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What is JotForm?

There is good reason why JotForm has the highest rating on the G2 website and has the title of Best Online Form Builder. In fact, when you look at this comparison grid, JotForm is up here and all of its competitors are somewhere down here in the mix.

Yes, JotForm is both the leader and a high performer when it comes to creating your forms online. And why is that?

Well, you can create a form in a matter of seconds, not even minutes. You can add your custom logo, you can add your colors and create a form like this in literally less than a minute.

Or maybe you want something that's going to wow your audience, and also keep their attention so that they can fill out your form and actually see where they're going with the preview down below here. I really, really liked this form.

And perhaps best of all, JotForm integrates with more than 30 payment processors, so you're not just limited to things like PayPal and Stripe. You can collect payments any way that you want from your customers all over the world.

Just when you thought things couldn't get better with JotForm, they introduce something new. And today we're gonna take a look at how you can manipulate your data right here from within JotForm.

Overview of JotForm Tables

So here I am within JotForm looking at some survey data which was collected via a form. Now in most forms, such as SurveyMonkey, or Google Forms, or almost any other form builder, your very next step would be to download this information, probably into an Excel file, so you can actually start to manipulate the data and start to apply other things.

What JotForm Tables does differently is it allows you to do all of those things that you would regularly do in a spreadsheet and more right here from within JotForm. So for example, let's say I want to freeze the Name field, because that's what I'm gonna be referencing right away.

I'm gonna freeze that column, so no matter where I scroll here to the right, I can see that name here. Not only are things colorful here, but I can manipulate the data, if need be.

Let's say that this individual here actually has updated their job title, they're no longer an other. I can click on here and use this dropdown and say that, yes, they are now a nurse.

Now things are relevant, now things are staying up to date. But what the real power of JotForm Tables is, is that I can add other columns once I've received this data.

So for example, maybe I want to do an evaluation of all of the employees here. Maybe I need to schedule an interview, for example.

Within the Add a New Column dialog we can add any number of basic fields, many of the things that we could have added to the original form. We can even add some formulas, whether they are complex formulas or just some simple addition and subtraction.

We can either connect other forms or connect an existing table. But let's go back to the basic area here.

In this case, let's say I do want to schedule an interview with these individuals and I need to see if I am keeping track of when those interviews are scheduled. So I'm gonna say Interview Scheduled is the name of the column, and I'm gonna hit next.

I'm gonna just give them two options. Basically it's a yes or no as my team and I need to reach out and contact these individuals.

So I'm gonna say that yes is one option and I'm gonna say no is the other option here. So these are the two choices that I want to create from.

I'm gonna say Create Column. And now I've got my Interview Schedule column.

So now as I work my way down the list, I can say, ah, yes, this person I have scheduled that interview with them. Hilly here, yes, I've scheduled with them as well.

I've reached out to Kermie. Still hasn't gotten back to me. So that is a no.

You can see the value here is that I can actually start to work with the data rather than just exporting it somewhere else.

Adding Tabs & Filtering Data

But let's take a look at the tab feature up here. And yes, this is much more than just adding a new worksheet within your Excel or within your spreadsheet document.

Let's say I just want to focus in on all of the head nurses here under Job Title. Now, I could use the filter here to get me started, right?

I can say let's take a look at the job title and I only want them to include the head nurse. Let's apply that filter.

So now I'm only seeing these head nurses at this moment in time. But you know what? I don't want to just filter this information because sometimes that can be confusing.

Maybe I just want to focus on this data or have other members of my team see this data so they're not confusing it with the master data or the default data that we see here in this first tab.

So in this case, what I can do is I can say create a new tab and I'm gonna say head nurse, in this case, and I'm gonna say Create Tab. So now you can see this new tab has been created.

And all I have in front of me are those with the job title head nurse. Now what makes this so powerful, because JotForm Tables is an actual database, is that the changes that I make here or the changes that I make on the first or the master tab here are going to reflect in both places.

How many times have you copied things or created a new worksheet in Excel and you start changing things, and, oh, but I didn't have it synced up or I didn't have the right formulas in place so things are happening there. So let's take a look at an example here.

Let's go back to employee information and I'm just going to remove this filter so we can see all of that data here available to us. If I go back to the head nurse here, we can still see just the information that we're viewing, just that head nurse information.

All right, so if I come over here, and let's find someone that has that head nurse title here, let's say Shane here, and let's say that, oh, you know what? Shane's date actually isn't October 18th, 2010.

I spoke to him the other day and we need to update this. This is actually incorrect. He was actually hired in 2012.

So I'm gonna update that time there. So you can see that it's 2012 for his entry.

If I now go back to the head nurse tab, and let's find where Shane is, here he is, October 18th, 2012. It's an actual living, breathing database.

So as things change in one area, they are going to be reflected everywhere else. So maybe this is where I want to be scheduling those interviews.

Maybe I'm assigned to just make the interviews for all of the head nurses. Everyone else on my team can have access to all of the data here, but I can be hyper-focused and zero in on just this subset of area that I want to.

On top of that, maybe I don't need things like job start date and phone number here. So maybe what I want to do is I want to come down here and hide this column, and maybe hide the phone number and the birth date.

I just don't need that information as I'm planning things out here. It's not gone and it's not hidden from my first tab here, but this allows me to work so much more efficiently, effectively, and especially if you're sharing this with others.

Different Views, Charts and Reporting Options

Another great benefit of using JotForm Tables is that we can view our data in a number of different ways. More than just creating filters or different tabs along the top, we can come down to any of our submissions and hit this View button, and we're gonna see the full details for that particular entry.

But it gets better than this. What we can do is come up to the tab itself and say Change Type.

Here we have some other views which are gonna help us out a lot. I particularly like the Cards View, which gives us sort of a snapshot view of multiple entries at a given time.

So we can see the details. And if I need to come down here and say, yes, you know what?

I have scheduled this interview, I can come down and say yes. I can work within this view. It's so much more than just reporting.

But speaking of reporting, let's go back to our table view here. And let's say I want to get a quick glance at the breakdown of all of the different departments.

Now, if you are using a traditional spreadsheet tool, you would have to select this entire column and then cross-reference it with perhaps a name or some other column on a different axis to be able to produce that report. But I want to know this right now.

Well, all I need to do is select this dropdown and say Summarize with a chart. And now instantly I can see the breakdown of the different departments which are represented within this particular form.

And keep in mind that this is dynamic. So if this particular form is still open and people are still submitting entries, they can do that, and this report will be updated accordingly.

I can even choose a different type of bar chart or type of graph right here within this view. So a variety of different ways in which you can view that data immediately as you're working with your forms.

Import and Connect Other Data

Now because JotForm Tables allows us to manipulate our data and rearrange the information any way that we want, we may want to add other data to this table or perhaps add another tab.

So in this example, I'm gonna say Add Tab. I want to add a table view. But in this case, I want to connect to another form, or perhaps another survey that I've given my employees.

This one's labeled Medical History Form. I'm going to say Next. And now I can choose only the data that I want to include.

Maybe I want full name and I want a couple of these key questions here to include in this table. I'm gonna say Create.

And now I have this data right here alongside my other tabs. So if I need to cross reference this, if I want to combine some of this data, I have it now at my fingertips.

And since JotForm Tables is so much more powerful than your traditional spreadsheet, you may want to add other data that you didn't collect in a form.

So here under Add Tab, I'm once again going to select Table View, but this time I'm going to select Import From a File. And JotForm accepts any type of CSV or Excel-formatted file that you can upload right here to JotForm.

So if you need to cross reference, if you want to work with your data in a much more manageable and easier way, you can bring that in here, as well.

So if you'd like to get so much more out of your data with an easy-to-use interface, get started with JotForm Tables with their free forever plan.

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

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

What makes Keap different?

Your CRM system needs to do so much more than just manage contacts. So in this video, I'm sharing three features in Keap CRM, which will make your life so much easier.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And here we are within the home screen of Keap CRM.

Now, I could show you how easy it is to manage your contacts. I could show you how to set up a pipeline right here within Keap, but you know what? Every CRM does that.

So rather, I want to focus on three features that I think set Keap apart. One, appointment scheduling, which is built right in.

Two, automations that are actually easy to set up and maintain. And three, perhaps my favorite, all of the mobile features, including a free second business line, which is really gonna make a difference with your business.

Appointment Scheduling

So let's get started with Appointments. Chances are, you're already using another tool such as Calendly to manage all of your scheduling, and you know what?

That's just one other place you need to go to manage all of your appointments. It's also an additional cost.

Well, the great thing about Keap is that it keeps your appointment scheduling built right in. I got a few set up here already, but let me show you how easy it is to set up your own.

So here, I'm gonna hit this plus button, and I just need to give this a name. Maybe I'm gonna call this one an Audit Session.

So this is where I audit someone's technology, for example. And down below, I can choose where this meeting or this appointment is going to take place.

I'm gonna say online in this case, and I can either choose to integrate with my own Zoom meeting link or I can use and paste any link that I want. I'm just gonna say, testlink here for this particular example, and then hit Next.

Now, under info, I get to choose my hours and availability. So this is gonna be a full hour I'm gonna select.

I can choose if I wanna add a Buffer time, just to make sure that none of my appointments run right into the next one. And last but not least is Availability.

So let's say that, you know what, on Friday I don't want to take any of these types of sessions. And maybe on Wednesday, I need to pick up one of my kids a little bit earlier, so I'm gonna say 3:00 PM.

I love how simple and quick it is to set up these appointment settings. I'm gonna select Next here.

And last, we have a few options, I can either choose to include some Pre-appointment instructions. So here I can ask some questions or just let them know what to expect as they book this session with me.

Lastly, I can choose which calendar or multiple calendars they should use to determine my availability. So here, I've already synced my calendar with Google Calendar, and this is the main one that I want it to reference, to make sure that it doesn't double book me or book me over anything else that I already have scheduled.

I'm gonna select Finish, and now I'm done. All I can do is share my link with others.

So I'm gonna hit Done here. And here's the Audit Session that we just created.

Now, I can either click on this link directly, and it's gonna take you to a preview of what my prospective client will see. And again, it's simple, it's easy.

Yeah, maybe next Tuesday at 2:00 PM works for them, they can select Book now and start to fill in their information. But if I go back to my Appointment Setting here within Keap, I can also send this invite directly.

And what that means, is if I select this button, it's actually gonna open up my email dialog. So now, I can send this directly to a particular client, maybe on my list.

It already has the link embedded into the email down below, so that they can book a session with me. Making it that much easier for me to get more bookings and to send these invitations out to others.

But let's don't stop here. Let's take this one step further, and look at how we can incorporate this appointment link into an Automation.

CRM Automations

So under Automations, I know a lot of people complain about how difficult it is, and they say, "Scott, listen, I don't have a background in technology. I don't feel comfortable setting up this type of automated workflow."

Well, Keap actually makes it simple. And I'm gonna show you how.

Number one, Keap gives us a number of different templates to help us get started. Everything from some easy or simpler ones, all the way to some more advanced.

And you can build your own from scratch if you like. Why don't we get started with this Free consultation template just to get us started, and I'll show you how easy it is to set this up.

