[PREMIUM] – One of the best things about the Internet is the plethora of web-based services out there designed to make your life easier. And Google is a leader in this area. I am a long professed “Google whore”. Sometimes I question the things that they work on, but there is no question they are a leader in this area.

Google Calendar is one of their flagship products. And people sometimes underestimate the power of this free, web-based app. So, in this article, I am going to provide a full rundown of how to master your schedule with Google Calendar.

In fact, because there is so much to cover here, the remainder of this article will be for PCMech members only. We will cover how to use multiple calendars, how to take advantage of reminders, mobile phone interaction, interfacing with Calendar via text message, keyboard shortcuts, etc. My goal is to have you jumping into using Calendar and enjoying the benefits of having your schedule online rather than sitting on your computer. Read on…

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The Benefits of Google Calendar

Software “in the cloud” always shares the same primary benefit: portability. When you have your schedule stored in Calendar, you can access it via your web browser, your mobile phone – pretty much anything that can get online. Also, the fact that it is maintained by Google means you don’t have to worry about workability. Their servers are running fine, so any time sensitive issue with be taken care of quickly.

Different Views

When you first log into Google Calendar, you will see different views to choose from, including day, week, month. You will also see one that says “4 days”. This will show the next 4 days. If you would like to change this option to something which suits you, you can go to “Settings” and change the option for “Custom View”.

You can also use the monthly calendar on the right side of the screen to drag from one day to another, creating a range between the two days. Just click on one day, hold the mouse button down while scrolling to another day. Release the mouse button and you will see your calendar range has changed.

Setting Appointments

There are two ways to add an event to your calendar: (1) the quick add, (2) directly on the calendar. When you use the Quick Add, just hit the link on the top left side of the screen and begin typing. You can use natural language here and Google will figure it out. For example, if you enter “lunch with Bob on Monday at 1pm”, Google will enter that event on the next Monday on your calendar automatically.

You can also click on a time on your calendar and a little bubble window will appear so that you can enter a date on that day and time.

To reschedule an event, you can drag and drop the event on your calendar from one day or time to another. You can also edit details of the event and change it manually for more fine-tuned control.

To remove an event, just click on it and hit the “Delete” link inside the bubble popup.

Entering events to your calendar is only part of it, though. When you edit the details of an event, you see you have many more options available to you.

Event Details

When editing the details of an event, you can change the title of an event and the time. When editing the time of an event, you can choose to make it an all day affair by checking the “all day” checkbox. If you want the event to automatically repeat, you can do that, too, by choosing a repeat interval in the dropdown. This is useful for putting things on your calendar that occur at regular intervals which you might otherwise forget.

You can also enter a location for the event. If you enter an address, you will be able to automatically map it using Google Maps. You can enter details to the event, including any notes that you might want to associate with it.

There is also an option for discussing the event. This is really only useful if you are sharing events with others (more on that below).

Each event can have a guest list. If you enter the email addresses of the other attendees, they can automatically get details sent to them for the event. They can also post comments on your event, so it acts as a community hub for any event you may be planning. If you are using Gmail, you can select from your contact list.

The reminders section (under Options) is one of my personal favorite features of Google Calendar. You can set a schedule of email reminders to be sent to you before an event. By default, the system will want to send you a reminder of the event one hour beforehand. You can change this interval using the dropdown. Click “Add a Reminder” to add another reminder to your schedule. You can also have event reminders sent to your mobile phone via SMS – a VERY cool feature that is only easily accomplished when using web-based software like this. The reminder would simply arrive via text message to your mobile phone. Lastly, if you choose the “popup” option, then you would get a popup window reminder in your web browser as long as you are using one of the Google services when it is time for the reminder to happen.

Setting Up Calendar With Your Mobile Phone

I often use SMS reminders for an event in order to remind me to do something when I know I’ll be on the road. In order to take advantage of this, you need to first set your mobile phone with Google. Here’s how:

1. Click on Settings, then Mobile Setup
2. Enter your cell phone number in the “phone number” field, including area code.
3. Select your cell phone carrier from the carrier dropdown. They support a LOT of carriers, so chances are your’s is on the list.
4. Click “Send Verification Code”. Google will then send a text message to your phone which contains a numerical code. Enter that code into “Verification code” field and press “Finish Setup”.

Once this is done, you can choose “SMS” as a reminder option on any event. Pretty handy.

Working With Multiple Calendars

You can have multiple calendars on one screen in Google. This allows you to categorize your events. For example, you might have different events for work. Others for family. So, you can set up these as different calendars, each with their own color code and other options.

To add a calendar, click on “Add” in your calendar list on the left side. You can then choose “Create a new calendar”. It will take you to the calendar details screen. From there, you can enter the name for the calendar, description, location, timezone, etc. When done, press “Create Calendar”.

Once the calendar is created, you can assign a different color code to it so that all events in that calendar will show up differently on screen. When viewing all of your events at once, you can easily make out the difference by color code.

Make It Portable

Another cool thing you can do with a calendar is make it portable. When looking at the calendar details screen, you will see “Embed This Calendar”. Using the code they provide, you can embed your calendar into a webpage somewhere else.

The “Calendar Address” code allows you to make your calendar data portable. The XML link allows you to monitor your events in any RSS feed reader. If you are using a Mac and running ICAL, you can use the ICAL link to automatically import your events from Google Calendar into ICAL. And if you want to create an HTML link to your calendar, you can do that, too.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Yes, even web-based software can have keyboard shortcuts. Here is the rundown:

Mobile Interface With Calendar

The integration between your mobile phone and Calendar can be more than just receiving SMS reminders. You can also send text message commands to Google by sending a text message to GEVENT (48368).

Make your text message read “next”, and Google will respond with the next scheduled event on your calendar. Send “day” and you’ll get your daily agenda via text message. Send “nday” and you’ll get tomorrow’s agenda.

You can also mimic the functionality of the “Quick Add” function by sending in new events via text message. So, in the above example for Quick Add, if you sent in a text message saying “lunch with Bob Monday at 1PM”, that event would be added to your calendar.

Sync With Your Desktop

Above, I discussed how you can use the various feeds to import your calendar into other applications. If you use ICAL on the Mac, for example, you can use the ICAL feed to bring your Google Calendar events into ICAL. A third-party service called Plaxo can also help you accomplish this.

If you are running Microsoft Outlook, Google has their own way of handling you. Google Calendar Sync is a small utility you can install and allow 2-way sync with Google Calendar and Outlook. If you enter an event in Outlook, it will sync with Calendar automatically. And vice versa.

Conclusion

This has been an overview of how to use Google Calendar to master your time management. If you have been using a desktop-based calendar, I would highly recommend you check out Google as a replacement. As we mentioned, you can probably tie in your offline data to your online data anyway. But, the benefits available to having your schedule on the Internet are too good to pass up. For example, email or SMS reminders just aren’t possible using Outlook (unless you’re in a corporate Exchange environment where they have all that set up). Google Calendar gives these kinds of capabilities to the average joe.

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