How Text Blaze saves you time

If you wanna save time while working at your computer, you need to stop touching your keyboard so often.

So in today's video, I'm gonna show you how Text Blaze can help you reduce the number of keystrokes and make your life so much easier.

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

In today's video, I wanna show you what Text Blaze is, how it can save you so much time and help you complete your emails, your chats, your documents, that much faster with text expansion.

So, let's dive in.

How often are you asked the exact same question via email?

Here's an example where someone is asking me about my pricing options.

At first glance, I may say, ah, this is gonna take me a few minutes to properly describe my packages, give the pricing, maybe include some links.

Well, there's a much better way.

When you have something like Text Blaze installed, all I need to do is type in just a few key letters and I've got everything here, and now I can hit send and move on to my very next email.

Yes, I just hit three keys on my keyboard, and I've got a complete response here, including formatting, including links, I've got all my pricing information, and now I can move on to the rest of my day.

So, how does Text Blaze work?

Well, let's jump over into the Text Blaze dashboard.

Text Blaze dashboard and snippets

Here you can see I've got a number of different snippets that are already set up.

The one that we just used here is called Quote Options.

So I took a little bit of time crafting the ideal message to the questions that I most commonly receive.

In this case, it has to do with my packages and my pricing.

So I've spelled out the different packaging, I've included the links, I've even formatted things, including bolding certain things and maybe italicizing certain things so it looks great and professional.

But all I need to do is select this shortcut key /QO.

I've chosen the letters QO to represent quote options so I can input this wherever I go.

If things change, I only need to go to one place here and maybe update some links or adjust my pricing, and then I can use this going forward.

Email is a classic example where text expansion can come into play, but let's take a look at a few other examples before we look at how we can set this up for ourselves.

Here's another one that I've created called /VC for video conferencing.

So many of us are sharing the details of our meeting rooms, whether you use Zoom or Teams or Hangouts, and here I've just taken a moment to include those details here.

So let's go back to an email example, I'm just going to delete the contents here.

This time I'm gonna go /VC, which stands for video conferencing.

Now I can input this wherever I want.

If someone's asking me for my details via a chat, I can do so.

If I wanna include this within a document, I can do so as well; just a couple of keystrokes on my keyboard, and then they have direct access to my meeting room.

Use Text Blaze for labels or common phrases

Another example that I love to use is for using Text Blaze for labels and here I'm gonna use an example within my calendar.

As you can already see here, I like to add some emojis to some of my calendar events, just so they stand out a little bit more.

One of those other examples is I like to use an emoji and maybe a term or a word in all caps for certain tasks just so they stand out and I can recognize the difference between them.

For example, let's say I wanna make a phone call later this afternoon.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on my calendar to open up this event, but I'm just gonna type in /P.

This brings up my emoji and call, and I can say call Jane regarding the meeting, that's exactly what I want to do at that time.

So this is really helpful to me because whenever I want to add something like this, let's do another one, maybe on a different date here.

Again, it's as easy as just typing in that letter, and I can call Bill regarding the email discussion we had last week.

So now that you know some of the benefits of using Text Blaze, let's take a look at how we can create our own and add even further functionality so that your snippets, the things that you input into your documents, your chat window, or anywhere on the web, can be that much easier and that much more customizable.

How to create Text Blaze snippets

Here within the Text Blaze dashboard you can see that I have a list of my snippets here on the left-hand side.

You can see the names which I have given those snippets, and then on the right-hand side, you can see the shortcuts which will be used.

Of course, Text Blaze also gives us the option to create multiple folders.

So if we want to create our snippets in different categories or different themes, we can do so to make it that much easier to manage.

But to start your snippet, all you need to do is hit this plus button here, and we will be provided with a new window to give it a new label.

Again, this label is gonna be something just for yourself.

So in this case, I'm gonna call this one review process.

Next, we need to choose a shortcut key.

You'll notice that many of mine start with a forward slash, and there's a purpose or a reason behind this.

It's often not a great idea to use shortcut keys without some type of special character prefacing those letters.

Why? Because what if I create a shortcut key such as TH?

Well, TH is probably risky because anytime I spell the word the or that or those or any other TH word, then this snippet is going to be put into place.

So I'm gonna stick with a forward slash here, and why don't I just put RP for review process?

It can be as short or as long as you like.

Now down below, we can put in whatever we want into this snippet.

In this example, I'm going to assume that someone has sent me a document and maybe as a part of my business, I need to review these files or review this document and I promise to get back to my clients within three days.

Using Forms and Dynamic Content with Text Blaze

So watch how I'm gonna create a customized response, including some dynamic dates, into this message.

First off, I want to address them by name.

So I'm gonna say hi, but what I'm going to do is add a dynamic field here.

I'm gonna add a text and I'm gonna say that this is a name field.

Now this field name is optional.

In fact, all of these three options, the default value and the columns, meaning the width of that text field, are all optional.

I'm just gonna input name at this point, just so I know what this field is for when it comes up and I am prompted.

So I'm gonna say hi, and I'm gonna put a comma after it and then I get to start, oops, that's a period.

I'm gonna put a comma afterwards, and then I'm gonna start my message.

I'm gonna say, thanks for sending over these files.

I will review them and get back to you by…

Now here I wanna put in a dynamic date.

Remember it's all about saving time and making things easier for me.

So I'm gonna come back down here, but instead of using this forms and dynamic content, I wanna use this one, which is called Time and Date Shifting.

You can see there's a variety of different options we can include, including the current date and the current time and other insertion context.

But in this example, I wanna use time and date shifting.

So I'm gonna say in three days, I'm gonna promise or tell them that I'm gonna get back to them within three days.

So now I can insert this, I'm gonna put a period at the end because it's the end of a sentence.

Now that date three days from now is going to be input directly into this response.

But I'm not quite done here because as you can see, the date format is a little, shall we say a little strict or maybe a little too formal.

It's not gonna sound that natural if I tell them that I'm gonna get back to them in this date format.

So all I need to do is select this and come down here and select time-date format.

Here I have the option to change it.

First, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna remove the format that is currently there.

Then I'm gonna come down here and select this one.

This is going to give me a preview so in this case, it's going to say September 10th, 2021.

I like that for the most part but you know what, including the year that might sound a little rigid or maybe someone will clue in that I'm some automation.

So all I'm gonna do in this case is I'm going to eliminate the year and because it's the end of the sentence, I'm also gonna eliminate that comma.

So let's test it out and see how this is going to look.

Text Blaze makes it very easy, you can see we're in the edit version or the edit tab here, all I need to do is come over here and select Preview; and this is what it's going to look like.

I'm gonna have the ability to fill in the name and then thanks for sending over the files.

I will review them and get back to you by September 13th.

That looks really nice and clean, doesn't it?

Okay, let's remember what was the quick key? /RP.

So let's pretend that I've received those files and I'm replying to this client.

I'm gonna hit /RP on my computer and I'm presented with a new dialogue.

And here you can see I've got that name field that I created.

So I can say, hi Bill.

That's all I need to do at this stage and hit enter on my keyboard.

Now it's entered directly into the email and as you can see, September 13th, which is exactly three days from now, is entered into my response.

I can immediately hit send and get on with the rest of my day.

So if you have certain processes, if you have certain replies, if you have certain responses that you'd like to add, you can do so right here.

Adding calculations to Text Blaze snippets

One of the more complex things that you can do, if you really want to take your text expansion to the next level, is by adding calculations.

Here's an example called Forms where you can actually input drop-down options and it will calculate the price for you.

Let's take a look at this example back in our email version here as well.

I'm just gonna clear this and I'm gonna use the /form.

Once again, I'm presented with this dialogue so I can enter in a name.

Here you can see I can enter that name in once, but it could appear in multiple places.

And here I can say, well, a customer bought 13 widgets at a price of 12 per widget and now it's calculated the total price down below.

I can hit insert and now it's right here within my email response.

So you can actually get quite advanced if you like right here within Text Blaze.

Pricing and Plans

Now not only will you save a huge amount of time with Text Blaze, but you will also save money.

Why? Because Text Blaze has a free forever plan.

Now you are limited to only 20 snippets, but you can have up to 2,500 characters in each of those snippets.

If you need more and a few more features, the pro version is only $2 and 99 cents per month.

And for the amount of time that you're going to be saving, this is absolutely nothing.

For the cost of a coffee, a regular coffee, you will be saving so much time using Text Blaze.

If you'd like to start saving time right away with Text Blaze, be sure to click the link in the description below.

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

Crmble CRM

It doesn't matter if you pay for Trello or if you're just using a free Trello account, you now have unlimited access to Power-Ups.

That's right, you can use as many Power-Ups as you like.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven great Trello Power-Ups that won't cost you a thing.

And let's dive right in with Crmble.

Many people have asked me, Scott, can I use Trello as a CRM system, as a customer relationship manager?

I'm often hesitant to say yes, because Trello really wasn't designed for a CRM as the end goal, until now.

With the Crmble Power-Up extension, you can use Trello as an excellent CRM system.

