- It is time for part three of our Google extravaganza,
our back to basics series on the Google ecosystem.
We've already looked at your Google Account in part one,
Gmail in part two and today it's Google Calendar
on Dotto Tech.
(bright music)
Steve Dotto here how the heck you doing this fine day?
At Dotto Tech we make technology easy so you can do more,
and today's show is our third in a five-part series
on the Google ecosystem.
The goal of this series is to teach you
how all the different pieces of Google
fit together and work together.
'cause each one each tool that we look at
standalone is a pretty good tool,
but it's when they're integrated
this is when they work with each other
that the real magic starts to come out.
So this is a very back to basics series.
So if you're an experienced Google Calendar user
there's a very good chance you will learn
absolutely nothing new today,
but if you're not a very experienced Google Calendar user
then there should be plenty of value in today's lesson.
So we're gonna start talking about Google Calendar
from the perspective of just how it appears on our desktop,
but it's really important to understand that Google Calendar
like all of the Google tools are online services.
They're software as a service that lives in the Cloud.
So everything we do on the desktop
which I'll be showing you right now
is also reflected in works in our mobile device,
and in the calendar world that is especially important
because typically speaking when you're sitting at your desk
it's important to know what's on your calendar,
but it's really important to know what's on your calendar
when you're out and about and running around.
And think about it when you're running around
is so often when you're making appointments.
When you're at the dentist
and you're making the next appointment,
or you're checking what's upcoming.
So integrating with your phone is a
tremendously important part of this entire equation.
Will show you the mobile integration
at the end of the demo today,
but I wanna start with an overview
of Google Calendar itself.
It's free of course along as a part
of the Google's ecosystem is that part
of the entire Google suite of tools,
and in this particular case for the demo today
I'm not use the demo account that I set up
I'm gonna use my real calendar account
because it's far more populated,
and Google Calendar is a tool that
you will refine over time to your own needs.
It's a tool that you are gonna end up
customizing quite a bit.
Now I think calling it Google Calendar is almost a misnomer.
They should probably call it Google calendars plural
because typically speaking we don't
just have one calendar that we live off.
One of the beauties of Google calendar is
you can create multiple calendars that stack one
on top of the other and can kinda shine through each other
to give you a lot more control over your life.
So you can have a work calendar, a home calendar,
a personal calendar, a workout calendar,
you can have a business calendar,
you can have all different calendars
you can share family members calendars
so you can see all of the appointments
that might be important in your life
all in one combined screen.
That's a really important feature
that's built into Google Calendar.
Now as you look at my version of Google Calendar
it might look slightly different than yours
and that's primarily because Google Calendar
is very flexible in how you view your information.
Looking at the main screen right here
on the right hand side next to the Settings Menu
is a chance for us to choose how we view our calendar.
I've got mine set for month right now
which shows my entire month at a glance,
but you can quickly switch to the week at a glance,
you can switch to a four day view,
there's even a schedule of you
which just basically compresses everything
into your actual appointments,
so you're just see appointment after appointment
being laid out.
So there's lots of flexibility about
how you layout your calendar.
Now over here on the left hand side
they call this the Main Menu.
I think if I was in charge I would call it a sidebar
but they call it a Main Menu,
and in it is a little mini Quick Pick calendar.
so you can jump around the calendars very quickly here,
but down below is a listing of all
of the different calendars that
I either own or am subscribe to.
And this is really the beginning of
the power of Google Calendar.
Before we even talk about appointments
and setting up individual appointments
I'm gonna talk to you about how the calendars works
because it's so important.
As I mentioned just a few moments ago
you can set up multiple calendars
for different related topics.
So if you see here these are the calendars that I own.
I've got my own personal calendar which is my own schedule.
It's my agenda.
I also have an editorial calendar
for how I publish all of our content,
and then there's a reminders calendar and a task
and a webinar schedule calendar that I have
that puts up all of my different
puts up the schedule for producing all of the webinars
that we do on a weekly basis.