So in this case, I'm gonna call this Audit Hour Session. Right, so, as it goes with the appointment that we just set there, we're gonna invite people to click on that link so they can book some time with me.

And the language that is used here is very easy to understand. When this happens, Then, this is going to happen.

And you can keep it as simple or as complex as necessary. So in this case, the When is gonna be when someone fills out a public form.

Meaning, maybe it's a contact form on our website or maybe it's another form that we have linked from our social media profiles. You probably already have a form such as this on your website, or you can create almost any type of form right here within Keap.

When that happens, we want to send them an email instantaneously. So as soon as they submit that form, we wanna send them an invitation to book a time with us.

So here is the, Then send a Free consultation email. Now it's already included a template here.

I'm gonna click on the Edit icon. So here you can see what that person will receive.

And the great thing about keeping all of this within Keap is that you can merge your contact information directly into your messaging. Do you know how much more likely someone is to open up an email when their name is actually in the subject?

Let's get something scheduled. Tom, you can put that right in here, even though they just a few moments ago entered in their name into that contact form. And you can see that again here within the messaging itself.

But we want them to click on that booking link so that they can set up a time with us right away. So instead of Let me know a few times that work for you and I'll get it scheduled, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna delete this last sentence and say, "Please use the link below to book a time with me."

Okay, and now all I need to do is insert that link. Do I need to go back and paste the link? No, no, no, no.

Keap makes it so much easier. Down below, we have this Add booking link icon.

When I select this, I've got all of my scheduling appointments right here. Here is that Audit Session that we just created.

I'm gonna select that, and now it's gonna bring it right into that email. I'm gonna select Next at this point.

And now, I get to choose if I wanna send that email immediately or maybe delay it by a bit. Well, I wanna show how prompt I am so I'm gonna leave it at Immediately.

I'm gonna select Next. At this stage, I can say, Preview and see where my form is at.

Really nothing much has changed other than the few tweaks that we've made. But wait a minute, I think I wanna do something more, because what if they don't book a meeting with me?

What if they don't click that link? I'd like to send a follow-up.

So I'm gonna select on this and I'm gonna add a Then after this first email. I'm gonna hit this plus button, and I can choose from one of these options or Show all the options down below, which gives us a lot of things that we can consider.

But in this case, I'm gonna select Send another email. And I'm gonna send a follow-up email in this case.

So maybe I'm just checking in, or maybe I wanna customize this message to say that, "Hey, just wanted to see if you wanted to book a time with me." So once again, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna insert that Booking link to make sure that they have it at their fingertips when they receive this email.

I'm gonna select Next. But in this case, I'm not gonna send it immediately.

I certainly don't want them to have two emails hit their inbox at the same time. So in this case, I'm gonna select Delay.

And I'm gonna say, "Send the second email two days after the first one." Two days after they send that form.

I can even choose if I wanna send it at a specific time, if I like. I'm gonna hit Next here.

And so now, we have the first email, as soon as they send in the form, then we have the second email, which is gonna come up later. But you've noticed that we have now a Stop option.

And this is important because do we want to send this second email if they've already booked it? No, of course not.

We wanna stop this second message from arriving if they've booked something with me. So in this case, I'm gonna hit this plus button here, and I'm gonna say, "We want to stop it when an Appointment is scheduled."

I'm gonna select this, and I can either choose when a specific type of appointment is selected or confirmed. Or I can say Any appointment.

I'm gonna select Any appointment in this case. I can either choose if anyone within my organization is scheduled or maybe just a particular user, in this case.

I'm gonna leave it at Any user, and I'm going to select Next. I can come back and select Preview, and now we can see everything in simple language.

When any public form is submitted, Then, send that Free consultation email. Then I want you to wait two days and at 8:00 AM send the follow-up email.

However, I want you to stop this entire thing when any appointment is scheduled. Now I can select Publish.

And now we've got this automation in place. I don't have to do anything but look great to my prospective clients, and have them book more sessions with me.

Mobile App & 2nd Business Line

Last but not least, and maybe my favorite. Let's take a look at the amazing mobile features within Keap.

So here I am within the Keap app, and the first thing which is amazing and will save you so much time, is that keep gives you a free second line. Meaning, you can use one device, your single phone and manage both your personal number and your business number.

No more adjusting and, "Oh, who is this for? Is it for me? Or is it a prospective client?" So you can manage all of that on the same device.

So here we go. You can see that I've been having a conversation with my fictional client called Fred. And I can say, "Hi Fred, just checking in. Seeing if you want to book something with me." for example.

I'm gonna hit Send here, and you know what's going to happen, is I'm gonna get an alert on my phone. Do you know why? Because I'm actually sending it to my personal phone.

I just wanted to share with you an example of how I'm using two numbers on the exact same device. So I can go back and forth and share this information, even though I might manage my personal life with my main line.

And now I can use this business line either for special purposes or as my new business number. But the great thing is, is that all of the great features that we saw when it came to appointment scheduling and those appointment links, and even things like invoicing, we can send here via text.

So for example, "Let's book a time together." for example here. And what I can do, is that I've got a few different icons down below.

You'll recognize that we have this Booking Engagement icon here where I can say, Oh, there's that Audit Session that we created. I'm gonna select that one.

It's gonna put it directly into the text message. Now, they can book that time with me.

So easy, there it is. I've just sent it off and now my test account has received it up above, so they can book that time with me.

We can even add text templates here within Keap as well. So if I choose this icon just to the left of the money symbol here, you can see that I've got a variety of templates all ready, ready to go.

So here's this Follow-up one here, which of course, is gonna include Fred's name directly in it here because I've merged those fields together. So, look at how quick that was to send a follow-up message to Fred.

I already had the template ready. Now, it's ready to go.

Another fantastic feature that you can do here on the mobile phone, is if I come over here to my Settings, I can take a look at my different Notification settings.

So, here under Messaging, you can see that we have something turned on called Auto-replies, meaning that if I'm on a phone call or if I just can't reach or answer a phone call, I can send automated text replies so that they know that I'm being attentive. They know that I'm responding in due time.

So here, for example, if I miss a call during Do not disturb, this is perhaps the message I want them to send immediately. So they know that "Hey, I'm on top of it. I'm gonna get back to you."

But I can send that text message, have these rules in place so that no matter what I'm doing, even if I'm in a meeting, or I can't get to my phone, they can get an auto-response via text messaging.

But guess what, it gets even better, because you know what? I don't spend all of my time texting and managing my business on my phone, let's jump back to the desktop.

So now, back within the Keap desktop version, you can see on the left-hand side, I have a heading called Messages. And yes, that's right.

I can manage all of my text communication right here from within the desktop. I even have the templates available to me and those booking links.

All of these shortcuts which I can add right away. So, even if I'm not in front of my phone, and if I'm working on the desktop, I don't wanna go and waste my time by picking up my phone again. I can say, "Thanks, talk to you then."

If you'd like to try out these Keap CRM features for yourself, including the free second business line so you can manage everything on just one phone, be sure to click the link in the description below.

And if you have questions about Keap CRM, include them in the comments. Thank you so much for watching.

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

Looking at the Pyrus Inbox

If you need to approve contracts, payments, or other requests within your business, Pyrus may be the ideal solution for you. Let's take a closer look. (frame zooming)

Welcome to Pyrus. Pyrus presents itself as an excellent team communication tool, but I think its real strengths have to do when it comes to its task management and especially its workflow management when it comes to creating forms.

But let's start with the basics. Here we are within our Inbox, and this is really going to be your home base within Pyrus, because not only can you manage all of your own personal tasks or projects that you're working on with your team, but as you are assigned different steps or stages, as we'll look to a little bit later, they will also appear here.

So, you always know what is needed and where you should be focusing your attention. To create a new task in Pyrus, it's as simple as just hitting the New Task button, and we're gonna send out a weekly newsletter.

That's gonna be the task in this case, if I can spell it correctly. And we can add as much description here as we want.

Here are some of the additional bonuses of using Pyrus. Unlike other tools, we don't just have to make an assignment to an individual, we can also assign to roles.

This is really, really powerful and flexible because maybe you have more than one accountant, and it doesn't really matter which one it's assigned to, as long as they know they are at that stage and they need to approve it.

The other nice thing is that we can create a workflow in the moment. So, if I need to create beyond just sub-tasks, I can say who needs to approve those roles as I'm creating this task here.

Another nice feature is that I don't have to just hit Send, which is more than just complete or add, because really, when we're talking about workflows and forms, it's a process, right?

So, you're sending this to the next person in the stage, but I can also hit Send & New. Okay, it's forcing me to select a person in this particular case.

I'm gonna send it to the Editor. I'm gonna say Send & New.

And so now, I can immediately start filling in my next task or create my next workflow. But let's get out of our Inbox here for a moment, because I think the real power within Pyrus

Creating Forms and Workflows in Pyrus

is creating our forms and its associated workflows. So here, we've got a few different examples here.

We've got an accounts payable invoice, which is standard for really every business. As you're receiving invoices from vendors, who is approving those payments?

Who's making sure that the numbers are correct, and that you've got the right PO number, for example, and that you've got those things in place before you actually pay for that invoice?

Or you may have something like a service desk form or a general inquiry form. As someone is making either a complaint or an inquiry, you want to have a certain step or certain procedures that people are following so that you can provide the best service possible.

Creating Invoices with Pyrus

So, let's start with this AP Invoice. I'm gonna click on it, and you'll notice that we'll have some of the more typical fields that you would find in an AP Invoice.

Now, everything that you see here is absolutely customizable. Things such as Vendor, Invoice Date, PO Number, and of course, our invoice total.

But probably the easiest way to add an invoice, rather than filling out all of these particular fields, is just to upload the invoice itself. We can either upload a file or paste an image of that invoice.

So, I'm gonna select Upload a file here. I've got an invoice here that I'm gonna select, and I'm gonna say open, and it's gonna upload this PDF file.

Now, what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna skip all the way down to the bottom, and I'm gonna hit Send. Send is going to start this process and assign it to the next person in the stage.

The reason why I'm going to do this is I'm gonna actually show you the form in just a second, because what Pyrus is doing is actually scanning the information in this particular invoice, it does have OCR technology built in.

And as we scan down here on the left-hand side, you can see that it has actually brought in all of these line items, including things like the price, including things like the correct quantity.

And I haven't had to type in any of this manually at all. It's just automatically brought it over here into my invoice details.

If I scan down below, you can see it's also looking at the next steps in the process because I've already set up a workflow for this particular form.

So, I filled in the form at this time, but now I've added the accountant step two, and I've also added myself to step four. So, I know exactly where this is going in the next step.

Down below, you can also see the comment field is designed a little bit differently than what you would find in a standard comment field because in these cases, we want to either approve, acknowledge, or maybe disagree.

And yes, there are some quick keys you can use here as well. Is everything looking correct over here on the invoice, and is it matching up over here on the left-hand side?

I'm gonna go back for just a moment here and open up another invoice that we've taken a look at.

Next Steps and Workflow Approvals

I've got a few different invoices here that are currently in my queue. So, let's take a look and see what we need to do next as a part of it.

So here, if I scan down here, I can see that Balla filled in this form. And again, we have the same steps that are happening here Accountant to step two and Scott to step four.