When we first open up a Trello card, you can see that we have some Crmble fields, which allow us to enter in customer information.

Now you can customize which of these that you want to display, or even add some of your own.

Here you can see, I can add in all of those details that I'm used to seeing when working with a traditional CRM system.

So whether this represents a new client or a deal, I can move it through its different stages of the sales process or the pipeline, or however you'd like to set up your CRM and have that information accessible here.

You can also see on the front of the card, I can see the size of the deal, I can give it a rating.

I can see if this particular client or this lead is warm or not.

Maybe it's a little cold like this one here, but it gets even better.

If we click on the Crmble link here in the top right-hand corner, we've got our full CRM dashboard.

I can see exactly where things are within that process.

I can even click on the Leads option here, and I can see all of my customer information here all in one place.

So if you want to use Trello as a CRM system, be sure to check out Crmble.

Bulk Actions

Now the next free Power-Up on my list has almost become standard for all of my Trello boards, and it's called Bulk Actions.

How many times have you wanted to make changes to multiple cards right here within Trello, but Trello doesn't allow you to do that?

Well, with the Bulk Actions Power-Up, you can do just that.

Let's say that I need to change three cards in three different lists, and I need to change their labels.

I want to change this one and I want to change this second one, and I also want to change this third one here.

I'm going to waste an awful lot of time by clicking on each and every one of those cards.

But if I select Bulk Actions at the top of the screen, it's going to show me a slightly different view of that Trello board.

Now you can see I've got these little check boxes.

So if I click this one and this one, and then this one, now I've got all of these options available to me here.

In this case, I want to relabel.

I'm going to select relabel, and let's say I want to make sure that they're all changed to an HR project.

I'm going to say Relabel.

I can say Relabel and Keep Selection if I want to do further changes on these three.

Why don't we do that in this example?

I'm going to select that.

First, it's going to add that blue HR label, but they've remained selected because maybe I also want to change their due date.

So I'm going to select their due date, and I'm going to say that everything here is due by the end of next week.

I can even make that time nice and uniform, and I'm going to say Change the Due Dates.

Now you can see, not only do they all have the blue HR label, they are now all due on September 3rd.

Bulk Actions is such a massive time-saver no matter how you're using Trello.

List Limits

No matter what you use your Trello boards for, sometimes you may have a list or more in which you want to keep in check.

What I mean by that is perhaps there's a part of your phase that you want to make sure that you don't have too many cards at any given time.

That's where the List Limits Power-Up comes into play.

Here you can see under my Pending list, I've got some numbers at the top.

It says three of four.

Because I have List Limits enabled, and I've told it I only want a maximum of four cards in this list, it's going to give me a warning if I exceed that number.

So let's say, for example, I'm going to drag over this card into this list.

You can see it says four of four, and maybe one of these In Progress cards I have to bring back.

So I'm going to bring it back to Pending.

Now, not only does it tell me it's five out of four, but this entire list is now shaded in a different color.

So this is telling me and other members of my board that, wait a minute, we've got too many in this Pending state.

What's going on? What's the bottleneck? What do we need to do differently?

You can apply these list limits and change the number for any of your lists.

Or, as you can see in my example here, you can just apply it to one particular list.

So don't feel that you have to apply this to everything in your workflow.

Now I can say that, you know what, maybe we can still work on this particular task, and now that color changes back to its normal shade.

I can still see the total, the four out of four.

If you need to add your list limit, all you need to do is come up here and come down and select Set List Limit.

Once the Power-Up is installed, and now we can set our number here and say Save.

Now I can see it's three out of five for this in progress list, and I can continue to work with my Trello workflow.

Card Priority

When it comes to managing all of your tasks and cards, setting a proper priority can be one of the most effective ways to get the most out of Trello.

You're probably familiar with using labels where you can use labels, not only for different categories or perhaps departments, but you can also use them for priorities.

For example, here I've got a red Urgent label and I've got a yellow Medium Priority label.

But sometimes this can get confusing because I also have things like departments and other categories mixed in here.

Well, now you can use Card Priority by Screenful to set a true priority.

Here, you can see on a few of my cards, I've got things like Highest, and I've got one here that is labeled Critical.

These are separate from the labels themselves.

If I open up this card, for example, you can see that it has its own client request label, but it also has its separate priority level.

Under Power-Ups, I can select Card Priority, and here, I can choose or edit the priority levels given here.

Now these are the defaults that Card Priority gives us.

I think they're most helpful.

If I want to bump this up to Highest, I can do so.

It's going to change it here.

It's also going to change that on the front of the card as well.

If you select the Card Priority option here in the top right-hand corner, it can also give you a summary of where those levels are and where they exist amongst your different lists.

In fact, you can even look at it a few different ways, based by label or by assignee as well.

Now, the nice thing is, under Settings, you can really customize this Power-Up.

For example, maybe you don't want to see it on the card front, but you do want to see it on the card back, or vice versa, or maybe both as we see in this case here.

The other nice thing is this option, to only show the high priorities on a card front.

You very well know that by adding more information, maybe other custom fields, maybe other Power-Ups as well, the front of a card can get very, very busy.

I think this makes an awful lot of sense, that maybe we only want to show the top two priorities, we can still give these other high priority levels or these priority levels to other cards, but we don't necessarily need to show them everywhere.

If I uncheck this option and hit Save, you'll see that I have a few more that appear because these are below my top two priority levels.

But if I ever need to come and change that, I can do that here under Settings.

I can also come in here and actually change the text of any of my priorities as well.

A very flexible tool, a great way to add true priorities and not waste all of your Trello labels.

Card Dependencies

Now let's stick with another power-up designed by Screenful.

This one is called Card Dependencies.

How often have you been working within a Trello board, and you know that something is a parent of something else, or maybe this task is a child of another card?

Maybe something needs to be accomplished before something else can get started.

Well, with Card Dependencies, we can do that.

Let's open up this card as an example here.

If we want to add a dependency to this particular card, all we need to do is go over to the Power-Ups section and click on Dependencies.

Here we have a number of different ways in which we can add a dependency.

For example, maybe you work in blocks, meaning that it is blocked by another task or it's related to something else.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to something.

I'm going to select that option here, and now all I need to do is search for the name of that other card.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to New Idea 2.

What's going to happen is I'm going to have its own Card Dependencies section right here so I can see the relationship between these two.

The other nice thing is that it's quick and easy for me to remove if need be or to check it off, so that once this connection or this dependency no longer remains, I can check it off at this level.

Let's add something else here, just as an example.

I'm going to click on Dependencies here.

In this case, that's a child too.

I'm going to say it's also a parent of a different card.

In this case, I'm going to say this is related to something called a new listing.

I'm going to select that one.

Now you can see the different relationships here as well.

The other bonus of using this Power-Up is that we have direct links to these other cards.

If I click on New Idea 2, I can go directly to this other card and see what's happening here.

If I need to go back, I can see that oh, this is a parent to Get Quotes From New Vendors, and I can go back to that original child dependency.

A great way to make and see those relationships between your cards.

Card Duration

The next Power-Up in our list has all to do with getting more out of due dates right here within Trello.

Of course, applying due dates is so crucial to staying on track and making sure that your projects can complete on time.

Sometimes it can be difficult to estimate how far out is this particular date?

If you've included both a start and an end date, how long is this actually going to take?

Well, with the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker, it can give us both sets of information in a different and more digestible way.

For example here, this card is due on September 3rd.

How close is that?

Down below, it's telling me exactly, that's in one week, seven hours, and exactly 21 minutes from now.

This is maybe a little more relevant to me.

As I glance at other cards as well, such as October 31st, okay, that's one week and a day, this is one week and three hours, now I've got a bit of a better grasp of how close I am to those due dates.

If you've also included a start date, here you can see the Card Duration Power-Up will tell us the total amount of time.

So this card should take us about four days, in this particular case.

This one has a very long duration.

It's 27 weeks and one day.

I wouldn't be able to do that math quickly in my head, but now I've got the exact number here, thanks to this particular power up.

So if you're wanting to see this, of the card, but you can also see this inside the card as well, be sure to install the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker.

Costello

The seventh free Trello power up on our list has all to do with tracking costs.

Whether you're tracking a budget or financials here within Trello, Costello makes things so much easier.

Even before I open up any of these cards, you can see here in the top right-hand corner, I've got a total cost of roughly $2500.

What it's doing is summing up the different cards where I've added cost data.

In this example, I'm going to come over here to the Power-Ups section, and I'm going to add a total cost.

Let's enter in a number, something like $1500.

Now you can see I've got this number attached to this card here.

If I close this and I come to the front of the card, you can see that that cost is visible here as well.

But the great thing is, is that my total cost has increased, because, of course, it's going to be dynamic, so I can add cost to any of the cards on this board, and when I click on this option here, I can summarize it by a few different ways.

Not only will it show me the individual cards where I've added cost data and include the number, but I can summarize it by column.

Here I can see my biggest expenses are under the Pending task here, but I can also summarize it by label as well.

Here I can see that both HR and the client request are very close at around $2,000.

