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You spend an awful lot of time with your email. So wouldn't it be nice if you had a collection of tools to make your email experience that much easier?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at an extension that doesn't just do one thing or two things. It has a whole mix of cool tools to help make your life so much easier.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And today I want to introduce you to Mailbutler.

Now Mailbutler does a variety of different things, but in today's video, we're gonna zero in on four of its core tools. Now in today's video, I'm gonna be showing you Mailbutler within Gmail, but Mailbutler is available for both Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook users as well.

Email Tracking

So let's take a look at one of the first cool features of Mailbutler, and that is Email Tracking. So I'm gonna compose a new message here, and I'm just gonna send it to a dummy email address here that I use from time to time, I'm just gonna say hello.

And how often have you sent a question or a message and wondering when someone actually receives it? Now you don't wanna seem like a pest following up on that email too early, wouldn't it be nice to know when that person has actually opened up that email?

Well, you can do that with Mailbutler. Here at the bottom of my message you can see that I have a variety of different tools, and this is exactly what the Mailbutler extension gives me.

Here is called Open Tracking and I've had it checked by default. Now you can also enable Link Tracking to know when someone has actually clicked on a link within your email, but we're only gonna to focus on Open Tracking at this time, when someone opens the email and how often it is open.

So with that enabled, all I have to do is just send this email like I would in any other email, I don't have to do anything special along with it. But I'm gonna be notified, and in fact, I'm gonna see that here on my screen when someone has actually opened up that email.

If I go to my sent folder here and you can see that there is this little icon similar to what we just saw in the previous email. So I know that these three emails have been opened, they've got this little blue double check mark, but here's the one that I just sent it has tracking enabled, but it's not yet opened.

So I'm just gonna go over and actually open up that particular email that I just sent here, and yeah, I've read it, blah, blah, blah, that type of thing on my end what I'm gonna see is that that now changes to the double check mark. So I can see exactly, hey, and if I hover over it first opened today at 1:34 p.m.

Now I can act on that if I need to, maybe I need to follow up with a phone call or maybe I want to check in and see if they have any further questions. So the ability to have email tracking and to see the history of that email is really, really powerful.

On top of that, Mailbutler has its own dashboard as well. And so here you can see, you can track all of your email that you have enabled email tracking on to see when it was first opened, if it was open multiple times, for example, if they've replied to it.

Schedule Send

A great way, again, to keep track, maybe not have all of your emails, but especially those that mean the most to you. Now, another great feature of Mailbutler is the ability to schedule an email to be delivered sometime in the future.

Now, of course, some of you may be familiar with this feature within Gmail. If you come down to the very bottom of your screen here and hit this dropdown arrow, we have this Schedule Send ability, but of course not every email application has this capability.

Here we see that there's a Schedule Send, this is the Mailbutler version. And this is what's special about this, yes, I can choose on my own when I would like to send this message, maybe I wanna send it tomorrow and I can choose, you know, anytime I want, maybe I want to send it tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 p.m.

However, when I've got an email address in the message already, it's gonna ask me if I'd like to optimize the delivery time for this individual. I'm gonna check this box and we're gonna see that that 2:00 p.m. now changes to 10:05 a.m.

Why is that? Well, Mailbutler has kept track of my previous messages and when this email address has opened them up or replied to my other messages in the past.

So it's using real data to say this is probably one of the best times that you could deliver a message to this particular individual in order for them to see it, in order for them to grab their attention and actually respond to your email. All I have to do now is hit schedule, and now that message will be delivered at that particular time.

Signatures

So it takes Send Later one step further using real data to help to optimize the delivery of that message. Let's move on to Signatures, which is something that is really special here within Mailbutler, 'cause I know many of you have asked questions about where can I go to create a great email signature.

Back inside the Mailbutler dashboard, all I need to do is come down here to Signatures, and here you can see here is a sample signature that I created in just under a minute. By selecting Add Signature, Mailbutler gives us a variety of different options, a variety of different templates that we can start out with and start to move things around.

And of course you can adjust your colors, add a logo, add your branding. In this particular example, you can add your own images and it's so easy to quickly and easily add your social media links for example, so that you can create a professional looking signature.

But the other great thing is that you can swap between a of signatures because some of you may be familiar that depending on who you're speaking to and the messaging behind it, you may have a particular signature that you would like to include. And when it comes to data, Mailbutler continues to track the progress and how successful these signatures are.

So for example, both the Click-through Rate and the Reply Rate will be recorded based on these signatures. So you may want to AB test a variety of signatures to see which one is more clickable, which ones are people actually paying attention to.

Now, when I jumped back over into my Gmail and I start to compose a message, all I need to do, if I don't like this default signature that I have set up here in Gmail, I can come down here to the Signature bar and I can select Scott's signature. I can put it right in here and continue with my message.

And again, if I need to swap that out, if I need to go to something different, I'm just gonna click New Signature as the example even though I haven't really set this one up, I can do so as well. Now, the last thing that I wanna show you here is the Advanced Contact Information.

Contact Information

As mentioned, Mailbutler gives you the ability to track emails and record history of your email messages. But wouldn't it be great if you could pull in some further information as well?

I'm gonna click on this message here and I may have to block out some of the content here just for privacy reasons. But now all I need to do is come over here to this Google sidebar and open up Mailbutler, and now I have additional information that I can use to take advantage of when I am corresponding with this individual.

Maybe I forgot the last time that we actually had a conversation together, or if they have opened up messages from me in the past. Mailbutler also provides you with some very simplified CRM information.

I can take a note about this sender, I can add a task or a to do list associated with this message, or with this contact as well. So whether you're wanting to track your emails, whether you want to schedule an optimal time to deliver those emails, manage your contacts, or create a professional signature, Mailbutler has something for you.

Be sure to check them out at mailbutler.io. Thank you so much for watching today's video, and if you have any questions, be sure to leave them for me in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

When it comes to the world of business, sales is your lifeblood.

No matter what you sell whether it's a product or a service, you need to make sales in order for your business, not only to survive but especially to thrive.

So in today's video, I wanna show you the importance of using a CRM tool and more importantly, to see if Pipedrive might be the best CRM tool for you.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And yes, a customer relationship management system.

Why a Sales CRM is important

Is very important for managing all of your clients and potential clients.

You want a central place to store their contact information, things like name and your email history and phone numbers and important things when you go to reach out to those contacts.

But really the core area of any CRM system is the pipeline or the sales funnel as we see here.

You need to manage those clients from the very first point of contact all the way to the end of your sales funnel where they sign a contract or they actually purchase your product or service.