Plus down here in other calendars
these are calendars that I've subscribed to.
They can be other people's calendars
such as I've got my wife's calendar here
her work calendar here,
but also different applications
that have date related content within them.
Can also populate calendars for me.
So for example right here Asana tasks.
This is our task manager and project manager.
And watch what happens to my screen
when I turn on that calendar.
All of these new tasks come on to my screen
because they're all generated out of Asana,
and I've got actually several different calendars
within Asana for different types of things.
I also am subscribed to other calendars
like holidays in Canada,
the Vancouver Canucks my local hockey team,
you can subscribe to public calendar
such as the holidays and the Vancouver Canucks calendar,
or private calendars such as your spouses calendar
or somebody else who is a team member's calendar
so you can see other people's appointments.
This integration and this awareness of other calendars
is really at the heart of some of
the real strengths of Google Calendar.
Once you understand this
and feel comfortable with multiple calendars
you can turn on and off calendar layers
to make it more clear what's happening in your day,
but you can also very quickly then set
what your obligations are,
or your opportunities for time are
against what else is happening in your universe.
So I love this fact that I can kind of layer
these calendars this way.
So that's a kind of a global view of
how multiple calendars work within Google Calendar.
And we'll show you later on this video
just how to create a new calendar.
I'll show you that process 'cause
I think that's important to recognize.
But before I do the real building blocks
of your calendar are events.
The events screen is where all of
the magic happens in Google Calendar.
And so what you do if you wanna create a new event
which is you know an appointment effectively
is you can just either click within
the date itself of the date you want
or you can click on the little plus sign here
which will create an event.
Now this screen that you see here is a screen
that you're going to get become intimately comfortable with
as you use Google Calendar more and more because
there is so much power packed into this event screen
it's wonderful.
So first of all we create a title.
So let's say the title is going to be a
we're gonna have a "Team Meeting."
Team meeting,
and I'm gonna be setting up team oh,
that's a good idea team meeting.
And then you can set the date,
you can just quick pick the date
I'm gonna set it for 20th,
and I get you can set the time we'll make it at 2 p.m.
Now the timezone is gonna be based on your time zone,
and when you share this because a big part of
what we're gonna do what you can do with this
is you can share this appointment with others
and have people confirm that
they are have an appointment with you.
It will automatically transcribe the time
into their local time zone.
A big benefit there.
So you set the time or if it's gonna be an all-day event
and here you can set up repeating events.
So if you do the same,
if you have a team meeting every Thursday at 2 p.m.
you can set them up for every Tuesday at 2 p.m.
You can set up repeating meetings
that will automatically populate it into your calendar.
So that is another kind of one of
the nice powerhouse features that's built in.
Now we have the event details,
and we can make this an online meeting
or we can make it a Zoom meeting.
We can add by clicking here because
I have integrated Zoom with my Chrome browser,
one of the other aspects of Google Calendar
actually all of the Google suite of tools
is we can integrate other tools into the Google tools.
And in this particular case I have installed
the Chrome extension for Zoom meetings
because we use Zoom as our main video conferencing tool.
So now it appears here and if I click on this
it fills in all of the registration information
so people can join in on the meeting
so they know what to click and they know exactly
how to get into the meeting itself.
Isn't that cool?
Now this is valuable if it's your team,
but this is incredibly valuable if you're inviting
somebody from the outside into your meeting.
So you can set that up here.
You could also set up a location
if it was gonna be an actual physical location.
So if we were gonna meet at Earls in Richmond,
Earls Richmond BC.
I'm gonna take this in and see if it works.
Ah there it is Earls Kitchen and Bar in Richmond BC.
So it actually does a Google search.
Ah, another piece of integration,
Google Calendar is now integrating
with Google Search and Google Maps
and it's pulling up the location here.
Now the cool thing is when we go to actually go to Earls
if we weren't gonna have it on Zoom
but we were gonna go to the restaurant
when I go to that restaurant
when I pull up the appointment on my calendar on my phone
it'll tell me how long it's gonna take me to get there
and it'll even invoke Google Maps
and give me directions on how to get there.