So if you're working with money, budgeting, or financials, be sure to install the Costello Power-Up.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's Trello tutorial and tip video, and I'd love to hear from you next.

With unlimited Power-Ups for everyone, what's at the top of your Trello Power-Up list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

I hope you give this video a thumbs up, and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel for more Trello tips and tricks.

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

In fact, it's very simple.

Switching between programs

One of the easiest ways to save time while working at your computer is to use keyboard shortcuts. So in this video I'm sharing with you seven of my favorite Windows keyboard shortcuts so you can save time.

And let's don't waste any time and jump right into my first shortcut which has all to do with switching programs in applications. Let's say that I'm working on this Excel document but I need to jump into my word document.

I could keep coming down here to the task bar and go back and forth between these applications. But if I'm in the middle of writing something here, it might be faster since my fingers are already on the keyboard to use Alt-Tab.

To use this all you need to do is hold down Alt and then select Tab. Now you wanna keep all held down while you cycle through all of your applications.

So for example if I wanna jump back into that word document, I just need to hit Tab until I hover over that application and then release the Alt key. If I wanna go back to that spreadsheet, again Alt select Tab and then I can immediately be brought back to the second one in my list here.

If I don't need to cycle through everything or go to another application, it's gonna bring me to the second one in this list. So for example if I'm just going back and forth between these two, I can just select Alt-Tab on my keyboard.

Now you can get your mouse involved if you want. If I select Alt-Tab to bring up this menu, you can see that my cursor still has an effect.

So if I wanna jump into this paint application, I can click it and it will bring me there as well. So a quick and easy way, this is especially useful if you're giving a presentation and you want to quickly jump back and forth between applications.

Snap windows to sides (split-screen)

Next let's take a look at how we can take advantage of using a split screen view right here within windows. Maybe you don't benefit from using multiple monitors, but you'd still like to have two applications side by side.

All you need to do is within the application that you want to see is hit the Windows key and then either the left arrow key or the right arrow key, depending on where you want it to end up. So in this case I wanted on the left-hand side I'm gonna hit Windows and then that left arrow key, and when I release it, it's actually going to show me all of my open applications.

So now I can choose which application I want on the right-hand side. I'm gonna select this Excel spreadsheet, and now they are perfectly split left and right.

So I can be working over here on the left, but referencing data and referencing information here on the right-hand side.

Open pinned taskbar apps

The next shortcut on our list is gonna help us quickly and easily open up some of our most used applications. You're probably already familiar with pinning certain applications to your task bar down below.

This can be really useful if there are certain apps that you use on a daily or at least a regular basis. So you don't always have to come here to the search window or hit the start key as well.

But there's a quicker way to open up these applications than always bringing your cursor down to the bottom of the screen. So for example, if I'm working here within Excel and I wanna quickly work out a calculation without actually entering it into my document, I wanna open up my calculator app.

But instead of dragging my cursor all the way down, I can use the combination of a Windows key and the position that that application is in. So here you can see it is the second one that is pinned.

So if I select Windows and then the number two key, it's going to immediately open up this application for me because it's in the second position. So once again, let's in this case let's open up Outlook.

Let's see Outlook is one, two, three, four, five, six, so if I hit Windows and then the six key, it's going to immediately open up my Outlook account.

So this can be a great way to quickly and easily open up the applications that you want to use without having to make use of your mouse.

Search for programs and files

But of course, not all of your applications are going to be pinned down below. In some cases you're gonna have to go and search for the application or maybe search for the file over here.

Well instead of having to come down to the search bar, we can get there that much faster by selecting the Windows key plus the S key. Windows S is going to immediately not only open up this dialogue, so we might be able to click on something that is a most frequently used app or something that was recently used, but you can see that my cursor is already waiting for me down below.

Lemme close this down for just a second to do that one more time for you. Windows S and now I can immediately start typing in the file or the application that I'm looking for.

So these quick and easy wins to get you to where you wanna be that much faster.

Take a screenshot or snippet

The next shortcut key on our list is something that I use all of the time. When I want to share something with someone else often I need to take a screenshot, whether that's of a dialog box, whether that's of an image, or just something else on my screen.

So in this case perhaps I want to include this logo or this image for example into this document here on the left-hand side. So Windows has a fantastic screen grab and screenshot tool built right in.

In order to access it, you want to select Windows then Shift and then S. And what that's going to do it's going to gray out your screen for just a moment, but here you can see at the top of the screen, we have a few different options as to how we can get this snippet.

Now typically by default it's going to have this rectangular snip view. Meaning that now I've got these cross hairs and I can just click and drag over the part of the screen that I want to grab.

As soon as I release it, it is going to grab that, it's going to place it in my clipboard, and now we can go over here to this word document and I can paste it right in. If I go Control-V perfect, now I've got that image right here within my document.

But you'll see there's a few other ways in which we can snip images. So once again Windows, Windows Shift S and we're gonna have this option here at the top.

The second one is a free form snips. So in this case I'm gonna select it, and maybe I only want the PowerPoint logo in this case. So with my cursor, I'm going to click and hold, but this time it's going to highlight where I'm dragging.

I really like the way that they've set this up in the way that it continues to show me what is going to be grabbed before I release. I get to release it at this point.

Again as soon as I release, it's going to paste that image into the clipboard. I can come down here again, lemme just delete that previous one here. And I'm going to paste the new one.

Here you can see I don't have the addition of this graphic, I just have the logo cause I was able to grab it with that free form snip. You have a few other options available to you here as well.

This one is going to snip the entire window of the application that you're on, or if you just want to take an entire full screen snip, you can choose this last option. If you change your mind, just hit X, and you're brought back to whatever you last laid off.

Viewing the clipboard history

Since we're talking about snipping and screen grabbing, and then pasting things elsewhere, let's talk about our clipboard and accessing more than just your most recent copy. You're probably already familiar with grabbing something such as this text here and selecting Control-C, and then we can go and use Control-V to paste it somewhere else.

But what if I wanna go back and paste one of those images that I've already copied? Well because it's not the last thing I copied, I can only use Control-V and get that last piece of text.

If you want to access everything within your clipboard, you want to select Windows then V. And what that's gonna do is bring up this menu here, here you can see the text which is the most recent thing, but now we've got those snippets that we just use, we've got some other text, we've got other things even some things that I was copying and pasting from yesterday are contained within this clipboard.

So once again, just place your cursor as to where you would like to paste something from your clipboard, then select Windows V, and that's gonna bring up your entire recent clipboard. Now keep in mind there is going to be a limit. The limit is not the number of things which you've copied to the clipboard, it's actually the size of things.

Currently that maximum is four megabytes. So keep in mind the number of images that you've included on your clipboard that may reduce the total number of things found here. But let's say I wanna go down here, and this is something that I actually copied yesterday but it's still relevant and I'd like to add it to this document, I can select it and now I can paste it directly here in front of me.

So Windows V to bring up your entire clipboard.

Open the emoji library

Lastly, let's take a look at how we can liven up some of our documents or just make things a little bit easier to find with the emoji library right here within Windows. So regardless if you're within an application or if you're online, you can bring up the Windows emoji library by selecting Windows plus the period key.

What you can see here is that I'm first gonna see my most recent emojis right, the things that I've used most recently. But I can quickly and easily go through the different categories down below.

If I'm still having trouble finding what I want, and if you never want to get your cursor involved, you can start to type in what you're looking for right away. So for example, maybe I wanna find something that is food related, so I'm gonna start typing in the word food.

Now you may think that I'm typing in this word directly into this word document, but once I found the food that I want, let's say I'm gonna select the strawberry, it's going to now replace what I typed in.

It was only using that for it's search capabilities, and now I've got that emoji right here. Let's search for something else. Let's say I want to find a basketball, perfect I've searched for it, I've typed it in, I can just click it right here or I can hit enter.

Let's try that one more time. If I hit bat and then use my cursor to hit over or highlight over that particular emoji I can hit enter. And now in this case it's brought in a cricket bat for me as a part of this emoji search.

So if you're looking to add a little more color or just to make things a little more exciting within your applications, you can use the emoji library by selecting the Windows plus period key.

Now I realize that today's list was relatively short, but I would love to hear from you. There are so many Windows shortcuts that can help us save time. What are some of your favorites, please be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Because I'm sure that there are others that are gonna benefit from your tips. As always thank you so much for watching today's video, I hope you give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing right here to the simple activity channel.

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.

What's wrong with most scheduling apps

0:00

- [Scott] Sending your scheduling link

0:02

shouldn't feel weird and I agree completely.

0:05

That's why in today's video,

0:06

we're taking a look at SavvyCal,

0:09

a scheduling tool that does things differently.

0:12

Not only does it have some features that other popular tools

0:15

such as Calendly do not have,

0:17

but SavvyCal really and truly puts the participant first.

0:22

So it's easier and quicker for your clients

0:25

to book time with you.

0:26

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity,

0:30

helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

0:34

And just before we dive into SavvyCal

0:36

and all of the cool features that are included,

0:39

I wanna take a step back and look at what's wrong

0:42

with our traditional scheduling apps.