So let's take a look at some of the crucial and essential features of Pipedrive.

Viewing leads & sales pipeline in Pipedrive

So here we are taking a look at a sample pipe line. And on the left hand side, we are starting with our leads, this may be when someone first reaches out and fills in our contact form on our website and all the way to the right we get to negotiations started, right. This is when they've actually signed a deal and they've won the deal

and we're actually going to start working with this client. But of course, no one goes

from the far left to the far right in just a few seconds or moments. Depending on your product and especially on the prices of those products,

there are probably several steps in between. Pipedrive makes it very easy and very clear where things are at and that's what I really love

Viewing deals & client records in Pipedrive

About Pipedrive is its simplicity.

So for example, if I click on this Wayne Enterprises deal, I can see exactly how long it's been in my various stages.

In the top left hand corner, I can see the value or the potential value of this deal.

I can see that there's actually two products involved in this particular deal, consulting services and webinar training here.

And if I'm about to jump into a meeting, if I know that this is something I'm working on today, all I need to do is scroll down and I've got my contact information.

I've got a phone number here and perhaps most importantly, I've got an activity feed here on the right hand side.

So I know when I've made changes to the deal, I know when I last made a phone call, when I made my first pitch to them et cetera and I can keep my notes right here within the deal.

But of course because it's a CRM system, I could click on Wayne Enterprises and see, is this the only active deal I've had with them or currently have with them?

And here I can see actually I've got two deals right now.

And so that's gonna be important.

Maybe they're two different contacts within the same organization or maybe it's the same contact and I need to manage the conversation.

I need to manage the sales process because there are two deals.

Sales forecasting in Pipedrive

So getting back to my workflow, my sales funnel here, let's take a look at some of the other things that are staring back at us.

So of course, we've got our numbers herein terms of the value of the products or the value of these deals.

And that's very important when it comes to forecasting.

However, as any sales person will know that not everyone who starts in the lead area is going to end up being a customer.

So we can't count on these numbers here.

We need to do some forecasting.

So here if I come up to the top right and hit Edit, I go into my edit mode and I can just drag things around if I need to rearrange the order of my sales funnel.

I can give things new names if I need to.

But here is that probability that I was talking about and this is really crucial when you're managing your sales funnel.

Typically on any sales funnel on the left hand side, you're gonna have your probability rather low because only a fraction or a small percentage of your leads are gonna turn into paying customers.

But hopefully as you work your way through to the final stages that probability grows.

And here you can see once I've made a proposal just from my own experience and from history, I believe that there's an 80% chance that they will actually close this deal.

There's another nice feature that you can add here, it's something that's called rotting in days and what that means is that I can give myself

Setting custom notifications in Pipedrive

A warning if something has been in one of these stages too long.

So let's say after I first made contact, I need to make sure that it keeps moving after three days.

I don't want anything sitting here in this stage for more than three days.

So that's why I've put three here.

Now, you don't have to give it probability and you don't have to give it in these rotting in periods as well but just some nice features here as a part of the setup.

So when I hit Save here, what you'll see if we go back to our pipeline is at the top, we have the probability of these deals.

So for example, I can see that there's perhaps a total of 72,000 listed here within this.

There might be a few other products that are added here as well but I can probably only count on roughly $36,000 for my income or for my sale, I should say.

And that's just based on history, right.

That may be roughly 50% of these deals are gonna be able to work its way through to the very end.

Taking action with activities in Pipedrive

Let's look at some of the other helpful things that Pipedrive does so that we can stay on top of our sales process.

You'll notice that we have a few different colors here, we've got a green icon, we've got some red and we've got a little yellow warning sign as well.

What do all of these mean?

Well, the green means that I've got an activity that is due today.

So if I click on this one, on this George Foreman deal, if I click on it, you can see that I am due to give my first pitch today.

Now, once I've done that, once I've checked it off here by marking this little radio button, what Pipedrive is going to do is automatically open up this schedule dialogue.

And this is one of those features that I really enjoy with the CRM system.

It's not going to force me to add another activity but again, as any good sales person will know, you need to be thinking ahead.

So after that first pitch, depending on how it went, what is my next step?

What should I be doing next?

Well, I think a phone call probably makes a lot of sense but if I gave that pitch today, maybe I'm going to call them in two days time.

And if I want, I can see a preview of my calendar here on the right hand side and I can get to do that early in the morning.

I'm gonna try and group some of my calls together.

So I'm gonna do that at 10 o'clock.

If I want, I can add some additional notes here but I'm just going to hit Save.

And so now that little green icon turns to grey.

That means that I have an activity coming up.

I have an activity in the queue, it's just not due in the moment.

So if I click on any of these other ones here, you can see, oh, my first pitch is tomorrow with this client.

That's good, what about red and yellow?

Well, red, you can probably already guess, it means that I'm overdue.

Okay, I was supposed to make this followup call three days ago but I haven't yet.

So that's maybe where I should be putting my attention.

And then when it comes to this little yellow warning icon, what that means is I don't have an activity.

I've got nothing planned for this client.

So I should be thinking about what is the next steps so I can make that contact and start to push them through, start to guide them through my sales process.

Adding products to Pipedrive

Now another nice feature here is that we can add a product so it's that much easier to add them to a deal.

Why don't we open up this Coke deal here for example and I've already got some dollar value here but let's just say it's a dummy value.

This was just an initial value that I set up with this client.

Let's say that I've started a discussion with them and now we've got a better feel of what they're interested in.

Well, what you can do is create products or services in advance so when I come in here, all I have to do is click on this field and say, oh, they're actually interested in having me come and speak, that's really good so I'm gonna hit that as save.

And now that is listed here as my deal.

I've already given it a preset price.

I can come in here and change that price, right.

If it differs from my standard pricing or if I wanna give a discount but you can pre set up, let me go here to the product section just to show you, I can add additional products, give them a product code and even a default value here so I can manage that on the fly.

So if you're needing a better way to manage all of your clients and a more efficient way to manage your sales process, check out Pipedrive, click the link in the description to try Pipedrive free for 30 days and receive 25% off your first three months.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Do you wanna look better, sound better and just overall have a better Zoom experience?

Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you seven settings that you should tweak or at the very least review so that you can get the very best out of Zoom.

Hello everyone, it's Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And we're gonna be spending our time right here in these Zoom settings.

How to check for Zoom updates

Now, when you open up your desktop settings, just in case you see something that is different in your settings, what I want you to do is come up here to your profile picture, and I wanna show you how to check for updates.

