as my local time zone there.
So now if I go back to my calendar here on the left-hand side, I can clearly see my local time, but I can also see the Eastern time, my secondary time zone here on the left-hand side.
If you wanna go one step further, if we expand our menu option here, we can also choose to see additional current times in other parts of the world.
If we go back to our settings and back to the time zone area, just below, there is a section called World clock. And here we can add as many different additional time zones as we want, so we can see the current time for different places in the world.
Now, if you want to see even more time-saving tips and tricks, I invite you to click on one of the videos which is on the screen in front of you. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