0:44

So let me jump into Calendly for just a second.

0:47

And you're probably already familiar

0:49

with this interface, right?

0:50

Someone sends me a link or I click it on link

0:53

on their website and I'm brought to this screen

0:55

and I can see, okay,

0:57

I can see their availability, right.

0:59

I can click on different days

1:01

and then it can show me different times here.

1:03

What's the problem?

1:04

Well, now I've got to jump back to my calendar and say,

1:08

okay, well I'm available.

1:10

Okay, is that work for them?

1:11

No, no, okay, so the 26th, they could meet at this.

1:15

Now I've got to go back to my calendar.

1:16

I'm going back and forth and I'm wasting time.

1:19

It's actually a little confusing at some times

1:22

to see what is the best time for me.

1:25

This is the best time for them.

1:26

And that's good, that's half of the equation,

1:29

but really it puts the onus on me.

1:32

It's as almost as if this was designed

1:34

with the organizer in mind

1:36

and not so much for the participant.

Overlaying your calendar with SavvyCal

1:40

Well, that's exactly where SavvyCal does things differently.

1:44

So, for example, here I am within a preview.

1:47

This is the same type of screen.

1:49

So someone has sent me a link

1:50

and I wanna book some time with them.

1:52

First off, what I love about this in SavvyCal

1:56

is that it's really nice and clear.

1:57

I'm getting a full week view here of their calendar, right?

2:02

So I'm not just seeing the little dates and stuff.

2:04

I still have a full monthly calendar

2:07

here on the left-hand side,

2:08

but it's just a little more flexible

2:10

as I see what's available.

2:12

But here is the cherry on top,

2:14

in the top right-hand corner,

2:16

I have the option to overlay my calendar.

2:19

So if I hit this switch,

2:21

now my calendar appears right on

2:24

their availability calendar.

2:25

So I can say, you know what?

2:27

Wednesday afternoon sounds great to me.

2:30

Yeah, let's book 30 minutes there.

2:32

My information's already put in,

2:33

I'm gonna hit schedule and we're done.

2:36

It's a single click.

2:37

It's a single click and I already saw my calendar

2:40

on their calendar nice and easy for me.

2:44

So let's go back and take a look

2:45

at some of these features here within SavvyCal.

Creating and editing SavvyCal scheduling links

2:48

Here we are within the SavvyCal scheduling interface,

2:52

and you can already see I've created

2:54

three different links up to this point.

2:56

Let's go into the one that we just saw,

2:58

this coaching session with Scott.

3:01

Now, one of the benefits just from the creation side

3:04

is that I can also overlay my calendar here.

3:07

So as I'm creating my schedule, I can see what's coming up.

3:12

I can make changes on the fly

3:14

by overlaying my actual calendar.

3:17

If I don't want to see it,

3:18

I can just toggle it here in the bottom right-hand corner,

3:21

but this is a beautiful feature to make it that much easier

3:24

for me to plan out my schedule.

3:26

Now, on the left-hand side,

3:28

you can see some of the options here

3:29

that we can choose from.

3:30

In most cases, you're probably going to want to use

3:33

a multi-use scheduling tool,

3:35

but you can also do we'll use as well.

3:37

If you want people to select it one time time,

3:39

and that's gonna be their only time

3:41

to book that particular meeting.

3:44

But here are some of the other features

3:45

that you won't find elsewhere.

3:47

In this case, we can actually choose

3:49

to have multiple durations for this same meeting.

3:54

So, instead of having to create multiple events in Calendly

3:59

or some other popular tools where I'd have to create

4:02

a 30 minute coaching session,

4:04

and then I'd have to create

4:05

a separate 60 minute coaching session.

4:08

And maybe if I wanted to offer a two hour coaching session,

4:11

I'd have to create a separate event for that,

4:14

I don't have to do that.

4:15

I can do that all right here.

4:17

So why don't we do that?

4:18

I've already got 30 minutes and 60 minutes here.

4:20

Why don't I select two hours?

4:22

So now they're going to have the option

4:24

on that same booking screen, 30, 60, or two hours.

4:30

So, I love this ability to be able to offer multiple hours.

4:34

The next one here has to do with,

Setting available hours and ranked hours

4:36

what types of availability are we going to set?

4:39

Now, I'll show you in a minute

4:40

where we can set the defaults here, right?

4:42

We see things like work hours and bonus hours,

4:45

and you can have as many of these presets as you want.

4:49

So in this case, my work hours are going to be nine to five

4:53

with a bit of a break in here for lunch,

4:55

but I've also added some bonus hours as well,

4:58

some bonus hours in the evening on Tuesday and Thursday,

5:02

but it gets even better.

5:04

You can see here in the top right-hand corner,

5:06

we have something called ranked hours,

5:08

meaning that you don't have to offer

5:11

all of these hours at once.

5:13

You can offer one of these hours first.

5:16

And then if that still doesn't work

5:18

for your clients or your participants,

5:20

then they can be presented with additional hours.

5:23

So for example, if I uncheck, if I disable this here,

5:26

this rank in hours,

5:27

what you will see is it's gonna refresh my calendar here

5:29

on the right-hand side, and I can select the bonus hours,

5:33

it's gonna be one or the other.

5:35

In this case, here you can see my bonus hours, right?

5:36

I can see them here down below.

5:38

I can choose either my bonus or my work hours

5:41

from those presets.

5:42

But as soon as I select ranks,

5:45

now what I can do is I can choose number one,

5:48

how of these that I want,

5:49

and I can have as many as I would like to add here.

5:52

I'm gonna select bonus hours here,

5:53

but then I can click and drag and say, you know what?

5:56

At first glance, I want them to actually

5:58

look at my bonus hours first,

6:00

because maybe I wanna fill my days

6:02

with other important tasks

6:04

and this is going to be secondary.

6:05

But in this particular example,

6:07

let's go back to where I had it set originally.

6:09

I want work hours first, and then I want those bonus hours.

6:14

So what I'm gonna do here, let's just go back here,

6:16

I'm going to paste this link

6:18

just so that we can see this in action.

6:20

So when I send out this link to a client,

6:23

or if they perhaps click on a particular button

6:25

on my website,

6:26

here is what they're going to see by default, right?

6:29

This is what my current availability is,

6:31

but you will notice down below it says,

6:34

having trouble finding a time, click show more.

6:38

So let's say that this is really busy with their schedule.

6:41

Let's say that they're jam packed and oh,

6:43

I'd really like to meet.

6:44

I'd really like to set up this coaching session.

6:46

What do I do next?

6:47

Well, I can select show more

6:50

and now I've got my bonus hours displayed.

6:53

Well, maybe this fits with their schedule.

6:56

So again, thinking of your clients,

6:59

thinking of your participants first, and like I said before,

7:03

we have that dropdown.

7:04

So if they want a 60 minute session

7:06

instead of a 30 minute session,

7:07

if they want a two hour session,

7:09

all they have to do is select that option here.

7:12

They don't have to go back to some other link

7:15

or select some other option.

7:18

Fantastic, so here you have the ins and outs,

7:21

of actually setting up a particular session.

7:23

Let's move on and take a look

7:24

at some of the other features here within SavvyCal.

Setting up individual recurring scheduling links

7:27

Returning to our scheduling links page,

7:29

another feature I love about SavvyCal

7:32

is the ability to create individual recurring links.

7:35

What do I mean by that?

7:36

Well, let's take a look at this one

7:37

that I've created in advance.

7:39

It's called Scott and Julie check-in.

7:41

Let's say that Julie is a member of my team.

7:44

And you know, once in a while when I want her to,

7:47

I want Julie to set up a meeting with me,

7:50

just so we check in maybe once a week

7:52

or once every other week.

7:54

Now, it's gonna be the same format, right?

7:55

I want the same duration of time.

7:58

It's going to be meeting in my office and yeah,

8:01

Julie is the recipient.

8:02

So the great thing here is then I can create

8:05

a custom link just for Julie,

8:08

including her information already

8:10

so that she can just click it whenever she wants.

8:13

And we'll have all that information

8:15

waiting for us right here.

8:16

And I can even go ahead and edit the URL.

8:19

So in this case, maybe I want to call this,

8:21

Julie check again, for example, something like that.

8:24

I'm gonna hit save here.

8:25

So now she can bookmark this URL

8:28

and just use it whenever she needs to.

8:30

Or maybe I can send her that URL saying,

8:32

hey, let's check in later this week,

8:34

please use this link to book a time with me.

8:38

So this can be great,

8:39

whether it's for staff or with other people

8:41

that you meet on recurrent basis,

8:43

and you don't want to send them

8:45

to your publicly available link

8:47

or the thing that is listed or linked to your website.

8:50

You can customize it for certain individuals.

Managing availability settings in SavvyCal

8:53

Taking a look at our availability settings,

8:56

here you can see the work hours and the bonus hours,

8:59

which I've referred to before.