Now, if it's a major update, Zoom will probably prompt you anyhow, but just in case you don't see one of these settings in your Zoom account, you wanna come up here hit your profile picture and select Check for Updates.

Make sure that you're on the latest release.

Okay, next up let's hit that gear icon

Upload a profile picture to Zoom

And jump into tip number one and this one has to do with looking good, especially when we are off camera.

You don't know how many times people have asked Scott, how do I get my profile picture within my Zoom account?

Well, all you need to do is come down here to profile.

It's pretty easy to upload or change an existing picture.

Now, the reason why I think this comes in handy is that whenever your video is off this profile picture will appear and it just looks that much more professional.

Especially when you are joining a meeting such as when you are waiting in the waiting room and it makes it a lot easier for the other host and other people to see who you are, in things like the chat window and the participant list as well.

So I would highly recommend that you upload your best profile picture, but let's stick with looking good.

Touch up your appearance in Zoom

And we're gonna come back here to our video.

And Zoom has recently added a few new things that we can do to adjust the quality of our video.

The first one here has to do with touch up my appearance.

Now this isn't exactly brand new, it's just that they've given us a few more options.

This used to be just a checkbox on and off, but you can see now we have a slider here to the right, so we can see how much do we actually want or need to touch up our appearance.

The more you drag it to the right, the more it will tend to soften up your skin and facial characteristics.

If you pull it all the way back to the left, it's almost the same as unchecking this.

So again, depending on your profile, you may wanna adjust what is the right setting for you for touching up your appearance.

Adjust for low light in Zoom

But the other one on this same screen has to do with adjusting our light and this is really, really useful, especially for those of us who may not have professional lighting or proper lighting in front of us.

Now, again, we can turn it on and off, but we can also choose a manual option.

If we want to get a sliding bar here.

Now that's a little bright, right?

I'm starting to look like a bit of a ghost there, but I've ever bring it too far back, maybe somewhere in the middle, just so that you can see me nice and clear.

If you don't like that, you can always go back to auto.

I think auto does a relatively good job, but again, just a little more control to make sure that we look our best within our Zoom calls.

Show video preview when joining Zoom meeting

All right, let's stick here with our video and the one I wanna show you down below, you might have to scroll down on these settings.

But something that is typically turned on by default, but I encourage you, strongly encourage you to make sure it's turned on is this checkbox.

It says always show video preview dialogue when joining a video meeting.

Now for myself, I'm typically the host and so I typically have my video set up.

I know where everything is and I'll take a quick glance ahead of time.

But when you are joining a meeting, it's a lot better to get that first preview, just to make sure that nothing is funny in the background, that the camera's at the right angle, that you're looking at the right camera, if you happen to have multiple cameras.

So leaving this check, it's gonna give you that little preview.

So you don't just arrive into a video with everything over the place and Oh my goodness, the video's zoomed in on my chin or something funny like that.

So just make sure that this one is checked on as well.

Now, the next one in our list.

Suppress Zoom background noise

Might be the most important one or what I feel is the biggest update here on Zoom.

And this one actually has to do with our audio settings.

Now, of course, you can always test your speaker and test your mic, which I do encourage from time to time, especially if you have multiple inputs or as I mentioned before, multiple webcams that you use.

But it's the one here in the middle of the screen, which I think is so crucial, suppress background noise.

So what does this setting do?

Well, chances are, you may be typing on your keyboard during a meeting, or perhaps you have a fan in the background that may be noisy, perhaps you are a dog owner, perhaps you have small children at home.

What this setting is going to do is it is going to try and suppress that background noise.

Now, we have a few different choices here.

It is going to be set to auto by default, but depending on your particular situation or just the particular day, you can choose low, medium or high.

So again, if you're worried about other participants hearing the background noise in your home or in your office, you can adjust this level here.

This is really helpful again, for typing on a keyboard or any other sound that may be distracting to other participants.

Hold space bar to unmute yourself in Zoom

Now sticking with our audio here, I wanna go down to the second last option here on this screen and this has to do with pressing and holding the space bar to temporarily unmute yourself.

Now, again, this is typically selected by default.

So I hope this has already on for you, but what this will do is that if you are joining, if you're participating in a Zoom meeting and maybe you're not talking most of the time, you're only contributing here and there.

What this allows you to do is that when you are muted, you can simply press and hold that space bar.

You can speak, you can give your answer or give your input and then release the space bar and you will go back to being muted.

So you can almost think of it like a red button, like in a recording studio or maybe something that you would see in a TV broadcast studio, where you're just holding the button down, you're talking, everyone can hear you, but as soon as you release it, you go back to being muted.

I use this one quite frequently when I'm participating in a meeting and I'm not doing the bulk of the talk and I'm not the one who's presenting, but I'm just interjecting here and there.

It keeps my background noise absolutely to zero unless when I am talking.

Zoom video filters

And then the last one that I wanna share with you today is a little bit of a fun one.

Now I've talked to you before about how you can set up a virtual background, like the one that you see here.

If you'd like to learn more about how to set up your own virtual custom background, complete with a logo, I'll leave a link to that in the description below.

But something that Zoom just added frequently was video filters.

And yes, maybe this is only applicable to those of you who are a teacher or those who want to have a little more fun with your Zoom meetings.

You can put on some fancy shades if you want and if you feel it's necessary to wear a mask, even though it's a Zoom meeting, you can do so as well.

Just remember to select none here in the top left hand corner before your next meeting, just so you don't look a little foolish or look a little silly for your next Zoom meeting.

Now, if you'd like even more Zoom tips, I'm gonna leave a link below to a playlist of my very best Zoom meeting tips, everything from learning how to use breakout rooms, to sharing your screen, including sharing video in an optimal way.

So be sure to click that playlist for more.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Do you wanna learn how to set up a quiz in Google Forms, but you don't know where to start?

Well, then this video is for you.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And the great thing about Google Forms is that we can quickly and easily set up an auto-graded quiz, so not only can your students or your recipients take the quiz, but they can receive their grades automatically after submitting, if desired.

We're gonna look at all the options available to us as a part of today's video.

Now, I'm going to assume as we begin here that you know a little bit about Google Forms already.

If not, I encourage you to check out my video on everything you need to know about Google Forms, but here we have a fairly basic, a fairly simple form here, and we're going to convert it into an auto-grading quiz.

Question types for self-graded quizzes

Now, the first thing that should be noted are the types of questions that you can use and the types that you can't for giving an automatic grade.