Now, in this particular case, one of my roles is Accountant. So, I can come down here and select Approve and hit Send.

But it's gonna do a double-check for me and say, well, wait a minute, the invoice total cannot be held blank here. Let's make sure that you fill everything in correctly here before we move on to that next step.

So, having all of these checks and balances built into your forms, built into your workflow is exactly what makes things so powerful here within Pyrus.

Now, I'm gonna actually go back to the forms for a second, and I'm gonna click on AP Invoice once again, but instead of filling out a new one, I'm gonna come up here and show you both the Dashboard and how we can configure those workflows.

Dashboard and Reporting

So, starting with the Dashboard, you can see there's an awful lot of great information we can take a look at. This is all of the info that we have related to this particular form.

So, we can see exactly where things are within their steps. I've got three invoices within the GL coding process, and two are currently being assigned to the controller at this point in time.

And we can even see the quantity or the value of those invoices here as well. But we can also see things such as how much time has been spent on each of these steps, aging reports, due dates, overdue dates.

A lot of different data here that we can analyze here for each of our customized forms. But let's go all the way over to our Configure tab because this is where you're going to start and make sure that your workflow is working the way that you want.

Here, you can see the four-step workflow

Building Custom Workflows in Pyrus

that we've created here. I can select that option, and now we can start to customize all of the approvers that it needs to go through as a part of this step.

And as I mentioned before, if I click on this area here, I can either choose an individual, including the original author, or I can choose a particular role, giving you that much more flexibility.

I can even add additional conditions here as well, in terms of do they need to check a particular field, for example? Do they need to make sure that there is a PO number assigned before it can be passed on to the next step?

You can add as many steps as you need here to make sure that it gets assigned to the correct role or to the correct individual as you go throughout this process.

But let's go back to our forms builder one more time. And this time, I'm gonna click on the Service Desk form.

Now, I've created something that is much simpler. Why? Well, this is very different than approving an invoice.

In this case, maybe someone is requesting time off or requesting a piece of equipment within my organization. So, I've got things like Subject and Description, and maybe I wanna make sure that they include their Email and their Phone number.

But if I come over here to Configure, again, where I wanna focus a lot of my attention is making sure that my workflow is correct.

So, if I click on Workflow, maybe I want it to be assigned to Balla here when it's first assigned, and then we can just assign it to the person responsible.

But if it gets escalated, I'd like it to come back to me. So, I'm gonna change that person here. I'm gonna remove Balla in this case, and now, it's gonna come to me if this needs to be escalated.

I can hit Save, and in the future, I can know that if anything comes up with this particular form, what's going to happen is it's going to appear in my Inbox.

So, I can come here, spend most of my time within my Inbox, not only managing my own individual tasks but making sure that I'm assigned to the things that I need to be working on based on preset workflows.

Now, if you'd like to try Pyrus out for yourself, be sure to visit Pyrus.com and start with their free forever version.

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.

Where to go to edit sharing settings

Do you wanna share your calendar with others? Maybe it's just one individual, or an entire team, or maybe you wanna publish your calendar on the web.

In this video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about sharing your Google Calendar. (air whooshing)

So, let's get started by looking at where we need to go to make these share calendar changes. Now, there's two ways we can get into our settings for these purposes.

First, we can come up here to the gear icon, select the Settings menu, and then select Settings once again. And here, we'll have to scroll down on the left-hand side of our page and select the particular calendar that we want to share.

We're still gonna have to scroll down a little bit to get to this Share with specific people area, but I think there's a much faster way and an easier way.

Here on the left-hand side, all we need to do is select these three dots, the options for the calendar that we want to share, and then select Settings and sharing.

And that's already gonna bring us right into that particular calendar. So here, this is the calendar that I want to share.

I'm gonna come down to Share with specific people. So, all I need to do is select this Add people button.

Sharing your calendar with specific people

And now start to enter in the email address of the individuals I want to share it with. I'm gonna choose this individual right here.

And if I want to, I can keep adding other individuals. I don't have to do this one at a time, I can keep adding other email addresses here.

But where we want to focus our careful attention is under the Permissions dropdown. Now by default, the option is going to be See all event details.

What that means is that if I share this calendar at this stage, this individual, and anyone else that I add, is going to see all of the invitees.

It's gonna see the location, the description, all of the information of those events. But we have other options available to us.

If we select this dropdown, you can see the actual first option is to See only free/busy details, or I should say, hide those details. Meaning, all they're gonna see is blocks of time.

They're gonna see when you have events scheduled on your calendar but they're not going to see the title, they're not going to see who else is invited. They're just going to see the free/busy details.

So, this is a lot more common if you want to give people access to let them know when you're not available, maybe if they need to find time to book time with you, but you don't wanna share those details with them.

Now, there's two other options that we wanna see, and Google has carefully arranged this in a particular order. We're starting with no details at all, See all event details.

The third one down is Make changes to these events. So, they are going to be able to see all the details, they will also be able to make changes to any of your events.

This is the selection you want to make if you're sharing your calendar with an assistant or a secretary or anyone who is helping you to manage your particular calendar because they're gonna be able to make those changes on their end as well.

Last but not least, we have Make changes and manage sharing. This is the highest level.

You could say that you're giving them, really, administration rights at this level because not only can they see the details, make changes, but they'll also be able to add other people who can share and see your calendar as well.

So, this is one that you're only gonna be using for some particular individuals in this case. So, I'm gonna say See all event details in this particular example, and I'm gonna hit Send.

This person is now gonna receive an invitation so that they can access my calendar. And you can see if I ever need to change their level of visibility, I can always do so on the fly.

So, I can come over here and say, "You know what? I actually only want them to see my free and busy details." I can do so here.

I don't have to hit Save or anything else on the page, now they are restricted to that. If I wanna come back later and add other people, I can just do so here by selecting this Add people button and remove them by selecting the X on the right-hand side.

Sharing your calendar with a team or organization

Now, what if you don't wanna add people one at a time and instead, you'd like to add your entire team? Well, if you are using Google Workspace, you can do so here.

Here, I'm in my Simpletivity account and I'm still in the same section, I'm still under my calendar settings here, and I'm just above the Share with specific people, I'm looking at my Access permissions.

Now, we've got a few different choices available here. We're gonna come back to this one in a moment, but you can see that the second one down is Make available for Simpletivity.

Now, this is my organization. So, if I check this box, essentially, anyone within the Simpletivity organization is going to have access to my calendar.

Now, when I select this, you can see I still have some options here on the right, and we're familiar with two of them. The bottom two are grayed out because this really doesn't make sense to give your entire organization the ability to make changes and to manage your calendar, but the first two are still available to us.

So, we can either hide our details and just show free and busy. Again, this is very common so that teammates can see when they can book meetings and see when other members are free at any time of the day, or you can choose to see all event details as well.

This may be more applicable for smaller teams or people that you know very well within your organization. So, at this stage, again, we don't have to hit Save.

As long as you've checked this checkbox, you can leave it at this stage and now everyone within your Google Workspace will have access to your calendar. Last but not least,

Sharing your calendar publicly

Let me jump back to this other calendar here, and we're gonna see how we can make our calendar publicly available to everyone.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "Why would I want to do this? Why would I want to share my calendar with everyone?" Well, perhaps you've set up a calendar here within Google which is showing community events, or when you are available for a booking.

So, for example, if you work in sales and you want to let people know when they can book you for a call, perhaps you'd like to share your calendar details on your website or in some other public place.

So, in this case, you can see we have a check box called Make available to public. Now by default, this is going to be unchecked.

When you click this, it is going to give you a warning: Making your calendar public will make all events visible to the world, including via Google search. Are you sure?

By hitting Cancel, this box will be unchecked. But in this case, we're going to say OK.

Now, we still have that same option that we saw when we were sharing within our organization. We can either share all of our event details with the world or we can just share free or busy details.

But let's stick with all event details in this case. Now, how do we use this public calendar?

How do we share it with others or maybe include this link in an email or on a website? Well, you're probably most naturally going to draw your attention to this Get shareable link.

But don't be confused. This is actually related to sharing with specific people down below. I'm not sure why Google Calendar has chosen to put this here.

If I click this, you can see with this link, only people you allow can access your calendar. So, for example, if I copy this link, and I'm gonna open up an Incognito window and paste it in here and show it, you can see it's actually going to force me to sign into a Google account.

So, this obviously isn't very public at this point. So, let's go back here and I'm gonna select Cancel.

If you have Make available to public checked, where you really want to go is scroll down further down the page into the Integrate calendar section, and here you want to copy this public URL to this calendar.

So, I'm gonna select this. I'm going to copy it, and I'm gonna go back to my Incognito window here and I'm going to paste it just so we can see what happens.

So, here you can see, now I have my calendar available. So, if I wanted to add this link to my website or in an email, others, anyone online could come here and see those details.

Now, do you wanna see the difference if we set it to free or busy only? All we need to do is come back up here and we're going to select See only free/busy details.

I don't need to share anything else, all I need to do is go back to that calendar here. I'm gonna refresh the page, and now you can see I've got a lot of free/busy.

I've got a lot of busy information here. If I go to the week where we just saw a moment ago, you can see all of those events but there's no titles.

It only shows when I am busy. So, those are the differences between those two.

The last thing I wanna show you about sharing your calendar publicly is if you don't wanna share it as a link, if you come back down to the Integrate calendar section, you can also use this embed code if you'd like to paste it within one of your own websites.

Now, if you have questions about how to use Google Calendar or if you have suggestions for a future video right here on these Simpletivity channel, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Scirocco Take a Break Timer

There are so many benefits to tracking your time as a part of your workday. So, in this video, I'm gonna share with you three of my favorites. (logo whooshing)

Now, the first timer we're gonna take a look at today is called the Scirocco Take a Break timer. Now, it may be the simplest one on this list, but it can be very effective to help you with your focus.

The idea of the Take a Break timer is for you to set a desired time, hit the start button, and then have it minimized to your desk tray so that you can focus on the work in front of you. Then, when that timer is up, it will re-present itself and overlay itself, no matter what dialogue you are having open, or what you are working on, so that you can reevaluate and decide what you'd like to do next.

Now, the features may seem relatively simple at this stage, but you can actually customize quite a bit of it if you like. Let me just show you a quick example here.

So, let's say I'm gonna work for as little as 10 seconds. I know that's not realistic, but I just wanna show you this as part of this example.

So, you can set in any time that you like and then hit the start button. I can now minimize it, and you can see there's a little green light here telling me that the timer is running.

Now, I can go about my day and work on my most important task, but when the timer is up, I will be presented with this dialogue saying that, hey, I should probably take a break at this time. Now, I can choose to Remind Later.

And I've set it for a default of two minutes, but you can customize that where you can select Take a Break. And what that's going to do is going to set up another time, which you can customize as to how long you would take a break for, whether you walk away from your desk, or maybe just pay attention to something else at your workstation.

If we hit stop, we can go back and stop the timer and come back here and adjust those settings. Now, as I said, you do actually have quite a few options available to you.

So, you can customize your default time, your snooze time as I mentioned there. You can even limit your snooze count if you want.

