Where to find the Google Side Panel
- Have you ever been using Gmail or Google Calendar and then wandered over to the right-hand side and wondered what this side panel is all about? Or perhaps you have opened it up yourself and said to yourself, "Okay, that's nice, "I can see those things, but can it do "anything else for me?" Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about the Google side panel, including how you can make connections between different apps.
Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you're wanting to get more out of your technology and your applications, I invite you to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.
So, first and foremost, what is the Google side panel? Well, it's available in three different Google apps, Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. Specifically, within Drive, Sheets, Docs, and Slides. And you should see this panel by default whenever you're within one of those apps.
How to view the Google Side Panel
But just in case you don't see this panel, come all the way down to the bottom right-hand corner of your screen. It may look something like this, where you have nothing here. All you need to do is come down here and say, Show Side Panel, and then you should see this little sliver on the right hand side.
Now, in most cases, you're gonna see either keep tasks or maybe something like your calendar on the right-hand side, but it does depend on what you're viewing at the moment.
So here I am within Google Calendar and the great thing here is that I can take notes, I can search through my notes, for example, I can go to my tasks and I can check things off all within the same screen. I don't have to go back and forth between different apps.
I find what's really helpful, if you do use Google Tasks is that you don't have to crowd up your Google Calendar with the tasks up here at the top, you can uncheck that calendar view and just manage your tasks over here on the right-hand side.
But let's go back to keep, because I wanna show you
How to connect Keep Notes to Calendar Events
how you can actually make a connection between these things. So, for example, let's say I'm gonna open up this HR interview and maybe there's some questions that I have for this meeting, but they're specific to me.
I don't wanna add them here on the description of the meeting, 'cause I don't want everyone else to see it. If I come over here and say, Take a Note, even before I start writing that note, look what happens. I've created a link to this particular event.
So I'm just gonna type in just a few pieces of sample text. I'm just gonna say New Note, and I'm gonna say, Done. Here at the top, you can say it is now related, New Note. I thought I said, note, new note is related here
at the top of the screen. So even when I go to close this, you can see it's added that note and I can go to a different event and so to speak, but when I opened this one up, once again, here, you can see the related note.
No matter when I've created this note, it's gonna jump the top and show me that note, whenever I have selected this particular event. So this is fantastic for creating your own agenda or even taking meeting notes when the meeting is in progress.
How to use Maps Side Panel with Google Calendar
Now there's another side panel app, which I find very helpful here within Google Calendar, and that's the Maps View. So if I come over here to Maps, I can do many of the same things that I would do in a new tab. I can search for a place and I can see this miniature view of the map, but it gets better. Let's look at this event over here,
which is titled Walk with Kevin. Let's say, for example, I have forgotten exactly where we were walking and how to get there. If I click on this event and then click on the location, it's going to immediately show me that location here in the side panel view.
So, no, I don't have to go to a new tab, it's not gonna launch anything new for me, I can read about it, I can view this location here. I can even click Directions and get those directions brought up in front of me and remind me, "Oh yeah, it's only gonna take me about 12 or 15 minutes "to drive to that location."
So again, I don't have to go anywhere if you have any event or appointment, which has an address on it, you can pull it up and view it right here within the map view on the side panel.
How to use Tasks Side View with Gmail Messages
But let's jump into our Gmail because I'm sure you wanna get the most out of this when you're dealing with your email as well. So, as we said before, the same functionality exists with Google Keep, you can create a note and attach it to a specific event here, or a specific message within Gmail.
I'm not gonna show you how to do that again, but what I do wanna show you is how you can take advantage
of Tasks here within the email view. So let's say for example, I'm gonna open up this email and I wanna create a task around this message, but I wanna come back to this message, right? I don't wanna just create the task, I wanna be able to come back to this message and make an identification, be able to link it together.
Now, what we don't wanna do is actually come up here and say, Add a Task. If we add a task up here, it is not gonna have a connection with this email. And that's fine, not all of your tasks need to have that connection, but if you do want that connection to be made,
you need to come up here to the top of the email and say, Add To Tasks. And what's gonna happen here is down here under No Date, because we haven't given it a date yet, you can see that it has brought in the subject line of this email and it has created that link.
So now I can come in here and I can edit this name, right? I can say that this is a new task for me to accomplish here. I've given it a different name here, but I've created that link to this email. And you can see I've got a few other examples here as well.
If I wanna go directly to this task and say, "Oh, what was that all about?" I can click on that and it's gonna bring me to that email. Can we meet on Thursday?
What was that task all about? I can click on that and it's gonna bring me directly to that email. Let's go back to that one that we just created, I can click on it, and here we go. Now I remember now I know what I need to do with accomplishing that task.
So not only can you view your task list on the same screen as your email, but you can create those connections as well.