You're already probably familiar that here within Google Forms, there's a large number of different question types that we can choose and we can use when we are setting up our forms and when we're setting up our quizzes.

However, there are only six that we can use to assign points and provide an answer key and they're listed here: short answer and multiple choice, probably the two most popular or the two that you're gonna use most frequently.

But we can also use checkboxes, dropdown, and also the multiple choice grid and checkbox grid as well.

In today's example, we're gonna use three of those and again, including the ones that are perhaps the most common.

So first, let's just quickly go through the questions.

Quiz question examples

That I have here. The first one is not gonna have a grade at all. I'm just asking for their name, right? So it's just a short answer here. And below, I've got a multiple choice question. I've got a checkbox question where I want them to select more than one.

I want them to select all the correct answers. And then the last one is a short answer question. However, although I've added these questions to the form, it is not a quiz just yet.

How to enable quiz & quiz settings

What we need to do is come up here to the gear icon, up to settings and we wanna click on the quizzes tab here.

Now, everything is gonna be grayed out until we make this a quiz.

So if we toggle this button here, now we've got a few additional options down below.

Here are the defaults. By default, we are going to release the grade immediately after each submission.

Now note, this is not after each question. This is after the entire form is completed.

After the entire quiz is given, that's when we can release the grade.

But if we don't want to do that, we can choose this option later after manual review.

So this allows you, if you are the teacher or if you are the one who is collecting this quiz, you can review those answers before sending them the final grade.

Now note, if you choose this later option, it's going to force the user to provide their email address because you need some way to send that information to them.

The first one you do not need to do that. That's precisely why I've chosen just to ask for their first and last name.

Maybe I've got a class list. I already know who I'm gonna be sending this quiz to.

And then down below, we have three additional checkboxes that we may want to review in terms of what the respondent, what the quiz taker can see.

So the first one is missed questions. Are we going to show them which ones that they answered incorrectly?

Do we want to let them know which ones that they answered wrong or not? Maybe you don't want to let them know, and you only want to allow them to see that final grade at the end.

The second one is somewhat similar, but this one has to do with the correct answers. Do we want to show them which one is in fact the correct answer?

If you want to allow that, then you wanna leave this checked as well. But remember, in some cases, maybe you are fearful that they're going to share the correct answer with someone else in the class, or provide that information to someone else publicly.

If you don't want to reveal the correct answer, you can uncheck this box.

And then the last one has to do with point values. Now, you can always add point values, whether this is checked or not.

This just has to do with what the respondent sees. Are they gonna be able to see the total points and points received after each question?

So depending on your needs, you can check or uncheck these options.

Don't forget to hit save before leaving this screen.

That is going to allow us to have this answer key and now allow us to convert this into a quiz.

How to select answers & point values

All you need to do in order to set your answer key and pick the correct answer is click on the area as if you were editing it, as if you were gonna come in here and edit.

And down below, we now have this answer key.

And before we said anything, it's always gonna show zero points.

So if I select the answer key at the very top, it's gonna say choose the correct answers.

And in fact, here within the multiple choice, I could select more than one.

I'm gonna save that for my second question, because I find most people expect a multiple choice or these radio buttons to be one only.

So in this one, the correct answer is Ringo.

I'm gonna say that's worth about five points.

I don't know how many people are aware of that.

And if I want to, I can add answer feedback.

I can answer some kind of fun knowledge about that answer, or maybe why they thought it was someone else, but in fact it was Ringo.

I'm gonna hit done and now you can see I have this little checkbox beside it.

I can see that the point value and just for my own review, I can see which one is the correct answer.

Let's come down to the second question, which is our checkbox question.

And again, just to initiate it, I just need to click somewhere within this question to get into that edit mode and now I can see the answer key.

So in this case, I want them to select multiple choices.

The question: select all the songs that appear on the Abbey Road album.

Well, the correct answer is the first, third, and fifth.

The other two are from the White album.

And so those are the correct answers here.

And I'm gonna say that this one is, yeah, I'll give this one five points as well.

There's something really important though that you should know when you're selecting multiple choices like this.

It is going to be an all or nothing answer.

So basically, they're gonna get five points if they select these three correct options.

But even if they select two of the correct options and maybe one of the wrong options, for example, they are going to get zero points.

So that's a caveat, but I'm gonna show you a workaround.

You can always manually change that if you need to.

So again, I'm gonna hit done.

There you see the correct answers and my answer key.

Answer key for short text question

Now, the last one may seem a little more difficult.

We do have a few additional options here because it's a short answer question.

We're not giving them any choices here.

They need to type in the question itself.

Again, I'm gonna click on it to get into this edit mode.

I'm gonna select the answer key.

This one's kind of tough, so I'm gonna give this one, I'm gonna give this one 10 points.

You don't always have to use these arrow keys.

You can type them in, of course, if you want to.

So here I am going to type in the correct answer and the correct answer happens to be Revolver is the album.

But pay close attention here because you want to consider the different types of spelling or abbreviation that the people who are taking this quiz may use.

If I just leave this as Revolver with the capital R, it's actually gonna mark it incorrect if someone just types in revolver without the capital.

So I can add multiple answers here, multiple answers that I am going to approve.

Now, the last option we have here when it comes to a short answer is this checkbox.

Now by default, it's gonna be unchecked.

And what that means is that if they do answer something that is different than this, they will still get marked as incorrect, but there will be no point score given, meaning that you have the option to manually come in and adjust or give a point score.

If I do check this box, they'll still receive an incorrect, just like the first option, but they will get zero points.

So the way to think about this is that if it's unchecked, it's sort of unscored.

The question or the answer will be unscored.

If I check this, it will be scored.

It's gonna look at this list and if it's not on there, then they are certainly getting zero points.

I'm gonna leave this one checked in this case because it's a fairly easy answer.

You may want to uncheck this if you're expecting a wide variety of answers and maybe too many for you to include here in your key.

So I'm gonna hit done and that basically finishes it here with the editing mode.

Our quiz is now ready for us to try out.

It's ready for us to test out.

So what we can do is we can hit this preview button here.

How the quiz looks to respondents

And let's see what it's going to look like for the person who is actually taking the quiz.

It's gonna open up in a new tab.

I can just put in my first and last name here.

Which Beatle tried to quit? I'm gonna guess, I know the answer, but I'll just say someone else here.

We'll select all the songs that appear in Abbey Road. I'm gonna say I know my Beatles stuff pretty well.

I'm also the author of the quiz, so I'm gonna select those three.

