Even if you already use an electronic calendar (like Outlook or a PDA), switching to a web-based calendar will change your life… really! I really like Google Calendar for moms because of it’s versatility, and I highly recommend that you consider switching over, too. You’ll be glad you did!
There are numerous benefits to doing your scheduling online, but here are the highlights:
- You can manage multiple calendars easily
- You can share your schedule with other people while still keeping private events private
- You can get your calendar on the go from any computer, mobile phone, and more
- You can get reminders of events sent to your email, displayed as pop-ups on your screen, or displayed on your mobile phone via SMS
- You can send invitations and track RSVPs automatically
- You can sync with your other desktop applications to avoid duplicates or losing appointments
- You can still work offline when you don’t have internet access
Not every online calendar tool provides these services but Google Calendar does… for free… and a whole lot more!
There are a few things people find tricky when they first use online calendars like Google Calendar, so let’s get them out the way now:
- You can display multiple calendars in one Google Calendar window. Unlike paper calendars, which are difficult to color code without using different colors of pens, online calendars are easy to differentiate visually from each other. So instead of creating a calendar called “My calendar” and putting everything on it, it’s much better to create multiple calendars and have them all show up at the same time. It’s covered in more detail below, but I just wanted to give you a heads up about it now.
- You can share your calendars with people. You can choose to share a calendar with everyone (yes, the whole world) or with people you invite to view them. Both have their uses, but you must be VERY careful what information you share and with whom. I came across an interesting article recently about all the things a person could tell about you from an online shared calendar… scary! This concept of sharing is another reason it’s a good idea to build multiple calendars, each with their own privacy settings. After all, your mother probably doesn’t need to know about all of your socializing, just when you’re traveling so she doesn’t worry when you don’t answer your home phone.
- You can combine calendars later if you need to. It’s a simple matter of exporting the events and then importing them back into a different calendar.
Just as with email folders, the trick to using online calendars successfully is to keep them as simple as possible. Here are five easy steps to make sure you transition to an online calendar smoothly and get up and running quickly:
Step 1: Think through what calendars you need and then go from there
The easiest way to do this is to look at your existing calendar and ask yourself the following two questions:
- What are the logical categories of events I have every week? This might be work, exercise, family, social, travel, or any other category that makes sense to you.
- Which of these categories would it be useful to share and with whom? A typical calendar you might want to share is your work calendar. It would be helpful for your colleagues and family to be able to see it, since your work schedule impacts both groups. On the other hand, your family calendar is probably not appropriate to share with your work colleagues, so it would need to have more limited sharing associated with it.
- Come up with no more than 5 calendars that would incorporate all of your needs. Why a limit of 5? I find that more than that gets overwhelming.
- Now review your calendar for the past month and make sure every event will fit neatly in one of your 5 calendars. Tweak your system as needed until you accomplish this.
Step 2: Populate your calendars
Now that you’ve mapped out what calendars you need, let’s create them and populate them with some events. There is a great overview of Google Calendar from Appstorm.com called Getting Things Done with Google Calendar that everyone should read. There are some decent video tutorials for Google Calendar on YouTube, but I think the article does a great job of providing clear instructions with helpful screenshots.
Go ahead now and create your calendars and put the events for the upcoming week into them.
Step 3: Set up sharing
You probably had at least one calendar that you’d like to share with someone. I suggest you start sharing with someone first who is also using Google Calendar to ease the transition. Since you’re new to this, you don’t want to have to teach someone else at the same time! And again, just a reminder to be very careful who you share information with– it’s easy to figure out very personal information from looking at someone’s calendar!
Do you have any upcoming events that you’d like to invite others to attend? If not, don’t worry– I’m sure you’ll have use for this soon enough. But if you already have an event, consider using Google Calendar to set it up and issue invites. This is done in the “Edit event details” window. (Note: If you’re doing something big like a dinner party, I suggest using Evite instead of Google Calendar.)
Step 4: Explore other useful features
Now that you’ve explored the details view a bit, try out the other features there as well. You can set up a reminder for the event using email or a pop-up window, or for added functionality you can set up the calendar to send alerts to your mobile phone with SMS. To set that up you need to go into your Calendar Settings, Mobile Setup. It will take you through the setup process once and then offer you the option of choosing SMS reminders the next time you edit an event.
Another fantastic feature of Google Calendar is its integration with Google Maps. Just put the location information you have into the “Where” box on your event details and Google Maps will try to find it and create a map for you. The “map” link that appears after you save the event will take you or other invitees directly to a Google Maps page with all of its functionality, including getting directions. Cool, huh?
Step 5: Add public calendars
Now that you’ve played around a bit and are more comfortable with using online calendars you created, why not expand to publicly available calendars of use to you? A simple way to do this is to add the national holidays calendar for your country. This can be done by clicking the Add link under “Other calendars” and then selecting “Browse Interesting Calendars” until you find what you’re looking for.
I also subscribe to the University of Florida Office of Sustainability calendar because I live in Gainesville and often find interesting events to attend on it. Sure I could visit it online at their website, but it’s much easier to just subscribe to it (in Other calendars). The great thing is that I can also add individual events to one of my own calendars, for example a networking mixer to my Social calendar, by clicking on an event name on a public calendar then selecting “More actions” and “Copy to Social” calendar. That way I can check the Sustainability calendar once or twice a month and copy over any relevant events to one of my calendars quickly and easily.
Google Calendar used to offer a great feature for searching public calendars, but they did away with it a while ago, much to the disappointment of diehard Calendar users. Now to subscribe you have to know the email address of the person whose calendar you want to add or the URL of the calendar. Not as useful, but probably a good move given how many people were sharing personal calendars publicly without even realizing it. (Of course you’ll never make that mistake, right?!)
Google Calendar for moms is a winner!