9:00

So the nice thing is that I can manage

9:03

all of my different sets

9:05

or all of my different recurring ranges in one place,

9:08

and then choose to attach them

9:10

or possibly rank them depending

9:13

on the type of scheduling link that I'm creating.

9:16

So in this case, let's start and add another one here.

9:19

I'm gonna add one, something called weekend hours.

9:21

So maybe for a particular type of session,

9:24

I wanna add some weekend hours.

9:26

All I need to do is add a recurring range.

9:29

I'm gonna uncheck the days of the week,

9:31

'cause this is for the weekend.

9:32

And maybe I'm gonna say that my weekend hours

9:34

are gonna be from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.

9:38

And I'm only gonna offer this on occasion, right?

9:40

I'm certainly not going to add this

9:42

to all of my scheduling links, but when I need to,

9:45

I've managed it right here in a single place

9:48

and I can do so as often as I like,

9:51

so quick and easy to manage all of your availability.

Advanced settings and delegation in SavvyCal

9:55

Lastly, I wanna take a quick look at our settings here,

9:58

'cause not only can you bring in your teams

10:00

and integrate with other applications,

10:02

but what I love is that you can give delegated access,

10:06

meaning that you can allow an assistant

10:08

to manage your account on your own behalf

10:10

without giving them full access to everything.

10:14

So for example, if you have a virtual assistant,

10:18

if you have a secretary and you would like them

10:20

to help you manage your calendar,

10:22

you can delegate this access to them

10:24

without having to share your username and password.

10:28

So if you'd like a simpler way to manage

10:31

all of your scheduling links and make it

10:33

that much easier for your participant or clients

10:37

to book time with you,

10:38

I'd recommend that you check out SavvyCal.

10:41

Be sure to check out the link in the description below

10:44

for a special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

10:48

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

10:50

And remember, being productive

10:52

does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

How I define hidden features in Gmail

Sometimes it's the little changes that can have a major impact on the tools that we use. So in today's video, I wanna share with you seven hidden features right here within Gmail so that you can get more out of your inbox.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And when I say hidden features, no, these aren't things that you need to use a cheat code to get to.

In fact, most of these features are found in the settings, but it's my experience that the majority of Gmail users do not know that these settings even exist. So I wanna make sure you know where to find them, what they do so that you can get the most out of your Gmail experience.

Reading Pane View

And we're gonna start with the reading pane. You're probably used to this view right here within Gmail where I need to click on an email.

Okay, now I've read the email. I can delete it, archive it, add a label and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox.

Then I'm gonna open up another email and I'm gonna read it and do something with it and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox. Well, there's a more efficient way if you like.

If we click on the gear settings here and scroll all the way down, you can see that there's a section here called reading pane. The great thing about the reading pane is that we can choose if we want to preview or see those emails on the right-hand side of the screen.

I can still see all of my inbox here or whatever folder I'm looking at here on the left-hand side, but I don't have to go in and out. I can view my emails here on the left-hand side and I can read and deal and reply to those emails here on the right-hand side.

Now if you don't like the preview or the reading pane on the right-hand side, you can also choose below the inbox here. You can see your emails up top and you can read and deal with your emails down below.

If you wanna view more or change that split, you can just drag this little area here in the middle to change where that split occurs. Now you can both see your incoming inbox or your incoming email and you can reply and respond to it down below.

So if you want something more than just the standard no split view, make sure you take a look at the reading pane.

Auto-Advance Emails

Now the second one on our list has to do with saving even more time. In this case, we want to auto advance through our messages so we don't have to keep coming back to our inbox.

Once again, we're gonna click on the gear icon, but this time we're gonna say see all settings. At the very right-hand side or near the end of the right-hand side, we wanna click on this advanced tab.

At the top of the list, we have something called auto advance. What this is going to do is that after we delete, archive or mute a conversation, instead of going back to the inbox, we can enable this feature and it's going to take us to the very next message.

So let's take a look at what happens in a normal Gmail setting. Let's say I open up this email and I don't need this anymore so I'm going to delete it.

I'm brought back to the inbox. That's pretty standard behavior.

But if we go back to our settings here, I'm gonna click on that advanced tap and I'm gonna enable the auto advance feature and don't forget to hit save changes. Now it's going to refresh my Gmail screen here for just a moment.

Let me open up another email here and let's say, okay, I've read what I need to do here. I'm gonna delete this one as well.

I'm now immediately taken to the next message in my list and in this case, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna archive this. Maybe there's something in this message that I want to read later.

I'm brought to the very next message in my inbox so no longer am I wasting time going back and forth and back and forth. I can more efficiently get through my email by turning that auto advance feature on.

Undo Send Time Period

Now the third hidden feature I wanna talk to you about has to do when we make a mistake such as replying to an email when we're a little mm, hot and bothered or perhaps just a little angry and then we say, ah, you know what? I should take that back.

So we're talking about undo send. Now let's go ahead and create a new message just by default here.

I'm gonna send it to a test account here. I'm not even gonna fill anything in at this case.

I'm gonna hit send just to show you here on the bottom left-hand corner, we always have this little dialog that says okay message sent, undo or view message. Now the undo was there for a few seconds, but now it's gone.

I actually can't undo this message. In fact, even if I go and hit view message here, I don't have the option to undo this message anymore.

That's because by default, the undo send feature is set for a mere five seconds so if you don't make that decision very, very quickly, you will not be able to take that message back. If we go back into see all settings and about the fourth one down here on the general tab, we have this undo send setting.

Now here's the cancellation period. By default, it is five seconds, but we can extend it all the way out to 30 seconds, meaning that after we hit the send button, Gmail will not actually send that message until 30 seconds later.

I'm just gonna go down to the bottom of the screen here, the bottom of the page, and hit save changes so I can apply that to my email account. So now let's go ahead and send another message here.

I'm just gonna open this up. Let's choose the same test account in this case.

I'm gonna hit send and you will see at the bottom of the screen that undo link, this undo option's gonna hang around an awful lot longer. So I can wait here and say you know what? Didn't really mean to use that type of verbiage.

I didn't really mean to say the things that I did. You know what? Let's undo that. Let's take that one back.

So now we're brought back to the exact same email here and if I had put in a subject or some messaging here, I could now edit it. Maybe take out some of the words or some of the tone that I was speaking of in this particular case.

So if you want just a, a little more of a backup, if you want to make sure that you've got just a little more time to think about that email that you sent, you may want to extend this undo send for an extended period of time.

Nudges for Forgotten Emails

Now let's stay on the general tab here for hidden feature number four and that has to do with nudges. Now nudges can be really, really helpful to making sure that you don't forget about emails that have either been sent to you with a question or if you've sent someone else a question, for example, and you haven't heard from them yet.

Now in this case, I have both of them turned on, but let's be clear as to what each of them actually does. So the first one is suggest emails to reply to and it says emails you might have forgotten to respond to will appear at the top of your inbox.

So for example, if someone has sent you an email and it contains a question, but you've never replied to that email, Gmail can bring that particular message back, maybe after two or three days and say hey, should you reply to this message? Do you want to reply to this message? It will appear at the top of your inbox.

This can be a great way to make sure that you don't forget anything in your inbox. The second one has more to do when you are waiting for a reply, suggest emails to follow up on.

So these are sent emails you might need to follow up on and they will also appear in your inbox. So for example, if I send you an email and I ask you a question, but I haven't heard back from you in maybe 48 or 72 hours, Gmail may bring that message back to say, hey, you know what, you haven't heard back from this person.

They haven't answered you or replied to you. Should you send a follow-up email?

Now if you have not used nudges before, I might suggest that you check both of these boxes and leave them on for a two or three week period and decide if you're benefiting from these features. If you do find that they're annoying, maybe you're very good on the follow-up and maybe you have purposely ignored many of your emails that you haven't responded to, you can always come back in here and uncheck these boxes, but it's worth taking a look at, especially if you haven't tried nudges in the past.

Gmail Offline Mode

Now the next hidden feature on our list has to do when you don't have access to the internet or maybe you know that you're not gonna have internet access for a period of time. And that has to do with Gmail offline mode.

Once again, if we go into our settings, on the right-hand side of our tab near the very end, we have an offline tab and here we only have one option and that is to enable offline email mode. What this is gonna do is actually store and save a certain amount of your inbox to your computer so that you have access to those messages.

You can even set up and write the replies. They just won't be sent until you're back online.

A couple of things that you wanna take a look at here. First off, it's going to tell you how much storage it is going to take.

So in this case, if I do turn it on, I know it's gonna use just 17 megabytes. I mean, come on. That's almost nothing to store the amount of email that I want on my computer here.

The next option we have to consider is how many emails we want to store on our local computer. We have three different options here in terms of time, the last seven days, the last 30 days or the last 90 days.

How far back do you want to go if you are in offline mode? You may need to experiment with this. And you know, sometimes maybe just the past week is good enough, but you can choose from those three different durations.

Next we can choose if we want to download those attachments or not. Last but not least, you need to choose after logging out of your Google account, do you want to keep the offline data on your computer or do you want to remove it from your computer.