This is where the integration really starts to be magic,
and you start to recognize the power of integrating
all of the different tools of Google together.
So here we're using Google Calendar, Google Search
and Google Maps all together to help organize us
and get us to our appointment on time
and where we're supposed to be.
Absolutely brilliant.
If you weren't using Zoom conferencing
you can add other conferencing tools
such as Google Hangouts or you could incorporate Skype
or some other tool here.
The notification window tells you
whether or not you can set how early
you're gonna be reminded for a meeting.
So in this particular case because
I might have to be driving 30 minutes
to get to the restaurant I might just change that selection
and say I wanna be reminded 45 minutes
before this meeting I wanna a notification come through
to remind me that I have this meeting
so you can set things up that way.
Next this is really cool.
This is which of my calendars that I own
is this gonna go on?
Is this particular appointment can go on?
And you see all of the calendars have a color code as well.
So the calendars all have a default color code,
but you could also change the color
of any of your appointments.
So if you like to put all of your
you know kind of personal work tasks in one color
you can set them all up,
you can set up your own color code system if you choose.
And people who really really dive
into the deep end of using Google Calendar
will often do that.
They will often color code all of their appointments
so that when they are looking at their calendar
they see by color exactly what kind of activities
they're gonna be involved in.
And that's a really great technique to work with.
This is whether or not you're gonna be busy or not.
So this is if you're sharing your calendars with other,
if you want to let people know
whether or not you have this appointment or not,
you can either classify this time as busy or free,
or you can set it up for visibility as far as public
or private visibility when you're sharing
your calendar with other people.
So really granular support over top
of how you use the calendar.
And then you've got this description,
this event description field which is a full HTML window,
so if you were actually planning on a meeting,
on a business meeting, a team meeting,
you could put the agenda in here,
you can attach other documents in here,
you can create bullet points and ordered lists,
or you can create web links all right within this document
that then when you share it with others,
when you share the point with others
they'll be able to see the agenda here.
Again terrific flexibility.
Now I've been talking a lot about the fact that
this event screen while it will organize your calendar
can also be used to invite in to work with others.
And on the right-hand side here is
where we can add different guests to the meeting.
And all you do is you click on the window
and you start typing in people's names
and you can invite somebody.
So I'm gonna invite April from our team and here is April,
and so now I can send an invitation to her
and then when I go to save this you see here that
it will invite others if they are here listed out
as a guest a participant in the meeting.
And the cool thing is it sends an email
to their email address and you'll all receive these emails.
It's a a Google, a Gmail email that comes into your inbox
and it says you are invited to this event
are you gonna attend?
And you click on yes I'm gonna attend,
it'll automatically populate your calendar
plus it'll send back notification to me
that the person is going to attend the meeting.
Tremendous control over everything through this interface.
Now I'm actually gonna remove April because
I don't want her to think that we have a meeting coming up
and I'm gonna save this because I wanna show this to you
on the smartphone so you can see how this appointment
that we just created looks.
And where's it?
Here it is right there team meeting on the 20th,
so now it's appeared here in the calendar.
So it's that easy for you to create different events,
and if you would look at the view in different ways
if we go to the week view and we move to next week
when that meeting is will see that meeting in,
was 20th wasn't it?
So it's two weeks from now,
there it is right there,
and there's the team meeting right there
and it says at Earls Kitchen and Bar
actually have it both Zoom and Earls Kitchen Bar.
If I need to go in and edit at any point I just click on it
and I have all of the details right here
that I can go in and I can modify that meeting.
So that gives you an idea of kinda
the basic structure of Google calendars.
Now I'm gonna show you how to create a new calendar
other than your basic calendar that you started with,
and I'm gonna show you the preferences as well
before we jump and take a look at it in mobile.
So the first thing to do is how to create a new calendar.