How to create Events in Side View from Gmail
If we open up the calendar view, this is also very helpful if you're about to set up an appointment and say to yourself, "Oh, I don't know if I'm busy. "You know what, today might not work, "let's look at tomorrow, tomorrow is a lot more free."
I could probably create a meeting for this individual here, but it gets better. If I say that I want to create this meeting, let's say at 2:00 p.m, I'm gonna click on 2:00 p.m. on my little calendar here.
Again, it's gonna bring over the name of that email, the subject of that email, which I can edit if I want to, but this is what I find really handy is if I come down here to Add Guests, I can add anyone I want, but the very first option it says Based On Your Email.
Well, yeah, I want this meeting to be with myself and the person I'm talking to here. So I'm just gonna say, yeah, add that person. Here we are, I'm the organizer, here's the other individual. I can edit all of my other changes, all of my other options as I would, if I was in Google Calendar and then hit Save.
I'm going to say, Don't Send it This Time and there's my calendar appointment created directly
from within Gmail, including some of the information that I have here with this particular message. But maybe the best tip or the best option here
How to view Contacts in Gmail Side Panel
with the side panel within Gmail is the contact form. So here you can see I'm still within this email and it's showing people in this thread. Now I could always go back to all of my contacts and I could hit the search bar and search for a particular contact.
But by default, when you open up an email, it's gonna bring up the contacts that are related or are a part of this message. So if I click on this person here, now, I've got
all of their contact information at my fingertips. I've got their email address, work number, I've even got notes here at the bottom. If I want to use this as sort of a mini
or a simple CRM system. But here's the one that I find most useful, is Recent Interactions. I'm going to click on the More here, and you can see, I've got a couple of calendar events that are coming up.
I can click on those and it's gonna launch the calendar right away, but I can also see some of the messages that we've been involved with as well. So if I go here to let's get the team together, it's gonna immediately pull up that message.
Oh, September 2nd, did we have an email on that day? I can click on it, and immediately it's gonna bring up that message as well.
So you can see, you can quickly go through your history and review other calendar events and other messages right here on the right hand side.
How to send Drive Text to Google Keep
Now let's jump over to Google Drive. And in this example, we're gonna look at a document at a Google Doc, but again, these same features and functionality are gonna be available in Sheets and also in Slides.
So if we come over here, we can view our calendar if we want to, but I think keep is the real winner when you are using Docs or something within Google Drive. So for example, let's say that I want to get some of this bit of text from the document and I want to inject it or bring it into Google Keep.
Maybe this is a lengthy document, but there's some really good nuggets in there, that I wanna keep, or I want to review for later. All I need to do is come over to my document and highlight the piece of text that I want to bring over.
I'm gonna right click, and I'm gonna say, Save to Keep. Now, you don't actually have to have the Google side panel open for this to work, but it just a, this is a really great example of how we can see this in real time.
So I'm gonna say, Save to Keep, and here you can see on the right hand side, it's brought all of this text directly into my Google Keep.
And so now I can go and review it later, I can edit it, I don't have to be here within Google Documents. I can go over here and change that text and do whatever I want with it outside of Google Docs.
How to bring Keep Notes into Drive Docs
But the other nice thing is that it works both ways. In that example, we saw how we could take information from the Doc and send it to Keep, what about the other way around? Let's say I come down here to my team meeting notes and maybe these are things that I want to add to an agenda, or I want to add to my document.
Well, all I need to do is select that note, come up here to the menu and I'm gonna say, Add to Document, and immediately it is brought into my document. So I could have a large collection of notes, I could even have images over here in Google Keep,
and now I can bring it directly into my document. So another great way in which you can sync those two things together. Now, the other thing that I wanna
How to add more Side Panel Apps
point out when it comes to the Google side panel is that you can add more apps
than just these standard Google ones that you see here. You'll see at the bottom of the Google side panel, there is a plus button which says, Get Add On. So if I'm here within Google Docs and I add that or open it up, you're gonna see that there's a large collection of additional extensions that I can add to this.
Now, keep in mind, these are unique depending on where you launch this. As you can see in this case, I've got things like charts and Doc to Form and Easy Bibliography, things that are pertaining to a document, right? Things that are gonna help me here within my document.
But if I go back to Gmail and I hit that plus icon, I'm gonna see a completely different set of extensions. Here I've got things like Zoom, right? If I wanna create a Zoom meeting really quickly and add that link here, I've got like a Trello extension, If I wanna quickly convert an email into a Trello card.
So each one has its own set of extensions really useful so that you can be more efficient with your Google apps.
Now, if you're wanting even more tips on how to get the most out of Gmail, I invite you to watch the video down below where I show you seven settings you need to know and maybe change, to get the most out of your email.
Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.