Where do you actually go to view your offline mail? Well once you have set this up and hit save changes, all you need to do is go to your browser and type in mail.google.com and then you will be brought directly to your inbox.

It'll be an offline inbox, but you'll still be able to access all of those emails and start to reply even though you're offline.

Multiple Email Signatures

Now adding or editing an email signature may not sound like a hidden feature, but I find that there are many Gmail users who don't realize that they can add multiple email signatures and see the benefit of doing so. So once again, if we go into all of our settings and on the general tab, we wanna scroll down to near the very bottom of this screen and we'll come to the signature area.

Now here you can see I've got my default signature here and you can edit it any way that you like, but you can have as many different signatures as you want. So for example here, I've got a second signature which I like to respond to for a different purpose, right?

Maybe I have a different tagline, maybe I want to include different links or different promotional links within this, depending on whom I'm sending it to. The other benefit of having multiple signatures is that you can use them for different purposes such as for new emails versus reply or forward emails only.

So for example, I'm gonna create a new one here and I'm just gonna call this one a reply email and I'm gonna say create. Then here I'm just gonna say something like, you know, Scott F, maybe something really, really basic like that.

That's all I want it to say when I'm replying or forwarding to an email, just like that. So now down below when I come to my signature defaults, I can say okay, for new emails, yeah, I want you to use my signature, but when it comes to reply or forwarding, I want you to use my reply email, just like that.

So now I can come down here and hit save changes and that behavior will be there. However, it gets better.

So for example, I'm gonna open up and start a brand new email and at the bottom of the screen, you can see that we have this little pen icon which is actually an insert signature function. So by default, here is the correct signature that I want for most of my emails.

But if I come down here and select insert signature, I have access to all of my signatures. So maybe I want that second one, Scott Friesen number two, and maybe I wanna add some further details here as well.

You can have as many signatures as you want. You can even choose to turn off the signature altogether, depending on that message, but the flexibility of having and managing those multiple signatures can be great even if you're only using a single email address.

More Menu Space

Last but not least, my final hidden feature has to do with getting more out of your menu here on the left-hand side. Often we have a large number of labels here and even if I click the more option here, I still need to scroll to see all of my options.

And let's be honest. This isn't even that many labels altogether.

In many cases, it's this chat and rooms and meeting options or these areas that take up an awful lot of real estate. Well what if I don't make use of chat or meet? Even if I minimize this, it might still get in the way, depending on how many labels I have here.

Well if we go back into our settings and say see all settings, all we need to do is click on the chat and meet option and we can turn both chat and we can turn meet off. We can turn chat to off and we can say hide the meet section in the main menu.

I'm gonna select save changes. I'm gonna be brought back to my main screen.

And now they are gone. Now I've got full access to everything here on the left-hand side.

Now I would love to hear from you next. Which of these seven hidden features were your favorites or did I miss something from my list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for watching today's video.

I hope you like and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple

Right Inbox

Do you sometimes wish that you could do more with Gmail, or maybe that you could view your inbox in a different way? Well, in this video, I'm sharing with you seven of my favorite Gmail extensions so that you can give your email some superpowers.

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

Now, the first extension on our list is called Right Inbox. And as I open up my Compose menu, you can see right away I've got a number of additional options.

I've got four different buttons here within the message itself, and then down below, just below my Send button, I've got a number of additional options down here as well.

So let's take a look at some of my favorite features here within Right Inbox.

In this case, I am sending an email, and I'm asking someone a question. You know, how does Thursday look for you?

I wanna meet with this individual, but I wanna track when they open this up, and if they click any of the links within my emails as well. Well, Right Inbox, one of its features is the ability to track those emails.

Here, you can see, I can choose if I either want to track the clicks or the opens, or maybe I want to do both. Now that this button is green, when I send this message, I will be able to see when this person actually opens or if they click any of the links within this particular email.

If I open up my Sent folder here within Gmail, I can see this email, which I sent earlier, and I see that I've got a notification. I've got this little green check mark with the number two.

This is letting me know that this individual has opened up this email two times, and I can see exactly when they did so. This can give me some further insights, some further information as to what I should be doing next with this particular client.

My second favorite feature with the Right Inbox extension has to do with using its template feature. Why? Because it's so easy to access. It's right here at the top of my messages.

How many times have you written the same email over and over and over again? When in reality, all you need to do is use the same template.

So in this example, I've got a number of templates that I've already created. In fact, Right Inbox sets you up with a few defaults as well.

Maybe this is a follow-up email. I'm gonna select this option here and then select the button itself, and now you can see, I've got this templated message ready for me to send.

Lastly, before I send this email, I wanna make sure that I'm reminded if this individual doesn't follow up with me. And don't worry, Right Inbox has this built right in.

Down below, we can see this reminder option here, and I can turn this on and choose when I would like to be reminded. For example, I wanna know if this person has not responded to me by tomorrow afternoon.

So I'm gonna select that option. I have a number of other options available here as well.

Maybe I want to make sure that it comes back even if they do reply to me, or I can check this box, and it will watch and see if a reply comes within that timeframe. So you can really customize the way that this reminder works.

Now, I can confidently send this email, and I'll be reminded if this individual doesn't get back to me within that timeframe.

Gmail reverse conversation

Now, the next extension on our list is something that so many of you have requested or asked me about in the comments.

Here, within Gmail, we know that the oldest message will be displayed at the very top, and sometimes you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to read the most recent message. If you go to Reply, you're gonna be replying at the bottom of the screen.

What if you could change that? Well, the good news is that you can, and you can do it with the Gmail Reverse Conversation.

Here, I'm gonna open up that exact same email, but what? The most recent message is now staring at me in the face on top with my oldest message at the bottom.

Look at this. My reply is at the top as well.

If I hit Reply, I can now reply to that message very traditionally, very much like we see in Outlook and some other email programs, and the rest of my message is down below.

So if you prefer to read your messages with the most recent on top and be able to reply on top, Reverse Gmail Conversation is the extension for you.

Inbox When Ready

Now, the next extension on our list is great for anyone who gets distracted with all of the messages that are staring back at them. As a productivity coach, I encourage my clients to ignore their email for certain stretches of their workday.

Our next extension helps us to do that right here. Inbox When Ready allows you to hide your inbox with just a click of a button.

Here, in the top left-hand corner of the screen, I can select Hide Inbox and now everything is out of the way. I can still compose my messages as I would naturally, but I don't have to see all of the existing messages or new messages as they come in.

This can give me a heightened sense of focus and keep me distraction-free as I go about my day. But it gets even better.

If I click on the Inbox When Ready options here, I can choose the frequency for when I auto-hide my inbox. For example, I can hide it by default when I first get into my Gmail account.

I can hide my inbox after 10 minutes of inactivity, or I can even choose the Enable Impulse Check, meaning that I can dictate how often do I want to check my inbox today.

There's a number of other settings, including time of day and scheduling, in which you can include here as well, but if you wanna be distraction-free and just toggle your inbox on and off, Inbox When Ready might be the solution for you.

Gmail Tabs

Now, the next extension on our list got so many rave reviews and comments when I first introduced it two years ago that I thought I'd bring it back for today's video.

You may have a very long list of labels and categories here on the left-hand side, but there's probably some that you use more frequently than others. So wouldn't it be nice if you could just pin a few of your key labels at the top of the screen?

Well, you can do so with Gmail Tabs. Here, you can see I've got my Inbox tab, but I can quickly and easily go to my Action Required and my Newsletter tab.

These are the exact same labels as you would see here on the left-hand side, but they're just a little bit easier to get to because I have them pinned at the top of my inbox.

At any time, I can go over here and choose to edit these labels if I want to add further ones, or if I want to change the name of the label, but now, I can pin any of the categories or any of the labels that I have over here and easily access them at the top of the screen.

Clearbit Connect

Now, our next extension is ideal for anyone in sales, marketing, entrepreneurship, or maybe just anyone who needs to find a particular email address.

Perhaps I'm wanting to reach out to someone at a particular company, but I don't know their actual email address. All I know is their name.

With the Clearbit Connection extension installed, on the right-hand side of your panel here, we can open up this option and find specific emails. So in this case, maybe I've already typed in a company name, in this case, I'm gonna use Trello as an example.

I'm gonna click on this. What Clearbit is going to do is it's going to give me all of the known email addresses of all the people who work at Trello.

As I sift through this, not only can I see their name, a profile picture in most cases, but I can also see what their title is.

In this case, I'm gonna select this individual. It's gonna open up and give me some further information, including links to their Twitter account and their LinkedIn profile, and now I can email this individual directly.

Grammarly

Now, you've probably heard of the next extension on my list, but I really can't emphasize how important it is to use this on a regular basis.

Grammarly has been helping people craft better messages for many, many years, but chances are you do most of your text-based writing right here within Gmail.

With the Grammarly extension installed, here, you can see, just before I send this message, I've got a number of underlined words. It's very easy for me to see what Grammarly is pointing out to me.

All I need to do is hover over each one and see if I need to correct something. Yes, that's not how you spell wasn't.

I wasn't sure if we. Yeah, I missed a spelling there. I missed an entire letter.