And this last one here, I'm just gonna say something like, oh, maybe was it rubber soul, something along those effects.

And I'm gonna hit submit.

So notice I can see the point value because I said that I wanted the respondents to see the different points for each question.

But as I answer the quiz, it's not showing me the answers immediately.

I have to hit submit first.

So now Google Forms will show me the results of the quiz I just took.

And no, I didn't do very well, but of course I did not do very well on purpose.

The first one was just my first and last name.

Here we go, I answered this incorrectly.

It's showing me that I answered it wrong and it's also showing me the correct answer, because remember I left those checkboxes checked within the quiz settings.

Here I got the full five out of five because I answered the three questions or I selected the three correct questions here.

And then the last one here I guessed incorrectly and it will show me all of the applicable correct answers.

So keep that in mind as you're developing your answer key.

And if you allow your respondents to see the correct answers, they will all be displayed here down below as well.

Now, how about yourself as the instructor, the teacher.

Viewing quiz results and scores

The person who is managing this quiz?

Well, here under responses, when we go back to our form, we can see our responses in a few different ways, and you may already be familiar with the responses tab if you've used Google Forms in some other way.

I think the one that is perhaps most useful is going through it by question, because if I was to add multiple respondents here, I could see, well, which is the most difficult question on this quiz? What am I gonna revise in the future?

Now, I can look at the individual results here as well, but what I think is perhaps most useful is that I can come up here and create a Google Spreadsheet so I can see all of that data in a way that I can sort it, I can view it and it is maybe just a little more easy for me to read.

So I only have one entry in the sample quiz that we just created, but here you can see there's a timestamp. Here's the score. Here's the name of the individual.

Just imagine if you have 30 or 100 or maybe even 1,000 people who are taking this quiz, you can quickly and easily see all of their scores, their names, when they took it, and their individual answers as well.

Edit quiz scores after submission

The last thing that I wanna show you here when it comes to the individual responses though back in Google Forms is that you can adjust the point values here.

So let's say that someone comes to you and says, they have a good debate as to why Rubber Soul was sort of one of the last albums or it was recorded very close to Revolver. You could come in here and say, okay, I'll give you a few points here.

I can hit save at the bottom and now that score will be saved as a part of their results. So again, it gives you the flexibility if you need to make a few additional changes, even after the quiz was submitted. You can still do so right here within Google Forms.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I'd love to hear from you next. What other questions do you have about creating quizzes or auto-grading quizzes right here in Google Forms?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

My previous Zoom videos have received over 1 1/2 million views and thousands and thousands of comments.

So in today's video, I wanted to answer five of the most frequently asked questions I've received over the last few months. We're gonna talk about everything about managing participants to broadcasting, to our breakout rooms, and even some tips and tricks that you probably hadn't heard of before all in today's video.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And yes, you may be seeing a few different versions of me today because I wanted to show a few real world examples. And so I have myself on a separate computer on my iPad here next to me as I go through some of your most frequently asked questions.

Private Zoom Chat Messages

And we're gonna kick things off with the comment section.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is: Scott, are private messages within the chat window actually private?

Now, I get the feeling that many of the people who are asking this have been students perhaps, and people who are maybe on other people's calls, and can the host really see what we're saying? When we say private in here, does it actually mean private?

Well, the good news is yes. The host cannot see private messages either during the meeting or even post the meeting. They truly are private. But let's take a look at some of the other options that we have down here.

So by default, when you open up the chat window, it is going to list everyone. And that's usually the most common way that we use messages here within Zoom chat. If I'm the host, I'm sending a message out to everyone. And if I'm a participant, maybe I want to ask a question and I want other people to know what I'm asking or if other people agree and that type of thing.

But I can always use this dropdown and select a specific participant. So if I want to say something directly to Jack, I can just say, "Hi, Jack." And yeah, this time I'm going to spell his name correctly. And we can have a conversation. We can have a discussion back and forth if necessary.

However, there's an easier way to do this, especially if you have a large number of participants. And that is, let's say that we're back on this everyone's setting and I want to say something to Jack. I don't want to go through this dropdown menu. And if there's 30 or 40 people in here, what I can do is I can actually just click on this link, Jack's iPad, and it's gonna automatically select that down below. So now I can continue my conversation or select someone else to do so as well.

Renaming Zoom Participants

So that moves us on to tip number two.

And this has to do with managing participants in particular. And if you are the host, you may find it a little frustrating when people have cryptic names as their usernames. So here I've got Jack's iPad. Well, what if there's more than one Jack? Or I know more than one Jack, or what if it's even worse? What if it's something like iPhone 23, something along those lines?

Well, what you can do is you can rename anyone here within your participant list if you are the host. So if I click on More, I can come down here and select Rename.

Now, you may be asking yourself: What if it's a long list, Scott, and here this person doesn't have a profile pic? What if I'm not sure which Jack this is or which individual it is? Well, what you can do is come up here and here you can see Jack's iPad. I can click on this little blue button and I can say Rename as well.

I often use this more frequently because I'm actually looking at the person. If their webcam is on, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know which Jack this is. This is Jack Smith." Okay, we're gonna say OK. Perfect, now it's renamed.

Now, it's easier for me to see both in the chat window down below if I need to make him a presenter, whatever I need to do, if I'm interacting with this individual. So as the host, if you find it confusing or if you're not sure of someone's username, once you do find out, you can always go in and rename it yourself.

View Zoom Participants in Different Ways

Sticking with participants and how we interact in view participants, let's take a look at how we can view those participants in a few different ways.

So I'm gonna go here and actually share my screen because often that's what we're doing here within Zoom. And by default, typically you'll have just this small webcam window that will come up either in the top right corner, maybe the lower right-hand corner. And it will typically show the active speaker, showing me at this point in time.

But we do have a few additional options. We can choose this thumbnail view here, which is gonna give us a bit of a vertical list. Now I only have one other person in this meeting example. So I'm only gonna see the two of us. It usually maxes out at about four videos at a time. And then you can scroll through if you want to take a look at more. And don't forget that you can drag this wherever you like. If it's more comfortable or if you need to get it out of the way as you're presenting.

Now, if you don't like the vertical view, what you can do is you can drag this down to the bottom and it's going to adjust and give us more of a linear, more of a horizontal view here. Again, we can click and drag and move that around. If we wanna go back to vertical, you just sorta have to smash it. You have to push it to the right-hand side. So that's dragged to the right if you want the vertical, drag to the bottom if you want the horizontal. And you can put it in a variety of different ways. But of course, you can also minimize this altogether and hide the thumbnail view.