And you create a new calendar
I'm trying to remember how you do it.
Do we do it here?
Let's take a look here.
Let's go into Settings.
Ah, there it is Add a Calendar.
And here we go Add a New Calendar.
So here's where I said we can add our own new calendar,
but you could also subscribe to other calendars
that other people have or public calendars
that you can download.
I'll show you more on that in a minute,
but if I'm gonna create a new calendar
I click here and that creates a new calendar
where I give it a name,
I make it my calendar, add a description
and I'm not gonna do this because
I don't need extra calendars right now,
but that is the process of going through
and creating a brand new calendar.
Now with any of the calendars that you've created
you can then share those calendars
and lemme show you how that happens.
By clicking on the calendar here in the sidebar
I can go down and I can share it with specific people.
So here I have it actually shared my calendar
with Shannon with my wife so that she can see my calendar.
Now if you wanna share it with individuals
you do it by email address like that,
but if you also wanna have a public calendar
that you share with many people
you can create a shareable link.
Now why would you wanna create a public calendar?
You might be wondering.
Well, let's say that I coach a little softball team
a kid's softball team.
I can create a public calendar
of our schedule of games and practices
and I can then create a shareable link
that I email out to all of the parents
of the kids that I coach on the softball team
and then they can load that calendar
and subscribe to that calendar
so it will appear on their calendar
when they're looking at it.
Do you get the brilliance?
This is a tremendously powerful tool.
I have to say that I think in my mind Google Calendar
might be one of my favorite tools that Google has
because it is just so darn powerful.
Now before we leave I wanna take you
into the mobile version of Google Calendar
so you can see how all of this information is mirrored
within the calendar on the mobile app,
but you even get some additional integration here.
So I've got my calendar here open and in this calendar
if you hit the hamburger menu on the left-hand side
that gets you into all of your different selections
as far as how you view your calendar.
If you wanna view week at a glance,
month at a glance et cetera,
and also turn on and off your different calendars
from this position here.
But what I really wanna show you right now is
I can just scroll to the right to
the 20th there it is there,
and there's our team meeting.
That's the meeting right there
that we were just talking about.
And if we open that (laughs)
this is the coolest thing.
It looks at the location of the meeting
and it pulls a graphic if it can
from the website or from the the Google business page
of the business that you have the meeting at.
So we see it right there.
But also if I just tap here on the location
up comes Google Maps it'll give me directions
on how to get to that location.
I really like how this integration works.
And Google Maps of course now is also monitoring traffic.
So it's telling you how long it will take you to get there.
So before you even leave home if you've got an appointment
you know if there's gonna be traffic congestion
and if you should be leaving a little bit earlier.
Just some really great integrated technology,
and that's what the Google ecosystem brings to the table.
The fact that all of these different apps
talk to each other.
If you think about all the things that can talk
to Google Calendar are, email can talk to Google Calendar
setting up appointments, verifying appointments
and in confirming attendance
and even populating our calendar from a click within a Gmail
within an email within an email request.
Of course Google Maps and Google Search works
as we saw in setting up the event screen,
and they all work together seamlessly to help keep
us on track and make us that much more productive.
Google Calendar winner winner chicken dinner
all the way as far as I'm concerned.
So that wraps up part three
of our five-part series on the Google ecosystem.
We've looked at Accounts, Gmail and now Google Calendar.
So what's up next Steve?
I'll tell you what's up next,
we're gonna be talking about Google Drive.
Google Drive is Google's online suite of applications.
Word processing, spreadsheets, presentations
and online storage.
We'll be looking at that in our next episode.
So if you have not yet subscribed to this channel
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Plus if you have any questions
if you want more details on any topics
give us a comment below.
Well, I don't have time to reply to every comment
I guarantee you I read each comment,
and what you ask for often ends up as one
of our videos here at Dotto Tech.
So thanks so much for spending this time with us,
take some time and watch one of our other videos.
Till next time I am Steve Dotto.
I found stove in my castle. (speaking faintly)