You can even adjust the types of icons that would appear in the tray down below, and things such as sounds or no sounds. I know it sounds and looks very, very basic, but you know what, for what it needs to do, I've been very impressed with the Take a Break timer.

Toggl Track

Now, number two on our list is a timer called Toggl Track, or formerly known as just Toggl, that's T, O, G, G, L. And here, we're taking a look at a brief summary of my work week so far, but what I use most often is the desktop dialogue, which just allows me to start or stop the timer at any given day.

Now, recently, I've been using Toggl to minimize, try to minimize how many work hours I do in a particular day. So, this is really helpful for me, and if I need to, I can add further details.

But if I log in to the Toggl Summary here, I can get a variety of different reports. So, here's my workweek so far this week, but if I wanna go back and see what I did last week, I can do so and drill down and see my summary.

See some trending over time as well. For example, one of my goals has been to limit the amount of work I do to a maximum of four hours.

And here you can see so far, I've been doing a relatively good job, just staying below, razor thin below this bar below. Now, you can also add things such as tags or projects.

So, if you want to filter things by the different projects that you're working on, you can do so. You can have other further insights as well if you upgrade to their Premium or Enterprise plans.

What I like about Toggl is that it's very easy to initiate, to start and stop as a part of my day, but you can use some of the more complex features if you wish.

TMetric

Last but not least, if you want some more advanced features when it comes to time tracking, either for yourself or for members of your team, you're gonna wanna check out TMetric. Now, just like Toggl, you can either use TMetric here within your browser, or you can download the Desktop version as well.

I find this very handy, because I have most of the functionality here available to me, such as adding a new task and starting and stopping that timer. And I can see a summary of those tasks here below.

But when you log into the TMetric interface, here you can see how my entire morning has gone. Not only do you see the tasks that I have entered in here, but you can see what I've been doing, because I've chosen to use the TMetric Extension.

So, I can dive into this a little bit deeper and see how long I've actually spent in each of these applications. This can be great to find periods of your day where you're maybe wasting time, or just wondering where all of that time went.

TMetric also has a very functional task manager here as well if you wanna manage those tasks in conjunction with your time. But an area where a TMetric really excels is if you're needing time tracking for billable purposes.

If I click on Projects here, you can see that I can track my projects down to the cent, based on how much time I have used. So, whether I'm allocating a certain amount of time for a project or a certain budget, I can do so right here within Tmetric.

TMetric also allows you to do some other advanced things, such as time off requests. So, for example, I've already set up a policy here.

So, if I need to request some paid time off or want to set this up for members of my staff, I can do so. Here, I'm gonna let myself know, and I'm gonna request it in days.

So, I'm gonna request, I wanna take off, I'm gonna take off two weeks. No, I can't. Why? Because my balance is only five days.

Again, something else that I can manage right here within TMetric. So, so much more than just a time tracker.

If I come back here and say, okay, I don't have that much available to me, there, that will be approved, or hopefully approved, because it's within the balance that I've set here.

So, if you need a time tracker that can show you some more advanced details about where you or other members of your team are spending their time and you would like some further advanced features, you may want to check out TMetric.

To find out more details, be sure to click the link in the description below. Now, do you have a time tracker or a timer that you love?

Be sure to share it with me 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.

Why search operators are better than advanced search

Are you struggling to find that very important email? Do you waste a lot of time trying to search for a message that you know is somewhere within your inbox?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you how to use Gmail search operators so you can become an expert at finding any message that you want. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

And you're probably already familiar with the search bar here at the top of Gmail where you can type in simple words and we can just hit enter, for example, and find any message that has this word in it. And of course, we can use email addresses as well.

Now, you may also be familiar with the advanced search functionality here which gives you a lot more options. However, this advanced search can still be limiting depending on what you are after.

So, I wanna show you some basic search operators including some more advanced ones so you can find exactly what you're looking for. So let's go up here to our search bar, and I'm gonna search for this email address, Scottfriesen@hotmail.com.

Now, here what my results are showing are every single message where this person or this email address is included. So whether they sent it, whether I sent a message to them, all of that information is showing up here.

And that's why we see a whole section here that's labeled me.

Search From a specific email address

Because these are emails that I have sent to this email address. But that's maybe not what I'm after, I wanna see what is something that he has sent me.

I wanna see just the messages that are from this address. So all I need to do is go to the front of that email address and type in from: and then put colon and hit enter.

And now you can see that my results are quite a bit different here. Now, I don't see any of these mes, I may have replied to this message here but I am only seeing messages that have been sent from this individual.

Now, you're probably already saying, well, Scott, can't I do that here within the advanced search? I could just use this frontline.

Yes, you can, however, if you want to get more advanced and a little more granular, you're gonna want to use these search operators. On top of that, it can be a little tedious to use this menu here if you have to go and search for the different categories and okay, where do I go next in terms of what I want to search?

Once you get adept and more comfortable at using these search operators, you may never wanna go back to the advanced search dropdown. So, in this case, let's say that I want to find the messages

Search After or Before a specific date

that have been sent from this address, but only this year in 2021. Here you can see in these search results, I'm getting everything back.

I've got all of the messages that have been sent from this address. So, another operator we can use is after, and we just continue on, a space after the email address, I'm gonna say after: and then colon.

And now all I need to do is select what date. Well, if I want it to be this year, I'm just gonna type in January 1st, 2021 and I'm going to hit enter.

And here you can see my results are now updated. I'm only seeing messages in which this person has sent me after this particular date.

And the great thing about search operators is that you can continue on and on to get more and more granular. So let's take a look at some other ones that may be helpful for us.

We've already looked at after a particular date, but we can also change this to before. Those are two very common ones.

So, let's say before 2021, I'm gonna hit enter. Well, I'm obviously gonna see the results that were obscured or that were hidden from us just previously.

So you can choose these very specific date ranges if you know for certain, oh, I'm certain that he sent me this message sometime last year, for example. So after and before can be very, very helpful.

Using OR as a search operator

But let's clear this out for a second and let's take a look at another search operator, which can be very, very helpful. So once again, I'm gonna type in this email address, a test email, by the way, Scottfriesen@hotmail.com.

But I also want to see messages that include someone else. And that's where we wanna use the operator OR.

So if we use the operator capital O capital R, we can now add other operators into the mix. So in this case, I wanna see all the messages that include this email address but also this other one, this Gmail address.

So, I'm gonna hit enter now and we're gonna see quite a few results here. You can see in the top right-hand corner it says we're viewing one to 50 of many.

If I go over, we can see that there's actually a total of 53 messages that either contain this email address or this email address.

Using AND as a search operator

But what if I want to see any messages that include both of them on the same message? Well, in this case, what we'd want to do is change our OR to AND.

So if I hit AND and hit enter here, so now our search results have been limited to just one message, why? Because this happens to be the only message in my account where both of these email addresses are included.

If we open up this message, and we may have to expand this here, you can see it was sent by this Gmail account. But if we come down here and hover, we can see that this message below was sent by this Hotmail account.

So yes, they are both included, they are both involved in this particular message. Again, just very quickly I'm gonna change this back to OR just so you understand the differences here.

Now, every other message that we're seeing except for the one that we just saw, which is also going to be included here are from either of these two but there only happens to be one where both of them are involved at the exact same time.

Search for a particular Label

So here's another drawback of using the advanced search is that one of the options that it doesn't give us is how to search with a particular label or search for a particular label. Now, it's true we could use our labels here on the left-hand side, I could just click on URGENT and I can see all of my messages.

And what you will notice is if you come up here to the search bar when you click on any of these particular labels, it is actually including these search operator up at the top in the search bar.

So let's say we wanna go beyond just what's urgent, we wanna see what is urgent and maybe that is created or that has been left behind in the past. So here we're gonna continue on and I'm gonna type in before and I'm gonna just put a year before 2021.

I'm gonna hit enter and now we can see I've got a lot of messages that are actually quite old but they are still labeled urgent. Again, I can continue to add on and add on and add on to the search bar to be more granular in terms of what I want to find.

Let's say I want to see, well, is any of these from this Hotmail address that we were looking at before? And yes, actually most of them are, it looks like in this particular case.

How about the other individual that we were looking at, this other test account from Gmail? No, so I don't have to worry if I thought that message was in this label or in this area or before 2021.

Now, you can start to see the layering effect of using these search operators. A few other things that you can do beyond the advanced search, here we do have a Has attachment checkbox.

Search for a specific Filename

So to see if something has a particular checkbox, but what if we know what that attachment actually is? So in this case, we can use an operator called filename: and I'm gonna type in PDF in this case.

And you can see I don't have many messages with a PDF, I only happen to have this one at the moment. What if I know it has a particular JPEG image in it?

I'm gonna type in that file name and now I've got these three results here waiting for me. So if you know the file name, the file type, or the file extension, this can be another great way to zero in on what you are looking for.

Now, another complaint that many people have

Search Anywhere including Spam and Trash

when they use the search bar up here is that the results are typically limited to just messages that are either in their all mail account, meaning either in their inbox or one of the labels that are listed here.

Now it often includes things that have been sent as well. But what if you want to make sure that this keyword or this particular message is anywhere, including in spam or in your trash bin?

Well, in this case, what we want to do is we want to use the operator in.

So let's go back to our example of searching for messages from this Hotmail account.

And if I hit enter and I'm just gonna hit one more over, you can see I have a total of 51 results or 51 messages that are bringing back. However, if I continue on and say in

and hit enter, let's go over and see what my total is.

My total is now 56, so why has it changed? Well, if I come back over here and scroll down, you can actually see that we now have a few messages that have this trash can beside it, meaning that these messages are actually currently located in the trash.

Remember, your standard search is only going to limit it to things that are not in trash or not in your spam folder. But if you add in, it will bring back absolutely everything.

So if you wanna make sure that something isn't getting lost or if you haven't missed something in the trash, in can be an absolute time-saver.

Search for CC or BCC

The last one I wanna share with you today is CC or BCC. So for example, maybe I just wanna see the things that I or someone else have been copied on, maybe they were not sent the email or they were not appearing in the to field.

So in this case, I'm gonna stick with this sample email here and in this case, I gonna say, actually we need to put this at the beginning, my apologies. We need to put it at the beginning.

Now, you're gonna see all the messages where this person has been CC'd. And this is something I created just a moment ago just so you can see this, that this Hotmail account he was CC'd on this message that's why we're only getting one result here.

Now, if you'd like to see the full list of search operators that you can use with Gmail, I'll include a link to this page so that you can experiment and find the search terms and even the filtering options that you need to find the messages that you want.

Thank you so much for watching today's video. If you wanna learn more about using filters and labels here within Gmail, I recommend that you click on this video right here.

And if you have further questions about using Gmail and search operators, be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

My experience as a Trello consultant

Do you use Trello for your business? If so, I hope you're not making any of these seven mistakes.

Hello, everyone Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress and I have provided Trello consulting for the past five years and I have literally laid my eyes on thousands and thousands of different Trello boards.

So here in today's video I wanna show you the seven most common mistakes that I see my clients using and showing you solutions.

Using Trello Lists for Individual People

So you can fix each one. The first one has to do with using our lists and far too often, I come across teams and businesses that are using individuals for their own list.