Here it's gonna show me who is talking. I'm actively talking, so it's gonna let me know. And if I'm listening to other individuals as well, but I usually prefer one of these other two options. The other thing that I like to point out with when you're using this single view is that you can only drag this anywhere on your screen.

If you have a webcam dead center on your screen, you can even drag it up into or high parts of it so that you're looking almost directly at the webcam. Now, in my case, my webcam is slightly off to the right. So if I drag this over here, it looks almost as if I'm looking at you straight in the face. I'm actually looking at my thumbnail on my screen at the moment. But this can be a great tip if you want to be more engaging with your audience, be more engaging with your participants.

Broadcast to All Break Out Rooms

All right, next on our list has to do with something called breakout rooms. And I have an entire video showing you everything you need to know about breakout rooms. I'll leave a link for it in the description, and also here in the top right-hand corner as well.

But a common question that I receive when it comes to breakout rooms is, "Scott, can I present to all of the breakout rooms?" If I create, let’s say, three breakout rooms as the host, can I present my slides? Can I talk to everybody?

Well, I've got some bad news for you. As of the recording of this video, you cannot broadcast or share slides, or actually address everyone using audio in all of those breakout rooms.

However, now that I've initiated my breakout rooms, what you can do is send them all a message. Down here on the lower left, there is something that says "Broadcast a message to all." If I select that, it's just gonna be a simple text field, and I can say, "Hello, we will be wrapping things up in five minutes." Maybe just give them a warning or something like that.

And I can broadcast that out. Now, all of my rooms, all of my participants are going to receive that message. That's the best that Zoom can do at this point in time. Perhaps in the future, they'll give us the ability to actually broadcast things to everyone individually. But this "Broadcast message to all" can be a great way to make sure that those rooms are on pace. Maybe you can remind them to move on to discussion question number three, something along those lines. Or maybe you can share a question that one of the rooms that you jumped into and joined for a moment and you thought was relevant, you can share with others as well.

So don't forget about this "Broadcast message to all" feature.

How to reuse Zoom Polls

The last and final tip I want to share with you today is a common question I receive about polls. If you'd like to learn more about polls, I'll leave a link to my screen share tips because polls are a great way to make your Zoom meetings that much more interactive.

For our poll settings, what we need to do is actually jump into our Zoom account on our desktop browser. In order to do that, you need to go to Zoom.us.

Now, when you're within your Zoom account, you want to come down to Meetings, and you're probably already familiar with this area. This might be where you schedule new meetings or see the previous meetings that you've had as well.

But if you want to be able to repurpose a poll, you don't want to attach that poll to a specific meeting. Otherwise, that's the only place where that poll is going to exist. That's the only place where you're going to be able to access that poll. So instead, I encourage you to go to your personal meeting room. If you are using your personal meeting room, that's the same link, right? That's the same meeting ID time and time again.

All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom here to the poll section. And here you can see I've already created two polls and I can say Add, and I can start to add a brand new poll. The great thing here is that when I add this poll, when I create these polls, I can repurpose them and reuse them time and time again. So I don't have to create them from scratch every time. I can use them as long as I'm using my personal meeting room, not a unique meeting with its own ID, something that I've created from scratch.

So if you want to repurpose those polls, make sure to use your personal meeting ID.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's tips. And I'd love to hear further Zoom questions that you may have. Be sure to ask them and let me know in the comments. I may just make a new video and give you the answer in an upcoming video.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. And don't forget to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel. Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Are you tired of seeing unwanted emails in your inbox, even though you've unsubscribed multiple times in the past?

Maybe you're tired of seeing the same cold sales emails in your inbox, and it's wasting your time as you're trying to manage your email.

Well, in today's video, I want to show you a super cool way to send those messages into deep space so you will never see them ever again.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And I imagine you have probably subscribed to a number of newsletters over the course of the years.

Why Unsubscribe

And some of them are perhaps not as much value to you anymore as they once were. And you probably spent the effort scrolling down to the bottom of a message

and finding that Unsubscribe button. Perhaps you unsubscribed more than once.

You've come down, and you've found this link, and you've hit it, and then a week later

you still are getting messages or you're still getting offers from a particular sender.

When to Unsubscribe

Well, I often recommend that you go through that effort at least once, or maybe I should say, just once to unsubscribe. Now, anyone who is sending you information

Should respect that. I know different countries have different regulations. And should we just say the general rules of the internet should dictate that, hey, if you opt out,

You should not hear from those individuals ever again. Unfortunately, not everyone plays by the rules. And in fact, sometimes just this very act of hitting Unsubscribe sends that sender a signal saying, "Oh, a human being just hit that Unsubscribe button. "At least we know that that is a real email address. "There's a real person on the other end "of that email address." And therefore you might continue to receive information from them.

Cold Sales Emails

But there's a second scenario that you're probably familiar with as well.

And that is a cold sales email where someone reaches out to you, and you have no idea who they are.

And it's pretty obvious, perhaps by their messaging, that they have no idea who you are and what you do.

And you continue to see these, you continue to come across them, and they really weigh down on your email management efforts, right?

You only have a limited amount of time each day to deal with your email.

You don't wanna waste your time having to go through all of these messages that have nothing to do with you.

And you don't want to hear from these individuals again in the future.

Sane Black Hole

Well, that's where something which is called SaneBlackHole comes into place.

Now, SaneBlackHole is a special folder or label, as we see here within Gmail, that is a part of the SaneBox application.

Now, the great thing about SaneBox is that it's actually more than an extension or just a third-party app.

SaneBox is something that works with every single email client.

You actually don't need to install anything special.

And the great thing is, is that it works across your devices.

So, all you have to do is drag certain emails, particular emails, into the correct folder, or use the features that make the most sense to you.

So let's take a look at an example here.

Let's say that I no longer want to hear from Bed Bath & Beyond.

And no, I'm not knocking them. I'm just using them as the example here.

And maybe I have hit Unsubscribe, and I keep getting these messages.

All I need to do is drag this into my SaneBlackHole folder.

And of course it's gonna be removed from my inbox, but it gets better than that.

Now it appears in my SaneBlackHole folder.

However, it's only going to remain here for about seven days.

In case I made a mistake, I can always come back here and find it within that seven-day period.

However, at the end of those seven days, this message is automatically going to be sent to my trashcan.

Now, here within Gmail, when you send something to trash or something appears in trash, it's gonna remain there for an additional 30 days.

So, you really have plenty of time in case you need to go back and search for something in the event that you made a mistake or you want to go and review something.