On the next steps. Yeah, that makes more sense if I add, the next steps.

The reason why Grammarly is so important is that you're probably already a very good writer, but sometimes we do things very fast. Sometimes we forget to double-check our work, and that's precisely where Grammarly comes into place.

You can look so much more professional and increase your chances of getting a response by making sure your emails sound and look the way you want.

Zoom for Gmail

Now, the last extension I have on my list today has to do with setting up meetings that much quicker and faster. This is especially if you use Zoom meetings.

Here, on the right-hand side, under the Google taskbar, you can see I have the Zoom extension already installed. When I open up a particular email message, what I can do is have the option to either start a meeting immediately, or I can schedule a meeting in the future.

Not only is this going to allow me to quickly and easily create this meeting and send that link to whomever it is I'm speaking with, but I can access it here without going to a new tab.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video, and I would love to hear from you next. What are some Gmail extensions that I missed, or what are some of your favorite extensions that help you get more done as a part of your day?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video.

Be sure to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

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

Why forwarding email in Trello sucks

The ability to forward an email into Trello is nothing new, but it's also not very helpful. Let's take a look at this card as an example.

Here you can see there's an email thread which I've forwarded into Trello, but what am I gonna do with it now? Beyond being a reference place, I can't respond to it, I can't reply to it, and what if this person emails me again in this thread?

Nothing's going to be updated here. Well, fear no more because SendBoard for Trello changes absolutely everything when it comes to email.

Let's take a closer look and see how it's going to benefit you and your business. Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Who is SendBoard for and how does it work?

SendBoard for Trello is designed for teams who want to take incoming emails and turn them into actionable items right away. For example, maybe you are managing a support team, maybe you need to create tickets, or maybe you're managing a business like we see here, a pet grooming business, and we want to convert these emails directly into scheduled appointments.

When I open up this card, for example, at first glance, you may say nothing looks terribly different here, but when I scroll down to the activity area, you can see that there's an entire email thread, an entire email conversation, that is not only going on that I can reference it here, but the best thing is, I can reply to it as well.

When you have the SendBoard Power-Up enabled, you will have this button included on your incoming emails. If I click this button, it's gonna open up the SendBoard dialogue, and now not only do we see all of the emails that we saw before, but now I can write this reply directly from within Trello.

For example, in this case, maybe I just wanna send a reminder, "Please remember to show up 15 minutes in advance," or something along those lines. I'm gonna hit Send, that message is now sent using my standard email address, including my proper email signature, and I can see that I've sent it right here as well.

I can view it, other members of my team can view that that email has been sent as well, and if this individual replies to me, I'm gonna see that reply right here within Trello.

Email replies and how they work with SendBoard

Let's continue and take a look at how that looks and feels so that you can see the full benefits of the SendBoard extension. Here I am within the client's inbox and I've just received the email we sent a moment ago.

As you can see, there's nothing here that says Trello, it's coming from the email address that I've always known, the one that I've been using all along, it even includes the email signature. So the client has no idea where that message is coming from.

If I choose to reply to this and say, "Yes, confirmed," something along those lines, I'm gonna keep it nice and simple, and then I'm going to hit Send on this end. Let's go back to our Trello board and see what happens to those who have access to this board.

In just a few seconds, here you can see this exact same card now has a notification bell. Why? Because we've just received a reply to our message.

Now myself or someone else who may be watching this card can open up this card and see a "Confirmed." Perfect, they're ready for their appointment. If I need further detail, I can always click this button and access the full message.

If I want to see more details, including the full thread, all I need to do is expand or collapse this More option. As you can see, all of the features and functionalities that you've come to expect from your email client, including forwarding, replying, or even starting a new email, I can do right here within Trello, using the SendBoard Power-Up.

Viewing all messages and merging emails

Another great feature of SendBoard is being able to see all of the messages from a single user and the ability to merge different cards together. In this example, we can see that we've been having a conversation with someone about bringing their dog in for an appointment.

However, this exact same person has just emailed me, asking if they can reschedule. It actually has to do with this appointment down here, but now we have two different cards.

When I open up this card and if I want to see the full details, I can click on the SendBoard button, and now on the left-hand side, I can see right away that this is another conversation from the exact same person.

So it could be complicated for either myself or for my team to treat these as two different appointments when in reality, they're talking about the same thing. In order to merge cards together, all I need to do is open one of these cards and come over here and select the SendBoard button.

Here, I'm gonna select Merge Card. What it's going to do is look for the current card and say, if I want to keep this card or merge it with another. Because this is the shortcut here, I'm gonna choose to merge this card with another and select Next.

Immediately it's gonna give me this suggestion, because this is the only other Trello card that has a message from the same sender. I can either select this card, which I'm going to in this example, or I could search for any other card on this board.

Here, I'm going to select Next. Lastly, I can choose if I want to keep or not keep any of the comments, attachments, or archive the merged cards. This last option I think is very important.

We may still want to reference this original card somewhere down the line, but we just don't want to see it on the active board. It's also going to include a comment here, which I can edit if I like, just so I know the history of this.

In this case, I'm gonna proceed and select Merge. What's going to happen is that I am brought back to the original card, where the original message started, and here we can see that now I have that message so everything is kept nice and clean.

I have that history of that secondary card, but we no longer have the second card in this list. Myself and my team can provide the best service possible and not be confused by separate incoming messages.

Templated messages with SendBoard

Of course, when managing your email within your business, it's common to receive questions that can be answered by templated answers. The great thing about SendBoard is that you can create as many email responses or templates as necessary.

Let's say in this case that this customer is asking a very common question. I don't wanna waste my time or my team's time replying by writing out the same thing again and again.

So in this case, when I open up the email details, I'm gonna choose to reply to it, but what I'm gonna do is add a template. Here, I've got a couple of different templates that I've created already in advance.

In this case, they're asking about price, so I'm gonna insert this price response. The great thing is, is that we can use merge fields. So I can address that individual by name, I can even sign it by my own name and just have SendBoard do the work itself.

If I include this template, here you can see I've got the link to the pricing plans, I'm addressing to people by their name and in this case, it's my name as well, because I'm the one who is responding. I can add further details if I want, but I can save so much time by having ready-made templates right here from within SendBoard.

SendBoard settings and advanced features

Now that you know how SendBoard works, let's take a look at some of the additional settings that are available to us. On any Trello board, where you have SendBoard enabled, you'll have access to SendBoard here in the top right-hand corner.

The first place we wanna go to is the mailbox, just to show you how easy it is to set this up for yourself. When you start off with SendBoard, you will automatically get a SendBoard address.

In this case, the name here will be the name that you choose for your account, and then you can choose whatever you want in front of the at symbol. In this case, I've got it listed at hello@petcuts.sendboard.com. So you don't even have to create a new email address if you don't want to.

But if you do already have a custom email address, you can input that address here. So people can continue to email the standard address that you're used to.

On the Board tab, we have the choice to choose where we want incoming emails to appear, because perhaps you don't want them to appear on the very first list on your board. So we're given an easy dropdown to choose where we want those emails to arrive.

Lastly, on the Templates board, we have the choice to create an auto reply, which is especially helpful for help desks, or if you're receiving a large quantity of email and you wanna make sure that your clients or customers get an automatic reply.

We can also change the email signature so that it looks professional and matches the signature that you want to display to your clients. Last but not least, in the bottom section, we can edit and change our saved replies.

Just like we saw with our templates, we can create as many as we want so we can customize and be as efficient as we can when it comes to our email messaging.

Using SendBoard with Butler automation

An additional benefit of using SendBoard is that you can use it in combination with Trello Butler automations. That's right.

For example, you could send a templated email when a card is dragged into a particular list. This not only cuts down on so much time, but makes sure that those emails are being sent out when they move to the next stage.

Lastly, let's take a quick look at SendBoard pricing. Good news, you can use SendBoard absolutely for free. Your only limitations is to use it on a single board, but you have no limits when it comes to the total number of users.

Of course, if you need some more features and functionality, their essential plan starts at a very affordable $6 per user. So if you want to send and receive emails in Trello without any friction or perhaps you're using Trello for a help desk, a support team or a CRM, SendBoard is for you.

Be sure to click the link in the description below, to find out more details. Thank you so much for watching today's video.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple

How to start a new website

Are you ready to build your first website with Google Sites? Or perhaps you just need a refresher of all of the features and options.

Well, in this video, I'm gonna give you everything you need to know to get started with Google Sites. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here, at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

First off, if you don't know where to go to access Google Sites, all you need to do is go to your browser's address bar and type in sites.google.com and you'll come to a screen which looks very similar to what you see here. At the very top, we can start a new site by clicking this plus button, or we can choose one of the templates available here.

But down below is where you're going to see all of the sites that you have created, or perhaps websites that others have shared with you. For example, if they've given you editing rights.

So in this case, I have one existing website, but we wanna get started with a new website. I can either hit this plus button and start with a completely blank page, but in some cases I wanna get started a little bit faster.

So I'm gonna choose this template. Either way, you're going to be brought to that website.