Here in the first half of this board, you can see that we have a task list and in progress and complete, some standard things that many boards contain but if we move over to the right-hand side, we see things like Kristi's list, Brian's list and sometimes there's several, maybe a dozen of lists moving out here, all with individual names.

Now their intent is good in that they're trying to keep things organized that if Kristi is assigned something, we can move it over here but that sort of defeats the purpose of the workflows and the different stages in which Trello is so good at.

What we really should be doing is using this member assignment as you can see on these other cards so that we can assign members directly to specific cards regardless of which stage they are in.

The other thing you want to keep in mind is that if you or other members of your team need to see specifically what they are assigned we can come up here to show menu and we can go under search cards and filter things just for ourselves.

So for example if I just wanna see the cards that are assigned to me I can click my username and now I just see the six cards that I have been assigned to.

I can now work in this mode. This is more than just a view.

I can work and edit and move these cards around if I need to and whenever I want to, I can click X up here and go back and see all of my cards at once.

So I would strongly suggest that you avoid using individual lists for individual members of your team. Take advantage of Trello's use of a Kanban board and make use of the stages.

Poor Use of Trello Labels

The second mistake that I see far too often is not using labels effectively.

Now, here in this demonstration board you can see that I have several different labels.

One quick tip is that if you click directly on the label itself, it will expand and show you the name of that label that can often be very, very convenient so you don't have to remember the different colors and what they associate with but far too often I come across boards and teams that are not using labels at all or at least not very effectively.

Labels can be so helpful here within our Trello system and one of those reasons is that we can use again that filtering capability to narrow down and zero in on certain types of labels.

So I'll often ask my clients to see what would make the most sense for them to segment or break out their Trello cards on a given board. How would they like to see it maybe from a reporting standpoint or would other members of their team like to see that information?

If we go back here to search cards, you can see at the very top we can filter by either one or more labels.

Do I just wanna see my new projects? No problem, I can select that.

Keep in mind, you are not limited to just the first six or so colors that Trello provides you here.

If you need to, you could actually have several green labels which may represent the exact same geographical area but you can give each of those labels a different name.

So you can have as many labels as you need as long as they have distinctive names.

No Trello Backup Plan

Now, the third problem that I come across very often here when it comes to using Trello is the lack of a backup plan and although Trello is a trusted name and service things can go wrong.

Whether it's your fault, or if there is some downtime with Trello how about you add someone new to your team and they start mucking things up here within your Trello board and you wish that you could go back to the way it was set up a week ago or maybe just certain elements.

Well, one way that you could do so is come up here to show menu, select more and we could copy this board.

We could select copy and give it a name with a date perhaps so that we know when this board was copied but the problem with this strategy is that it's a manual process and either you or someone else on your team is gonna have to come in here and remember to copy this board every Friday and give it a name and then that's going to stack up in your organization and count towards your boards here within Trello as well and what if the mistake was made just two days ago.

You don't wanna go all the way back to last Friday. What if you wanna go to a particular point in time?

Well, a much better solution is to use a power-up called Backups by Rewind.

If you go to the power-ups menu here within Trello and just type in back or back ups, the very first selection will be back ups for Trello.

Now, backups for Trello is designed by Rewind which is the same organization which creates backups and on-demand recovery for products such as Shopify and Quick Books Online.

The great thing about Rewind is that it backs up every single aspect of your boards.

In fact, the list includes boards, lists, cards, checklists, custom fields, labels, and attachments.

So you can have the security of having someone either new on your team or maybe even you make an honest mistake and like to go back and revert to a prior iteration of that board, you can do so with Rewind and it will do it on a nightly basis.

So you don't have to remember to do something manually.

If you'd like to learn more about backups for Trello be sure to see the link in the description below.

Too Many Trello Notifications

Now, the fourth mistake that you may be making here within Trello as it pertains to your teams and your business is notification overload.

As you start to add members of your team, as you start to add due dates you're automatically going to start receiving email notifications and far too often people are receiving too many notifications at a given time.

The negative consequence is that some members of your team including yourself may start to ignore all of those email notifications.

So a better solution is to change the frequency of those notifications.

If you come up to the top right-hand corner and click your profile picture and then come down and select settings, you'll have the opportunity to change your notifications.

If you want to, you can allow desktop notifications but the one that we're gonna focus on here is this first one, change notification email frequency.

Now by default, Trello sets this to instantly meaning that whenever a change is made to a card that either you're assigned to or that you are watching, you're gonna receive an email notification.

But the one that I prefer and that I recommend to many of my clients is to change this to periodically and what that means is that it's going to send a summary of all of the changes that have taken place within the past hour.

If there's something that pertains to you, something that you're assigned to or that you have been watching, it's going to summarize all of those notifications in a single email.

Let me show you how that looks in my inbox.

So here within my inbox, I've received a notification telling me that I have three new notifications on this particular board and when I open up this email it tells me here's what I've missed.

Here are the three distinct and different changes.

Now you'll notice that each of them includes links to both the cards themselves but also the boards as well.

So I can come in here, review this email and say, okay none of this is really terribly important.

I don't need to reply or respond or maybe just one of them is but the important thing is, is that it's come in a single email, it's not clogging up my inbox and I can deal with it directly here.

Not Viewing Trello Across Multiple Boards

Now, fifth on our list of mistakes that I see far too often is not seeing the bigger picture.

Chances are that you're managing much more than just a single board and so are members of your team.

So how do you stay on top of all of the cards that are assigned to you and all of the things that are happening across multiple boards?

Well, the good news is that Trello has introduced some new views.

If you come up here to the top left-hand corner and we go all the way to the bottom, we're gonna select open work space table.

Now this is actually going to open up in a new tab.

What it's going to do is actually display our board in a different view.

So here you can see we've got a much more column and row vertical view of the same board that we were looking at here.

Cards, lists, labels and members and the great thing here is that we can actually change and edit these things on the fly.

If I need to add myself or someone else to this card I can do so, if I need to check this task off I can do so right from this screen but this still doesn't solve our problem about seeing things across multiple boards or does it?

Here in this long dropdown menu, we can select add boards and here I'm gonna select my Scott Demo Board.

So now if I scroll down to the bottom you can see I've brought in additional card information to this view but the great thing is, is that now I can start to filter and interact with this data across multiple boards.

Now I can always add more boards if I want but let me show you some of the capability here.

Let's say I want to just see the cards that are assigned to me.

Well, here you can see I'm assigned to two cards on this other board, in addition to the cards that I'm assigned to on this blue board.

Maybe I want to scratch that. Maybe I just want to see the things that are due or that are overdue, what are the things that we're behind on?

Well, we're behind on a few things in both of these boards.

You can get this view across two or as many boards as you would like in this space and if there's a particular view or filter that you like you can always bookmark this view so you don't have to come back and reset the settings.

A fantastic way to see the bigger picture across multiple boards.

Description Field Overload

Now, number six on our list can certainly cause you a major headache and that has to do with filling up the description field with so much information that it almost becomes useless.

Now don't get me wrong, the description area within a Trello card can be very valuable where we add links and as much data as we like but what if there's some things in here that are especially important, things that other members need to see right away or that perhaps we even want to be able to filter by for example, in this description you can see we've got things like, this will be a live broadcast, it will be a duration of 45 minutes and we need a half crew size.

We know would be a whole lot easier to manage this type of information is if you use custom fields.

So down below low here, in this example I've added three custom fields so that we can see is it a live broadcast or not?

It is, well then let's check this box.

What's the duration again, it's 45 minutes.

Well wouldn't that be helpful for others to be able to see rather than have to sift through these several paragraphs in the description and last but not least, we can select a custom dropdown menu and say, it's a half crew size, perfect.

It's a half crew size, now everyone will know and if I close this card, when it comes to custom fields you can even determine what is displayed on the front.

So now everyone can see that this is a live broadcast and the duration is 45 minutes.

In this particular example, I've chosen not to share the crew size that that's something that I don't need to see on the front of the card, but if I wanted to I could do so with custom fields.

Not Using Butler Automation

Last but definitely not least I've perhaps saved the best one and that has to do with not taking advantage of automation.

For the last few years, Butler has been baked into a Trello board and if you're not using automation well you're simply just wasting time.

How often do you have a process in your Trello board where you need to move a card or create a new card and then remember to do stuff such as set the due date for a particular time in advance or assign someone or yourself or add a particular label?

Well, Butler can do this all for you.

You just set it up one time and then that automation will happen the way that you want.

Let me show you a quick example.

Let's say I've got a new card here called new idea and when I bring new idea into the task list, when I bring anything into this task list right here, I want to add the new project label and I wanna set the due date to three days out from today.

Well, watch what happens, if I drag this over here I'm not doing anything else, I suddenly have that new project label and it is now due three days from today just like I said it would but maybe I wanna add something else.

Maybe I wanna make sure whoever makes this move is also assigned to this task as well.

Let me show you how to set that up.

If we come up here to Butler, I'm gonna go over and select my rules in this case and maybe I just want to filter it by the rules that are enabled on this board.

So here's this first one that we just saw in action but let's add something to it.

I'm gonna select the edit icon which is gonna open up my Butler interface here and in this case beyond adding the label and setting the due date to three working days in advance, I also want to add members.

So I want to join the card. Whoever moves it, I want to join the card.

I get to hit that green plus button. You can see it added to the bottom of the actions here and I'm going to hit save.

At this point, we can close the Butler menu.

Now it's not going to apply it to anything that has already there. It has to apply to new things going forward.

So let's say I'm gonna call this new idea two in this case and let's drag it over and let's see if this Butler recipe works.

I drag it over into the list, label, date and perfect. I'm assigned to it as well.

So make sure you check out Butler automations so that you can take full advantage of Trello.

Now, if you'd like to get even more out of Trello be sure to check out this playlist right here and if you're looking for more tips and tricks be sure to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

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

Adding Tasks and Due Dates

Are you brand new to Google Tasks or perhaps you just want a refresher? Well, in this video, we're gonna look at both mobile and desktop and show you everything you need to know when it comes to using Google Tasks.

So let's get started right here within the Tasks mobile app. And you can see here when first starting Tasks, you'll have absolutely nothing here in your initial list.

In order to add a task, we want to select the plus button near the very bottom. And it's gonna open up a small dialogue so that we can start to add our first task.

Let's say I need to email Karen about oh, I don't know, about something. So I've entered in my task here.

Now what I could do is hit save immediately and add this task. Let's hit that and you can see that it is added at the top of the list, but we didn't add a due date.

Now here's the thing. We can open up this task and now start to add further details, but let me show you how you can add those details when first entering in that task.

So I'm just gonna say task number two, in this case, and instead of hitting save, I'm gonna hit these description lines here. This is gonna allow me to add a full description or add other details like don't forget to tell her about the meeting or something like that.

So I've added some details. I can add links. I can edit whatever I want here in the detail section, but I can also continue and add this next icon, which is gonna open up a calendar and allow me to add a due date.

So let's say I want to do it by next Tuesday. I'm gonna say the 11th. Now we're gonna come back to setting a time and repeating a task.

But in this case, I'm just gonna select done. There's no specific time, it's just gonna be due on that date and now I'm going to hit save.