But BlackHole is going to do this automatically for you.

So you don't need to come back in here and clean this out from time to time.

After about seven days, it's automatically going to send it to the trash, and you will never ever hear from this sender again.

Let's pick another one here as an example.

Let's say that this is, for this example, a cold sales call.

And maybe this individual has been reaching out to me every two weeks for the last six months.

And I've told them to stop emailing me.

But you know, it's probably some automated system.

All I need to do is drag it to my SaneBlackHole.

And one of the great things when it comes to these cold sales calls is that, of course, they don't have an Unsubscribe button.

They don't even have that option in there.

So again, it's gonna appear here in this folder, and then it's going to send it to my trash.

So if you are sick of getting the same email messages from people, either that you don't know, or from organizations or from newsletters that you have already tried to unsubscribe in the past, and they're not respecting your wishes, you may wanna check out SaneBlackHole.

Now, if you wanna receive a special offer, if you want to try SaneBox absolutely for free and receive a $25 credit, all you need to do is go to sanebox.com/simpletivity, something special for all of my Simpletivity subscribers.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Do you manage a team and do you need to keep track of all of your employee hours?

Well, if you said yes, then today's video is just for you.

I'm gonna show you five reasons why you should check out OnTheClock for all of your employee time tracking needs.

Not only is it gonna save you time and effort, but it's probably also going to save you money because your time tracking is gonna be that much more accurate.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And whether you work in insurance, real estate, manufacturing, or any business where you need to keep track of your employees' hours, I wanna show you how OnTheClock can help you save so much time.

Easy time tracking for staff & managers

Now, my first reason for checking out OnTheClock has to do with ease of use, because let's be honest. If the application isn't easy for you or your staff to use, you're not gonna get the benefit that you need out of it.

Here I am in the administration dashboard, and I love the clean outlook of OnTheClock. Here on the top left-hand side, I can see immediately who's currently in and who's currently out, and I even get a punch map. So if I want to track where people have punched in or punched out, I can take a look at that as well.

Here on the timecards menu, I can see all of my employees' time card data. I can see all of their in and out times. I can even break things down by their regular hours versus their overtime hours so that everyone gets paid correctly.

I can also keep track of both PTO and holiday here as well. And if I need to make a change, I can just hit this edit button and manually update any of these records.

Employee view of OnTheClock app

But let's jump into what the employee is actually going to see.

So here I am logged in as an employee, and I love the simplicity of this layout because, as an employee, I just want to be able to punch in and then get on with my day.

As you can see here, Jane is currently punched out. She's not currently started her workday, so I just need to hit this punch in button—success! And now I can get on with the rest of my day.

I don't need to come back here until I finish my time or unless I want to change something else.

I get to log back into my account really quickly here, because I also want to show you the other easy features and displays that are available to your staff.

At the top, we have the "My Time Card" area, so your employees can see exactly when they checked in and when they checked out. And if they want to go back and see some historical data, they can do that as well.

But the other nice feature from an employee standpoint...

Manage PTO with OnTheClock

Is that you can allow them to submit vacation requests directly from within the application.

No longer do they have to send you a long-winded email, or do you need to keep track of this on a spreadsheet.

You can set what their PTO time is, how much they have available in a variety of different ways.

And then they can request it through the system.

On the administrator side, I can quickly and easily see all of the current PTO requests.

Down here, I can see that Jane has recently made such a request.

I can open up this request, review the details, review the dates, and then choose to approve or deny this request.

I can even add an additional note if I need to message something directly to my employee.

And the best thing is that all of this is automatically calculated, so I don't have to worry about the upcoming pay period or manually subtracting out that PTO over the course of the year.

Use GPS tracking for accuracy and limits

Now, another great feature of OnTheClock is the ability to track your employees via GPS or at the very least be able to prevent your staff from punching in or punching out from certain locations.

For example, here from the dashboard, I can see that both of my employees have punched in at the office.

That's great.

I can see that they've punched in at a location that I want them to, or at least where I expect them to be, but it can give me helpful information.

If I see that someone is punching in from a location that I'm not familiar with, if you're worried about that, when it comes to your staff, you can implement something which is called geo-fencing, and you can set up a perimeter as to where you will allow your staff to punch in and, or punch out from.

This prevents things such as time theft so that your staff can't get someone else to punch in for them.

They have to be within a particular location.

You can also set up other perimeters and other time tracking adjustments so that if you only want to allow them to punch in from a certain machine or a tablet or device, then you can set up that configuration as well.

Accounting & payroll integration

Now, having accurate time tracking information is important. What's really gonna save you time is how OnTheClock integrates with the most popular payroll and accounting software, including both the desktop and online version of QuickBooks

and other leading providers, including connect pay, ADP and Sage. And if you're an accountant bookkeeper or payroll professional, you may qualify to use OnTheClock,

absolutely free. You know how important it is to get accurate information from your clients to learn more, go to OnTheClock.com .

Access OnTheClock from any device

Last but not least, OnTheClock gives you so many options when it comes to access for both you, the administrator, but also for your staff, whether it's web-based or whether you want to give them the Android or Apple app.

You control how they access OnTheClock, how they punch in and punch out as you keep accurate time tracking.

To learn more about OnTheClock and to start your free trial, go to OnTheClock.com.

Thank you so much for watching today's video and remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Do you wanna view your inbox in a different layout?

Do you wish that you could customize your view right here within Gmail, to better suit your style?

Or perhaps are you tired of seeing things like this Meet and Chat window, especially if you don't use it, so that you can view all of your labels on the left-hand side?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you all the different ways that you can view and interact with your messages, right here within Gmail.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox.

SaneBox is the email tool to help you keep your inbox under control.

Why so few emails here? That's because SaneBox is using artificial intelligence to help filter out my email.

I particularly like the SaneLater folder where I can go back and look at unimportant emails as it learns the way that I deal with my messages.

If you'd like to try SaneBox for yourself and receive a special credit, go to sanebox.com/simpletivity.

Gmail Quick Settings

So in order for us to change our views within Gmail, all we need to do is go up here to the gear icon.

Now recently, this settings area was altered.

If you want to see all of your full settings, you'll want to come here and say, "See all settings," but Gmail has made it that much more convenient for us to change our different views.

Now most of these are not new, but they've been put in a location which is so much more...

Change Inbox Density in Gmail

Convenient for us to use.

So here, our first option is density. And by default, this is actually the default view.

Now the big difference here in the change that Gmail made just a few years ago, is that if you have an attachment like you see here in the default view, it will show that attachment on a separate line.