You're gonna be brought to a brand new web page. Now, the great thing about starting with a template is that you have many of the features, many of the images and themes and text, things that are ready to go as you start to build out your site.

Using the Insert tab on Google Sites

But let's get familiar with the different menu options and choices available to us. Here on the right-hand side of the screen, we have a tab format with things such as insert, pages, and themes.

Now the insert tab is where you're probably going to be spending most of your time, why? Because this is where we get to add content, where we get to drag and drop different types of content onto our various web pages.

So for example, let's say under this learn more button, I would like to add in this sort of carousel style of these three images with some text down below. All I need to do is click on this and drag it over onto my webpage.

You can see that there's going to be a blue line, which hovers wherever I drag my cursor. That's telling me that that's where this will be inserted when I release my cursor.

So I'm gonna release it right here and here you can see now I've got a few boxes where I can start to add images or possibly a video, and I can edit my text down below. On the right-hand side here, we've got a variety of different things in which we can add to our websites.

Everything from collapsible text, all the way to other Google-related functions, such as maps, Google calendar, YouTube, slides, docs, and a variety of other things, which you will find in Google Drive. So this insert tab is obviously a very important part of the Google Sites menu.

Managing Pages on Google Sites

Next up, we have our pages tab, which is gonna show all of the pages that are included on our website. We started here in the home screen, but if I want to go to my projects pages, all I need to do is click that here.

Now you can see I've got a different page that I can edit and start to manipulate.

Using Themes with Google Sites

And if I want to click the three dots to the right of any of these pages, I can change their functions such as making this the homepage, I can duplicate this page and I can also change its properties such as changing the title or the name of that page as well.

Lastly, we have our themes and here you can see, we can change the theme that we're looking at right now. Currently, we're using this impression theme, but what if I prefer this diplomat theme?

I'm gonna click on it and I'm immediately going to get a preview of that theme. As you can see, not only does it change the title or the header of my websites, but it's also going to change the font and the text and sometimes the layout of other things as well.

If I don't like that color, which it chooses, I can choose another color if I wish or I can actually insert my own hex code if I have something that is particular, let's say to my branding. It'll also give you some choices as to what type of text or what type of font that you would like for this particular theme.

You can change these themes at any time when you are editing your website. However, when first starting off, you might want to actually start by looking at the themes before you get too heavily involved with editing the other components of your website.

We're gonna come back to this insert area in just a moment so that we get comfortable with moving things around, within our respective webpages. But before we do so, let's jump up here and see some of the other options we have available to us.

How to Preview and Share your Site

We do have the ability to undo and redo. Another important area here is the preview button.

Why don't I go back to our homepage just since there's a lot more to look at here. I'm gonna click on the home screen and I'm gonna select this preview icon.

What it's going to do, is it's going to basically show us what this website will look and feel like to people who are actually visiting our website. So here you can see I've got the menu on the left-hand side of the screen.

I can see how things are going to look and feel, and I can even test out and click on the buttons or any active links that I have. Now in the lower right-hand corner, we also have the option to preview our website.

Not only just on a large screen, such as a desktop or perhaps a laptop computer, but also on a phone. This can be very important because your images, in particular, will be laid out and displayed in perhaps a different format than what you're used to when viewing it on your desktop.

You can also preview this in tablet mode, which can be helpful because a tablet is not quite the same as a phone and presented in more of a square format. So you can toggle between these three to make sure that your website looks and feels the way that you want to.

Lastly, we just need to hit this X to exit the preview, and we are returned back to our editing window.

Next up, we have the ability to share a link or copy the link to our website. However, in this case, we can't because we have yet to publish it.

More on that in just a moment. Here we have the option to share this website with others.

Meaning if we want to add collaborators or people who would like to give permission so they can edit this website, we can do so here. If you've shared documents on Google Drive, you'll be very familiar with this window.

It acts and behaves just like you have experienced within Drive. Next up, we have our settings icon, which is gonna give us some important things to consider.

Number one, we can adjust our navigation. For example, in this case, I have what's called a side navigation where I have this collapsible menu on the left-hand side.

But I can change this to top navigation, which might actually be easier for my users where they can actually see the names of all my pages here in the top right-hand corner. So you can toggle that based on your preferences.

You can also adjust the color of that title area. If you want to upload some brand images, such as your own logo, you can do so and/or a favicon.

A favicon is the tiny icon that appears within the address bar. Lastly, we have these three dots where we have a few further options to take a look at including a version history of all of the changes which have been made on your website and you can quickly and easily duplicate that site.

How to Publish your Google Site

Now the most prominent button on the top part of the menu is our publish button. Remember, none of the changes that we make here on any of our web pages will take effect until we actually hit the publish button.

So you can confidently experiment with things. You can use the preview option here, and when you're happy with how everything looks and feels, we can select the publish button here.

Because I haven't published this particular website yet, I'll need to give it a web address. So in this case, let's call this an awesome website for cool people, something like that.

So this is going to be the name of this particular website. As you can see, because I haven't registered a custom domain, I'm going to have this sites.google.com/view in front of that website name.

This is going to be fine when you're first starting out and first putting your website together. But later on, you will most likely want to add a custom domain.

I can hit publish and in this case, now this website is live and if I want to share this link, I can copy this link and share it with whoever I would like to. Let's return back to our insert area here,

How to Add and Edit web page content

because really when it comes to creating a website, it's all about the content on the pages themselves. Below the header area here, you can see that things are divvied up between different sections and they're identified by these little dotted lines, these little gray, horizontal dotted lines.

Now these are not gonna be visible to viewers, this is just for your needs so you can see the spacing and the distinction between these different areas. Now, if you'd like to move any of these sections, so for example, if I want this learn more button to come first, all I need to do is come to the left-hand side, click and drag and now I can move this to a different section of that website.

You can do that with any of the sections here. Google Sites also makes it very easy for us to move and add things around.

So let's say I would like to add a second image to this section here. Over on the right-hand side, all I need to do is select images and I'm gonna say select in this case.

It's going to immediately go to my Google Drive, where I may have an image that I would like to upload here, or I can do so by URL or a Google image search. Of course, I can upload my own images as well.

In this case, I'm gonna grab this image here. I'm going to double click on it and it's going to bring it in at the bottom of this web page.

All I need to do is click and drag it if I want to bring it into this section of the webpage here. Now, if you need to resize any component, all you need to do is select that component so you can see these blue dots, which will surround it.

Now I can click and drag and make this image larger. Although it looks as though it's going to overlap the image on the left, when I release it, what's going to happen is it's going to automatically resize the image beside it.

Each content type will also have further options when you click on them themselves. So here, for example, when I click on this image, I have the choice if I want to crop this image, if I want to uncrop it, if I want to add a link so that when someone clicks this image, it goes somewhere else. Or I can remove this image as well.

The same goes for anything that is text-based. So here you can see on the left-hand side, I've got a description area for this photo.

If I click on it, I can change the text type. I can change the font and size and do other formatting as you see here.

So make sure that you click on an image, click on any type of content to see the other options that are available to you.

Adding and Organizing Pages

Of course, as you continue to build out your website, you're going to want to add new pages and perhaps not all of them need to be listed here within the menu. So let's get comfortable with adding pages, subpages and changing our navigation options.

Here you can see at the very bottom, we have a plus symbol, so we can add a new page. Now by hovering over it, we have the choice to either add a new page or a new link.

Remember, sometimes you may want an option here within the menu, but you're going to link them to an external page or maybe another website altogether. That's where you would use the new link option.

But in most cases, you're gonna want to select a new page. I'm gonna click this button and give this one a name, and I'm just gonna call it new page, for this example.

I'm going to hit done and now you can see, I have this new page within my pages view, but it also appears here within the menu option. Now, if I come over and select the three dots, I can choose to hide it from my navigation.

Meaning if I select this option, now new page is hidden from the menu. You can also see that there's a little line through it, letting me know that it is no longer in the navigation.

But if I want to change that back, I can go here and say, show in navigation. Now, one of the options available to us here is to make something a subpage or to add a subpage.

But in this case, let's say, I want to make this new page, a subpage of my contact page. All I need to do is select it and drag it and hover it over top of any of the other pages that I would like to have it nested under.

So in this case, I'm going to release it and now you can see that it is indented underneath the contact page. Now, what has changed is that if I hover over a contact, you can see that I can go directly to that new page.

But maybe I think this style of menu option is a little messy, and I don't want them to see this new page option here. Well, just as we did before, we can come here and say, hide from navigation.

Now you can see that I no longer have the new page option when I hover over a contact. So depending on your needs, depending on how you want your visitors to access your menu, you can choose this option below.

If I want to, I can also click and drag this and put it in a different section of my website. So in this case, if I hover over the entire page, it's going to be nested or create a subpage there.

However, if I want it as its separate page, I just need to find a line, in between one of my other sites. I'm gonna go ahead and say, show this in navigation.

So it's back in that third position and that's how we can easily and quickly manage all of our pages right here within Google Sites. Now, if you have any further questions about how to use Google Sites, 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.