So here you can see in our list view, we have a separation between those tasks that have an actual due date. In this case, we've just got the one and then the one that has no due date as well.

And sometimes this can be helpful because not every one of our tasks needs to have a due date so sometimes this can actually benefit your productivity, but let's say I want to go back to email Karen and add a due date and maybe some further details as well.

All I need to do is click on that task and now you can see I have access to the details area. I can now come back here and add a date and a time.

So let's say in this case, I want to make sure I do this by the end of the weekend here, I'm gonna say by the end of Saturday, and in this case, what I can do is select a particular time.

Now this can be important because Google Tasks integrates directly with your Google calendar so you can have all of your tasks here that have a due date or a due date and time have it appear on your Google calendar as well.

So I'm gonna say 10:30 AM and I'm gonna say okay, I'm brought back to this calendar screen here in case I want to make this a recurring event, but we're gonna come back to that in just a moment.

So I'm gonna say done in this case, there you can see the date and time, and now I don't have to hit save or anything like that, all I can do is go back to my list and now you can see I've got this little time icon which is beside it as well.

Let's add one more task here without a due date. I'm just gonna call it task number three in this case and I'm gonna hit save just so we can see that separation again because what I want to show you is how you can reorder.

Sorting Tasks by Due Date or Custom Order

Or view your tasks in a different order. So in the bottom right-hand corner, we can see these three little dots.

And the first option here we have is to sort our list in two different ways. By default, it's gonna sort by due date.

And that makes a lot of sense when you're managing a to-do list. But if I click on this, you can see that I can also choose my own order in this case, I'm gonna select my own order.

And what it's done now, it's actually just entered it in from the most recent first to the least recent at the bottom. You'll remember that email.

Karen was the first one, task two and task three is what I entered in later. But let's say that I want task number two to be at the forefront.

If I click and hold, if I'm just holding down with my thumb or with my finger, I can drag it to a new position. Even though that's not due next, it's actually due next week, I can put it at the forefront if I want.

So again, you can move any of your tasks around in the order that you like, but we can switch. We can go back to those three dots and say actually, on second thought, let's go back to date.

Now if I go back and switch again, what tasks will do is that it should return it to the order you last had previously. So it should remember your order, but keep in mind, if you're adding new tasks along the way, it's not gonna look quite that distinct.

Let's go back to the date order and the other thing I want to show you here in this menu is that you can rename your list as well. Here you can see that I've listed it as Scott's list.

What if I want to call this something more like maybe my work list or my business list, for example, so I can do that. I can rename it whatever I want.

And the reason why that's important is that we can be managing more than just one list. Let's go over to the bottom left-hand side of our screen, the little hamburger or sandwich menu here and here you can see we've got the work list listed.

That's what we're working in right now, but I can create a new list. So in this case, I'm gonna say that I want to create something that's maybe a personal list.

These are the things that I'm gonna be working on outside of work. I'm gonna hit done.

And you can see I'm brought to a new list, which is completely fresh. Same functionality is what we saw in the previous list.

So here, I'm just gonna say that this is a family task. Maybe it's a family-related task and I'm going to hit save.

So there I've got one task in my personal list. If I come down to the left-hand side, I can toggle and switch between these two lists.

I can view my work list and I can view my personal list. Now it's important to know is that you cannot have a task that is listed in more than one list.

It is a one-to-one relationship. So I can't have this family task be displayed nor can I see all of my tasks at once.

Now, some of you may think that this is a drawback that I can't just see a master list of all of my tasks. However, I would argue that in some cases, this is a benefit.

Let's just take a look at the example I have here. Things that are relating to work versus things that are relating to my family or things outside of work.

What can be so confusing and distracting is if you have all of these things listed in the same place because usually one of them is winning out or vying for your attention more than anything else.

But let me show you how this can work together. Let's say this task number three here is actually something that was meant for my personal list, but I created it here within my work list.

All I need to do is click on that task where I can see the further details and you can see near the top, we actually have a little blue dropdown.

It's in my work list at the moment, but I can come up here and say move it to my personal list. So now this task is within my personal list.

If I come back out, I am still in my work list because that's where I was before I selected that task, but if we switched to my personal list, now you can see that task three resides there.

So you can easily and quickly move your tasks back and forth between these lists. Let's go back to the work list for just an example and let's take a look at some of the other things that we can do within a task.

Creating Repeating Tasks

So for example, I'm gonna open up task number two and let's talk about repeating or a recurring task. So in this case, if we need to edit the due date at any time, we just click on the date itself and it's gonna open up this calendar view.

So in this case, let's say that this is a task that I want to occur on a regular basis. It's something that I want to have happen maybe every day at a certain time.

So I'm gonna say I want it to start… I'm gonna change the date to the Monday. And I'm gonna say I want this to happen every day at let's say 2:00 PM in the afternoon.

So I've got my due date, I've got my due time. It's actually not repeating yet. For that, we need to select this repeat option down below.

And so here we can choose from a few different options here. I said I want it to happen every day so I'm gonna select this dropdown and say every day.

I want it to start on May 10th and yes, I want it to happen at 2:00 PM. So I am going to hit done at this time.

So now we have our repeat on here. Now if I go back to my master list, we can see we now have another icon.

We've got that repeat icon, those two little arrows showing me that it is a recurring task. So this is something that's gonna be very helpful.

Now, one thing to note is that as we check off this particular task, it actually is not going to appear again until the next time that it needs to be repeated, but let's talk about checking things off.

I'm gonna add another task here as well. Let's just keep with our number system task four and maybe task five in this case.

Completing and Reviving Tasks

So we've got a few more tasks here. So once you've completed a particular item, all you need to do is either check off the little circle to the left of it.

Here you can see one completed, I can undo it if I need to. And where that task goes is to the very bottom of the list under this completed section.

Let me check off task number four as well. So now I can see that I have two in parentheses that are completed.

Now, if I want to see specifically what those tasks are, I can just choose the little dropdown arrow here and it can show those tasks that are crossed out.

I can even click on them if I want to go into and review the detail. I haven't revived it yet.

At the very bottom, I can choose to mark it as uncompleted, but at this case, maybe I just wanted to review that task. Now at any time if I want to, I can come down here and I can say, you know what?

I prematurely completed this task so let's say mark it uncomplete. And now what we'll see is that task four is now in the upper portion again so we have that task ready and available for us to do.

Now at any time if you want to get rid of all of the tasks in this completed section, you could either do it one by one, but I would recommend you come back down to these three little dots in the bottom right-hand corner.

Here, we have a choice to delete all completed tasks. So in my example, I only have one, but you may have a dozen or many, many more.

If you never want to see them again, all you need to do is say delete all completed tasks. You will get a warning saying if you want to delete it permanently, I'm gonna say yes, and now you can see I have nothing left in my completed area.

Now, the other way in which you can complete a task is simply by swiping to the right. Here, you can see that I'm using my finger to swipe to the right and if I continue that all the way to the right, it is now brought that task down to the completed area as well.

Let's take a look at another piece of functionality here.

Adding and Managing Sub-Tasks

Which can be very, very helpful and that is using sub tasks here within Google Tasks. So I'm gonna add what I'm gonna call a master task in this case so this is the high-level task.

Maybe it's a project that's gonna take me a couple of weeks to accomplish. So let's say I'm gonna make a master task here and I'm going to hit save.

But now what I can do is I can open up this task and you can see at the very bottom, there's an area called add sub tasks because maybe there's a few different things I need to do in order to accomplish this bigger or larger master task.

So I'm gonna select sub tasks in this case and I'm just gonna say sub one. I can hit enter and add another one.

Hit sub two, in fact, you don't have to hit enter. You can just click on add sub tasks to quickly and easily add more sub tasks.

So now I've got my three sub tasks here as well. Now you'll notice at this stage, I cannot add a due date to these sub tasks, but don't worry.

We can still give them all their own unique due dates depending on where you need to accomplish them within this larger task.

So at this case, if I come back out to my master list, you can see that we have the master task and we also have our sub tasks as well.

Now, the nice thing is that if I go back to reordering, let's say if I don't want to order it by due date, I want to go by my own order, you can see that those sub tasks are actually indented which is nice and easy to see.

And if I click and drag and want to move the master task around, it will keep the sub tasks with them which really only makes sense, but I just want to make sure that you're familiar with how that works.

So if I want to drag it back to the top, those sub tasks are going to remain with it. But let's say I want to give those sub tasks their own individual due dates.

All I need to do is click on them and now you can see that they really behave and look just like any other regular task. I can come in here and I can say well, this one is gonna be due on the 11th and then sub task number two is gonna be due on the 13th.

And then sub task three is going to be due a little bit later on on the 17th or something along those lines. So here we go.

Now I've got all of them with their own unique due dates. Now that we're familiar with using Google Tasks on mobile,

Using Tasks within Google Calendar

Let's jump over to Google calendar and show you how it looks like over there. Here within my Google calendar, you can see we have that Saturday event, email Karen about something.

It's showing here on my Google calendar. To make sure that your tasks appear here also, just click the sandwich menu on the top left-hand corner and make sure that you have tasks selected so that you can see your tasks on your calendar.

So not only will you be able to view them here within Google calendar, but I can actually click and drag and move it and of course, that's going to sync directly with my Google Tasks as well.

If I click on it, I can see the details if we had added further details to this. In the bottom right-hand corner, I can mark it as complete and I can even hit the edit button and start to edit things here as well.

I can see which work list it is listed under. I can change it to an all-day task as well. So you can do all the same things or most of the same things that you would find in Google Tasks.

The other thing that is good to know that here within Google calendar, we can also add tasks directly. So you don't always have to be going back to the Tasks app itself.

In the bottom right-hand corner, if we hit this plus button, you're probably used to adding a new event or possibly a reminder here within Google calendar, but you can see just above event, we have the option to add a task.

So if I select this, I'm gonna say task in calendar just so we know which one it is. And I'm going to say that this is not gonna be an all-day event, I want it to be on the Saturday at 10:00 AM and I'm going to hit save.

So here you can see that we have the task in calendar. It's going to appear here on this date exactly where I want it, but if I go back to Google Tasks here as well under my work list, you can see there it is under tomorrow task and calendar at 10:00 AM.

So a great way to be extra efficient while working in mobile. Now let's jump over to our desktop computer.

Using Tasks on Desktop Computer

To show you where you can manage Google Tasks there. First, you're gonna want to go to Google calendar.

Why, because that's probably where you're going to be dealing with most of your task, but note you can access tasks in both Gmail and Google Drive as well. Here on the right-hand side, there is a Google side panel and you should be able to see the tasks view here.

If you don't see the Tasks icon, come all the way down to the right, and you should see a little arrow which will expand this side panel.

By selecting Google Tasks, you can see that we have the exact same menu and the exact same functionality that we had on the mobile view. So here we have the tasks that we created earlier and if we look on our calendar, we can see them listed here as well.

Make sure to remember that you have tasks visible on the Google calendar that you are using so that you can see them here right in your calendar.

But when it comes to working with your different lists, for example, you can do so right here. When it comes to editing and adding sub tasks, et cetera, you can do so as well.