So you can see that this particular message really jumps out.

Now this can be convenient because I can go right to the attachment, I don't even have to open up the email.

This is especially helpful if I already am expecting perhaps a document and I don't need to see the message, however, this can be a little jarring I think in some cases, because that one really stands out.

And if you have a few different attachments here, they're gonna jump out and look twice or maybe three times as large as the other messages in your list.

So in that case, you might want to go to the comfortable look here.

Here we can still see that paperclip there, identifying that we have an attachment on that message.

If you want even to go even smaller, you can select compact and have even more messages on the screen in front of you.

For myself, I typically prefer comfortable, so I'm gonna leave it at that.

Edit your Gmail theme

I'm not going to spend a lot of time when it comes to themes, I'm using the default theme here, but if you want something a little more adventurous, or if you want to upload your own photo as your background, you can do so here within the theme section.

Change the Inbox Type in Gmail

But the real goodies come down below when we can choose between different inbox types.

Now by default, again, this is our view here. We're gonna have our new messages appear at the top, a fairly basic and straightforward inbox.

However, we can choose to have a different type of inbox where we have our important emails first.

So here you can see things have been split up, anything that has one of these important markers on it are going to show first at the top of my list here, at the top of my inbox.

And then I've got this section which is called everything else.

Now you can conveniently minimize or maximize these areas if you want, but this can be especially helpful if you are using that important marker.

You can next choose the unread first, so this is going to automatically put your unread messages at the top, and anything which you have opened or laid your eyes on before, are gonna show down below.

Our third option here has to do with a starred first. So if you are using these stars or perhaps you have some filters or rules where these stars come into place, well then those stars are gonna come up at the top as well.

And again, the great thing is, is that you can do this dynamically, you don't have to set this as your inbox for all the time.

You can always choose this gear icon and come down here and choose the one that is most suitable to you.

Next we have a priority inbox, which is going to sort of break out a number of different things.

Here we have important and unread at the top, then we have Starred and Everything else.

How to customize your inbox type settings

What you'll notice here when it comes to priority, multiple inboxes, and also the first one, default, is that we can always click on this customize option here.

So here I can choose what do I want to show within that priority inbox.

Under priority inbox, you know, what are the different sections that I want to display here?

You can choose what you like here within the regular settings area. You can do that for the other types of inboxes as well.

Let's jump back to our inbox though. I'm gonna hit that gear icon so we can come back down to that inbox type.

Multiple inboxes, again, very similar to what we've seen before.

In this case, it's branched it out into a few different ways. I've got a few different filters, starred, drafts, inbox, but I can customize that the way that I want.

For the sake of today's demonstration, I'm gonna go back to that default, which is probably what you're most used to here, but I know a lot of people are not aware of all of the different inbox types that they can set up and the customization.

Edit the inbox reading layout and split pane in Gmail

That comes along with it.

Now, the next one can be really valuable to those of you who may be coming, especially from a Microsoft Outlook world.

And one of the things that I routinely hear is that Scott, this looks very different and I'd love to see the messages, I'd like to interact with one message but also see the rest of my emails.

Which is pretty standard within an Outlook world.

Well, by default, you're gonna have no split. You're just going to see these messages and if I want to go into this message, I open it up and then I have to go back to my inbox, back and forth.

But we have two other reading pane options here. The first one is right of the inbox.

So let me just close this for a second here, and again, if you're an Outlook user, you'll probably be familiar with this.

Here I can select the message on the left-hand side, and then I can read, I can reply, I can do whatever I want. I can go to the next message, I can go up and down this list, and I can interact with my message here on the right-hand side.

But we can also choose another view. We can come down here to below the inbox.

So here you can choose, you can drag and see how many messages you'd like to see at the top of the screen. And then you can see your message down below and interact with it down here.

Now I think one of the caveats of using this particular view is that sometimes this reply and forward, some of these quick buttons down below, get a little hidden depending on the screen size that you have.

But again, you can drag that up and down to your liking.

Toggle between split views with the quick icon

But there's one other thing that I wanna highlight here is that you don't always have to come up here to the gear icon to make this switch.

Gmail recently has also made this more convenient for us here by giving us the ability to toggle between these modes.

So, for example, I can immediately go back to no split or the vertical split, or the horizontal split, depending on my mood (chuckles), depending on how I'm working, depending on the screen size.

You don't always have to select the gear icon; you can come here as well.

Conversation view and email threading

So the last thing I want to show here is at the very bottom of these quick settings is the option for email threading.

By default, this is going to be selected, conversation view.

In summary, conversation view is going to group all of your email threads together.

So if you're having a back and forth conversation amongst people with the same email thread, it's gonna keep everything tightly together. You're not gonna see those as separate emails.

In today's day and age, I find it's really odd, or I find a really hard argument to turn this off, because otherwise you're gonna find yourself replying to an email, which may not be the most recent in that particular thread.

So I would encourage you in most cases to keep this turned on.

Minimize the Gmail label and menu bar

All right, so now for a bonus tip as a part of today's video, and this comes over to the left hand side of the screen.

A couple of things to keep in mind here, as we were looking at the different split and the toggle panes here, keep in mind that you can always minimize this side of the screen.

If you don't want to see all of those labels, you can have them minimized just by selecting the little hamburger, main menu icon in the top left hand side of the screen.

And if you just hover your mouse over, it will auto-expand.

And then I can come back over here. This gives me a lot more real estate as a part of my email inbox.

But let me open this up again.

How to hide Meet and Chat section in Gmail

One of the frustrations is that this Meet and this Chat window is displayed by default.

I know that there are many of you who are not using either of these features, or at the very least, you're not using them very frequently.

That can make the top of the screen a little cumbersome because you have to scroll through and you may have a lot of labels, like you see that I have here in this demonstration account.

I want to be able to click them more easily.

Well, how do we get rid of Meet and Chat?

What we need to do is come here, back to the gear icon, but we are going to say “See all settings.”

This is going to open us up to the main settings screen.

Near the top, near the end, we’re going to have this Chat and Meet area where we can choose to turn off either both or just one of these areas.

I'm going to turn them both off for now.

Don’t forget to hit “Save changes.”

Now it's going to refresh our screen, it’s going to refresh our Gmail account, and look at that—I have access to all of my labels. I don’t even have to scroll very far.

Right, I can access all of my labels here on the left hand side.

If you want to get even more out of Gmail, be sure to check out my video below where I show you seven settings I feel every Gmail user should know.

Thanks so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.