The one nice advantage is that the desktop version does allow you to access some of that functionality directly. So for example, if I have over a master task and hit these three dots, I can add a sub task, indent, delete or change it to a list right here without first having to open up the task itself.

Now if you have some specific questions about how to use Google Tasks, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

We also have a large number of Tasks experts right here in this Simpletivity community and I'm sure that they'd be happy to give you some additional answers as well.

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

Editing Your Event Settings

If you want to get the most out of Calendly, you should optimize your setup. So in this video, I'm showing you seven Calendly settings you should review right now. (air whooshing)

So here I am within my Calendly account, and the first place that we're gonna go is one of our events. I'm gonna click on this event to open it up and now I can edit my details. First thing, we want to go to the 'When can people book this event', and there's an awful lot of information in here so you want to make sure that you look at the careful details.

Days Out Invitees Can Schedule

The first place that we want to look is the date range. Now often when people are first setting up their Calendly events or accounts, they select indefinitely into the future, meaning that they want to be able to be booked at any time, right? If you're trying to acquire clients and get more bookings, you might want to select this option or at least be tempted. But I highly recommend that you keep some type of tight timeframe into the future. So in this example, I've set mine up for 14 calendar days.

Now we can change between calendar days and business days if you want to exclude the weekends but I've chosen two weeks out from today, meaning that no one can book me three weeks out in advance. Remember, do you really want to give someone the ability to book you three months or even six months into the future?

It's gonna depend on your business and the type of event that we're looking at here, but make sure that you're comfortable with the timeframe in which people can schedule you out.

Adding Buffer Time Between Meetings

The next thing that we want to look at here is when it comes to buffer time. And although it's near the bottom of this list, it's something that we don't want to overlook. Want to add time before or after your events? I strongly encourage you to say yes, meaning that you don't have meetings booked back to back or telling someone, "Listen, I've got a hard stop," because in most cases, we are dealing with video conferencing such as Zoom meetings or Google Hangouts, and so you don't want someone else dropping in to your meeting before you've wrapped things up.

So we've got a few different increments here between five minutes all the way out to a few hours, so you need to select what is best for you. But I also strongly encourage you to select both a before event and an after event buffer time. Remember, we're not just looking at things that are being scheduled with Calendly, these are also other events which are going to be appearing and scheduling on your linked calendars. So maybe even if you've blocked out some time for some important work, you want to give yourself some buffer time before someone can schedule you in. So I highly recommend that you select a buffer time for both the before and after event.

Next up, we don't want to forget this little link here, which we find at the very bottom of this section, 'Additional rules for your availability' cause I think there's some really key things in here that you're going to want to check. The first one here has to do with scheduling conditions.

Minimum Time Before an Event Can Be Scheduled

And there's really two settings that we want to look at here. The first one is invitees can schedule within. Now, what exactly does this one mean? I think this might be the most important setting in the entire event area. This basically means that no one can book me until 16 hours from now. Meaning if I share this or if they come across this link or my scheduling page on my website, no one can book me, the earliest, I should say, the earliest that someone can book me is 16 hours in advance. Now for me, this gives me enough time to both prepare and perhaps ask a few questions, review what they are wanting for me. And if you are not using the built-in billing here within Calendly, it also gives you some time to send an invoice, for example, or however you collect payment, or maybe just to confirm that this is something that you want to keep.

If you're doing a consulting business, you don't want to waste your time and just let anyone book your time. Maybe you need to qualify them first, and that's going to give you some buffer time. If you do not set this for some time in the future, that means that someone could book you 15 minutes from now or an hour from now, so make sure you have at least a few hours in between here, again, depending on your event type.

Limit Number of Events Per Day

Now the one down below is also something that I think many Calendly users overlook and that is the 'Maximum allowed events per day for this type of event.' Now I understand, when you're first starting out, especially if you're starting a new business, you might say, "I want as many bookings. I want as many clients as I possibly can." But think about the event that you are creating here. Should there be a maximum?

In this particular example that I'm looking at here, this is my consulting event, and so I want to limit myself to only two of these one-hour consulting sessions a day. Why? Because I've got other things that I need to do as well, and I don't want to fill up any day full of consulting engagements. I want to give my clients the best of me, and I have found that if I can limit this to a maximum of two, that is great. I've got the energy. I can give them all of my focus and attention. I don't want to be drained when it gets to maybe the fourth or the fifth consulting engagement of that day. So make sure you select at least a number, a number that is appropriate for you.

Next on our list, we want to come down to the 'Additional Options' section and we want to select the first one here, 'Invitee Questions.' Now at first glance, this may look rather basic and including a name and an email address is going to be standard. A quick additional tip is that you may want to turn on the 'Add Guests' feature if you want to allow people to invite other guests, other email addresses as a part of the invitation.

Add Custom Questions

But the one that I want to focus on here is actually asking your invitees a question so that when they sign up to book a time with you, that you are getting some additional information from them. All we need to do is click on this area here and we can edit this message to whatever we want. We can ask them specific questions as to, what would you like to speak with me about in particular? Can you tell me a little bit more about the technology you're using or what you'd like to get out of this meeting? You can change it and you can even make it a required question if necessary. But the other benefit here is that you don't have to limit yourself to just one question. Here, I can select 'add a new question' and I can add multiple questions, and make them required if necessary.

This can be a fantastic way to validate the individual who is requesting to book time with you. What exactly are they after? What are they seeking as a part of this engagement? So you can qualify them in advance and get some helpful information from them. Once in a while, I've received information from someone and realized, "You know what, I'm maybe not the best person suited for their needs." Not only did it save them time, but it saved me time. So I didn't have to find that out during the call. I could read what they wrote here. Maybe ask a follow-up question, but then say, "You know what, this probably isn't the best thing for you. We're probably not the best match and we can both find better solutions."

So make sure you take a hard look at using a question, whether it's a qualifying question or just asking for some more details here within Advance.

Next in our list, we wanna get actually out of our event here and actually come up to our 'Account' and select 'Account Settings.' Now you may think that by selecting 'Account Settings,' this doesn't have much to do with the rest of your site. It has to do with your profile picture and your name and your welcome message. Well, yes, these things are actually going to appear on your Calendly page, but what I wanna show you and what often too many people forget

Add Your Logo to the Booking Page

is the branding area here. Here, you can see that I've uploaded my logo. Why is this important? Well, I'll show you. I send people to my Calendly booking page, I want them to make sure that they know who they are booking with and not to question if this is the right screen. Not only can they see my profile picture here and my name but having the logo here can give them some additional comfort and also can make it a little more seamless if this is coming directly from my website or a link within my email. So if we go to our Calendly settings here, pay attention to the requirement here for the logo. Not only will it remind you where that logo will appear but they recommend that you use an image of 440 pixels by 220 pixels for the best display.

I would recommend that you always look at the recommendation whether it's Calendly or whatever website that you're uploading a logo or an image so it looks the best for your viewers.

Last but not least, I've perhaps saved the best setting of them all and the coolest trick for using Calendly. If you use the Google Chrome browser, I highly recommend that you install the Calendly extension. Why? Well, not only can you access your Calendly dates that much quicker, but let me jump into my email here for a second. With the Calendly extension installed up above, I can select it and I can easily see my different event types here. So what I can do is I can come here and actually copy this link immediately and then paste it into my email. But that's not the best tip of all.

Add Times Directly to an Email

In fact, my favorite feature here is that you can see there is a link here called 'Add times to email.' What this will do is if I select this link, I can then say, "You know what, I'm gonna make myself available" or, "I want to give this individual some availability on the 5th, on the 6th, and the 7th." I don't have to give them my entire calendar. I just wanna focus in on a particular area of the week. I'm gonna select 'Finish and Share' and now these times are copied to my clipboard. All I need to do now is come over here and I am going to paste them into my email. And look at this. Now this individual, once I've sent this email and they receive it, they can then book a time directly from within the email. I don't have to send them to another browser tab. I don't have to send them to my main Calendly screen. They can book it right here from within the email.

Now, if you'd like to learn more about every setting in Calendly, I recommend that you click this video here. And if you have other questions about how to use Calendly, be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching. Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Adding notes to Google Keep

This video is brought to you by SaneBox. Stay tuned to learn more about how SaneBox can help you keep a decluttered inbox. (logo whooshing)

Are you brand new to Google Keep, or perhaps you're just looking for a refresher? Well, in this video, I'm gonna show you everything you need to know to get started with getting the most out of your notes right here within Google Keep.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And today I'm starting with a brand new account.

I don't even have a single note listed here within Google Keep, but let's change that and show you all the different ways in which you can add notes, edit notes, and then manage all of that information here, right within Google Keep.

Now, by default, when you first log in or open up Keep, you will be presented with the notes section. Now, a little later on, we'll look at the other options that we see here on the left-hand side.

But to get started, let's start putting in some notes. Well, it's very, very easy at the top of our screen we will always have this take a note section.

And if we place our cursor in here, we are opened up with a brand new note. So we can start adding any piece of text, we can copy and paste links and other pieces of information directly into this note.

You'll notice that the cursor will always put us into the body of the note and not the title up above. A title is not necessary here within Google Keep.

So if I select close, you can see there is my full note at this case in point. If I start a new note, maybe I want to say this is new note number two but I do want to give it a title.

So this is the title section up here. If I hit close, you can see it doesn't make that significant of a difference. This really comes down to personal preference, and you may not need a title for each and every one of your notes.

But let's take a look at some of the other things that we can do here within our notes as well. Whether you're taking a new note, or perhaps you're coming in here to edit an existing note,

Using time and location reminders

You will see some other options here on the left-hand side. Let's start off with our reminders.

This can be really helpful if you wanna make sure not to forget a particular piece of information, or especially if you're using Google Keep as a to-do list.

So if we click on our reminders here, we're going to be presented with a few different default times, including later today, tomorrow, or next week. Now, if these fit my needs, I can select one of these right away.

Otherwise, I can come down here and select pick a date and time and be very specific as to when I would like to be reminded. So I'm gonna hit save in this case, and you can see I now have a little icon here, a little badge you could say that it's telling me when I will be reminded today at 2:30.

If I click on this, I can always come back in here and change that and say, you know what? On second thought, remind me tomorrow.

So now, I will be notified if I have Google Keep on my mobile devices, if I have my browser notifications turned on, I will be notified at that time about this particular note.

But you may have noticed that there was another option here under reminders. Maybe I don't want a particular date and time. Maybe I want a particular place.

And this is especially helpful if you are using the Google Keep mobile app on your phone. If I select place, all I need to do is start typing in the name of maybe a store, for example.

Let's see if I can pick something a little bit closer to home here. You can just start typing things in like you would in a regular Google Maps or Google Search.

And now when I've found, in this case, my local Staples store, I can hit save. And you can see that that is now added to this note.

Now it's not going to remind me at a particular date or time. What it's going to do, is that if I have Google Keep on my mobile device, when I am near this store, when I am driving by, or walking by it, when I'm within vicinity of this store, then I will be reminded.

So this can be especially helpful if you're managing a grocery list, or in this case if I need to buy some office supplies, when I'm close to that location, I will be reminded on my mobile device.

Collaborating notes with others

All right, a few other options here, the next one over has to do with collaboration. So you can always add someone to your particular note.

In this case, I am the owner here but all I need to do is type in someone else's email address. Let's type in this test account here, and I can hit save.

And now I can see that that individual has been added to this note. In fact, on the front of the note, from my main screen I can see that as well.

So now they can have access to this note and we can collaborate together. They can actually add content and we can see each other's changes as well.

Adding colors to notes

The third option here has to do with changing a color, and this can be very helpful to organizing all of your notes. Maybe I wanna make this note yellow.

And maybe for me, that represents something that I need to do today, for example. So I can manage my notes and base it on color coding.

You don't have to apply a color, but again another way in which we can organize our notes.

Adding and removing images to notes

The next one over has to do with adding an image. So you can add an additional image to any of your notes.

In this case, maybe I'm gonna grab this image here. I'm gonna select open. And now I've got this image embedded or a part of this given note as well.

There's a lot of other things that we can do with our images here within Google Keep. At this stage, I'm just going to show you how to remove it.

If you hover over the image, we can remove it, we can remove it here as well. And now it is removed, it's gone from that particular note.

The next one over has to do with archiving this note. And remember, archiving is different than deleting a note. Deleting is permanent, it's gone for good.

If I choose to archive this note, it will end up over here in this archive folder, so I can retrieve it later. Last but not least, we have this more section where we have a number of further advanced options as well.

This is where we can delete a note permanently. Here we can add a label, which I'm gonna show you in just a moment.

Adding drawings to notes

We can also add things like a drawing. So if you want to add something that you're drawing to, this is especially useful if you're using the mobile version of Google Keep, you can do so as well.

Now you can see I've added this drawing directly to this particular note. Be aware that it's actually going to add a full square, regardless of how small your drawing may be.

It's actually gonna take up an awful lot of room here when you add a drawing to that particular note. But let's look at some of the other options we can do here as well.

We can make a copy of this note. Maybe most of the note is the same thing that we want somewhere else, but we can make a copy and make some changes.

We can also show checkboxes, which I'll show you in a moment, and also copy it to Google Docs so that you can access this information within Google Drive.

But let's get back to adding more notes, because we can do so much more than just adding text-based notes here within Google Keep.

Lists and checklists within a note

One of the more popular ways of adding notes here within Google Keep is to create a list or a specifically a checklist.

So rather than placing my cursor here within take a note, I can come over here and select a new list. And what you can see is that it's going to give me a list-based form.

So if I start to write in, maybe a grocery list here, for example, I now have some checkboxes that I can tick off as I go along the way.

So this is especially helpful if you're creating a shopping list as you see here, or anything else, such as a to-do list where you want to tick things off.

If I close this off, I can see, and I can actually even access this checklist from the front of the note. I don't have to necessarily open it up.

I can actually start to tick these things off and you can see that it's going to cross them through and put them to the bottom of my list as well.

The other nice thing about the list format here within Google Keep is that you can drag and embed them or make them as a sublist down below.

So here I now have milk under oranges which probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but maybe what would make more sense is if I had a category named dairy, for example.

And maybe I added some things like cheese for example. And maybe dairy is gonna be my main header, and I'm gonna bring milk down below.

And I'm gonna bring cheese down below that as well. So I can have all of those areas underneath that subcategory down below.

Now, if I want to hide my completed events I can do so as well by clicking this down arrow here. But the other thing that we can do is always convert this back to a regular list.

So if I come down to my three dots here, I can say either uncheck all items, delete the checked items, or I can say hide checkboxes.

Now, in this case, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna say, keep, I wanna keep my deleted checkboxes. And now it's just gonna bring it back to a standard text or note-based form.

If I want to, I can always come back down here and say, show checkboxes. And it's gonna bring it back into that checkbox form.

But please note, it's not going to keep any of your previous formatting and here you can see milk and cheese are now in the same order as dairy in this particular example.

The other two options that we have here, is to create a new note with a drawing right out of the get-go. So we get our drawing screen here.

I'm gonna close this one, and the last one here is a new note with an image. So we already showed you how to add that image with an existing note.

Here, we can start with an image and we don't necessarily have to add any additional text down below if we don't want to, we can just add that image here as well.

Well, now that we have several notes created, and although many of them are very, very simple. What are some of the best ways for us to organize these notes?

How to organize Google Keep notes

Well, within Google Keep almost everything is drag and drop. So if you want to take something and move it somewhere else, you can take your cursor and just drag it around into a different location that you wish to.

Now up above, we actually have two different views. This is what's called the grid view, where you'll probably have roughly three or four across the top depending on the size of your screen.

But we can also have what's called a list view, by clicking this option, we get a vertical list. So now everything is gonna be stacked on top of one another, regardless of what is inside or how much content is within those notes.

I think for most people this grid view is a bit easier to work with just because you see so much more information on the screen at a given time.

But let's take a look at two other ways in which we can organize our notes.

How to pin notes to the top

You can see, as I hover over each of these notes, I have an option here to pin the note.

And so if I select this option here for this new note number two, if I select pin, you can now see that it's created two different sections here within my home screen.

I've got a pin section up top, which includes this one that I want to pin. And then I've got everything else listed as others down below.

Maybe I also want to pin this image one as well. So I'm gonna select that pin and I can reorganize these ones as well.

If I want to reorganize them in different sections, for example, I can do so. But if you have something very, very important and you'd like to pin it to the very top, this is a great way to do so.

Now the other thing that you might notice here is that as I hover over these different notes is that there's a little checkbox on the top left-hand corner.

What this allows me to do is actually select that note and then I can do other actions to it. Now this is really only most applicable when you want to multi-select and apply something to multiple notes.

So with this one selected, maybe I wanna select the other pinned note, and I'm also gonna select this yellow note. So here you can see in the top left-hand corner, I have three notes selected, and now I can pin all of them.

I can add the same reminder time to all of them. Maybe I wanna come over here and say, you know what? I wanna make them all yellow in this case, because this one is an image you can't really see that it's labeled as yellow.

But if I was to come in here, if I come in here and de-select them, you can see it has this yellow hover over it if we added some text, it would still look yellow as well.

So remember, that's the checkbox here if you want to multi-select and apply an action to more than one note. Now, the third way in which we can group our notes together

Using labels in Google Keep

And really start to declutter this home screen a bit, is by adding labels. And on the left-hand side we actually don't have any labels created at all.

We can create them in one of two ways. We can come over here to edit labels. And I'm just gonna call this one a work label, for example.

Okay, I've got one work label, and maybe this one I'm gonna say is a family label so I can do so as well. Now I've got two different labels.

You can see them here on the left-hand side of the screen. And now when I come over to one of my notes, if I select more, I can say add a label and say, yeah, this is work-related.

So I can add that label to it. You will notice, you can add more than one label. You don't have to keep it from a one-to-one relationship.

You can add this to work and family, if I want to. And those will also appear on the front of the card.

The power here is that if I only want to look at my work-related notes, I come over here to the menu side, select work. And now all I see are my work-related notes.

If ever I want to go back and see everything, I come up to the top and say notes. Maybe I'm gonna come over here and say that this one is a family related item.

I'm gonna say that this is a personal one. I'm gonna say that this is also a family related item, and I'm going to hit close. So if I click on the family option here, I'm gonna see those two included as well.

Another helpful tip, a very quick and easy way to add these labels. Let's start with a new sample note here, is if I add a hashtag. So in this case, I'm gonna add the hashtag.

I can either type it in, or it's gonna bring up my options here as well. So I'm gonna select family in this case, I'm gonna say close, and here you can see the hashtag still exists but I also have that family label included here as well.

Now, instead of coming over here to edit our labels, if I take another new note, or maybe I can just apply it to an existing note here, if I want to, if I say add, change labels or add a label, I can start to enter in a new label right from this menu.

I don't have to go into the edit labels area. I've now both added this new label to this note but I've also created this label here on the left-hand side.

Note, Google Keep does not give us the option to rearrange these labels or reorder them. So they will always be listed in alphabetical order.

Sticking with the menu side here on the left-hand side, you will remember that we added a reminder over here. If you ever want to see just the notes

Archiving and deleting notes

That have a reminder applied, you can always select reminders. And here we can see this location-based reminder, whether it's location or a due date that you've added.

You can see all of those reminders here within that reminders tab. Lastly, we've got two other options down below. And that is our archive and our trash.

Now, Google Keep makes it very easy for us to archive because as you hover over any of your notes, you can see the last little icon here is our archive icon.

So if I select that here, and I'm gonna come over and maybe select that on this note as well, both of those notes have now been removed from my home screen.

But if I ever need to go back and take a look at where they are, I can click on the archive option and see all of my archived notes. The other helpful thing here is that you can see this one is listed as a family note.

If I come back up to family, it will actually show me the archived notes here as well. So it will create that separation from either your active or the notes that do display on the homepage, and things that are listed here as archived.

Last but not least, you still have access to some of the notes that you have deleted or put in the trash. By default, notes in the trash are deleted after seven days, or you can go ahead and manually delete these notes as well.

This is where you will find them in the trash option.

Searching for notes

Next up, we wanna take a look at the search capabilities here within Google Keep, because rather quickly, you build up a lot of information and a lot of things that you may be searching for.

So here at the very top of the screen we have our search bar. By clicking in our cursor, we actually get a variety of other options available to us even before we apply any text.

So for example, maybe I just want to look at images here, I can click on this images option, and it's gonna bring back any of my notes that have that image.

If I select X here, I'm gonna come back to this menu, I can also search by my different labels. I've got things titled, things, which is sort of a smart way of Google Keep to try and classify all of your different notes.

I can see who I've collaborated with, or the things that are a particular color. So in this example, I just wanna pull up the things that have yellow with them.

Now that we're familiar with the search capabilities here within Keep, let's take a look at our setting. And there's some particular things that you're gonna want to make note of.

Google Keep settings

The very first option here under the gear icon is settings. And let's take a look at each of these one-by-one. So the first section is notes and lists, and you have the choice to either add new items to the bottom.

And if we uncheck this, uncheck this, new items will be added to the top. The second option, move checked items to the bottom. Now this has to do with creating a list or a checklist like you saw before.

Next up is displaying rich link previews. What this has to do is that when you are copying and pasting, for example, a website URL, do you wanna be able to see a preview of that website, maybe a little image or a font that is particular to that website, or do you only want to see the link itself?

Lastly, here in this section, we can enable a dark theme. So if you don't like the white background you can have a dark theme as well.

Down below, under reminder defaults, this is where we will select those default reminders. So if there are particular times of the day in which you would like to be reminded, just to make it that much easier when you're applying these reminders, this is where you set it.

And here's a pro tip, changing these reminder times will actually change the default snooze times in your Gmail account. So if you'd like what's going on in Gmail with those default reminder times, be careful with what you select here.

But if you need to change them, this is the place to go. Last but not least, is the ability to enable or disable sharing if you don't want to allow sharing of notes with other members.

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I especially love the SaneLater folder, which learns from you as you move different messages into the folder. Therefore, you don't have to fill up your inbox with things that you don't need to see right away.

And the great thing about SaneBox is that it learns from your behavior. So the more that you use it, the better it gets at refining your messages.

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