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Do you wish that you could customize the way your Google Calendar looks and feels? Well, in today's video, I'm showing you seven tips and tricks so that you can view your schedule the way that you want.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox. SaneBox is the email tool to help you keep your inbox under control. Why so few emails here? That's because SaneBox is using artificial intelligence to help filter out my email. I particularly like the SaneLater folder, where I can go back and review unimportant emails as it learns the way that I deal with my messages.

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

Different Calendar View Shortcut Keys

Let's get started with tip number one: customizing your Google Calendar views. You may already be familiar with the dropdown menu here, which allows you to switch between different views like day, week, or month.

Here’s a quick tip: instead of using the dropdown, you can use keyboard shortcuts to toggle between these views more efficiently. For example:

• Press D for Day view.
• Press W for Week view.
• Press M for Month view.

These shortcuts let you switch views quickly without navigating through the menu.

Another useful feature is the option to hide weekends. If your calendar primarily focuses on weekdays and you find weekends distracting, you can simply uncheck the “Show weekends” option. This will give you a more streamlined view of your workweek and help you see more of your calendar in the available space.

So, next time you want to customize your calendar view, try using these shortcuts and options to better fit your needs!

Go To Date on Calendar Shortcut Key

Let's move on to another useful shortcut key: G, which stands for Go To. This feature allows you to quickly jump to any specific date in your calendar.

Here’s how it works:

1. Press G on your keyboard.
2. A small window will appear where you can enter any date you want to navigate to.
3. For example, if you want to see your calendar for December 25th, 2021, just type in “12/25/2021” and hit Enter. Your calendar will instantly jump to that date.

This shortcut is particularly handy if you need to check events far in the future or the past without scrolling through months or years. It’s a fast way to get to any date you’re interested in without having to click around.

So next time you need to jump to a specific date, just remember to use G and save yourself some time!

Go To Today on Calendar Shortcut Key

That also brings me to my next shortcut key, which is T as in today, if I hit T on my keyboard, I will automatically go back to today. So whether I'm reviewing something in the past, or whether I'm going fast forward into the future, I can just hit T on my keyboard, and go immediately back to today.

New Calendar Event Dock View

Here's a handy tip for adjusting event times in Google Calendar: Use the dock to sidebar feature to make it easier to set the start and end times for your events.

Here's how it works:

1. Create a New Event: Click on the calendar space where you want to create a new event and start entering your details.
2. Dock the Event Window: In the top right corner of the event creation window, you'll see an option to dock it to the sidebar. Click this icon.
3. Adjust Your Event Time: Once docked, you’ll see a day view on the right side of your screen. You can now:
   • Drag the Event: Adjust the start and end times by dragging the event in the day view. Simply click and drag the edges of the event to extend or shorten the duration.
   • Move the Event: Drag the entire event up or down the timeline to adjust its position within the day.

This feature helps you visually manage your schedule, making it easier to set accurate times for your events without having to scroll through dropdown menus. It’s especially useful if you want a better view of your day while editing the event details.

Side Panel Map View for Event Locations

Now, the next one on our list is something that is quite new and something that I've started to use a lot more frequently.

And that has to do with incorporating a map view here within Google Calendar.

Now, quite often, I will try to include the address or the actual location of the place that I need to be.

I find this most helpful because I'm traveling with my smartphone, and if you click this on your smartphone, it's automatically gonna open up the Maps App.

But here within the desktop version of Google Calendar, you'll notice on the right-hand side, we actually have a Maps view.

If you open it up, you'll get a miniature Maps view of what's going on here.

So let's say that I'm not sure where this lunch is taking place. If I click on this event and then click on the map, what's going to happen is on the right-hand side, it's gonna bring up that address, and I can say, "Oh, Anton's yeah, I know where that is. I know how much time I need to get myself to get to that location."

Here's another lunch I have set up later in the week. If I click on this, and again, I'm gonna click on the address here, it's immediately gonna bring up this miniature map on the right-hand side.

And if I want to, I can even see the reviews and other pieces of information that's down below as well.

So if you happen to have address or location information within your events, not only is this gonna be helpful to you on your mobile device, but it's gonna be helpful to you here within the desktop view as well.

Adding Time Zone View to the Calendar

Next up, we wanna talk about time zones.

And I know for most of us, we are often working with either clients or colleagues that are in a different time zone than us.

But on the left-hand side, by default, you're only gonna see the one time zone. You're gonna see your local time zone.

Well, let's see if we can change that, or shall I say, enhance that?

Up in Settings, we wanna click the gear icon, then we want to click settings, and on the left-hand side, we wanna click on time zone.

Now, here we have the option to display a secondary time zone. You're gonna have to check this box first, and then down below, you can check or select any other time zone that you like.

So here I am gonna select Eastern Time, but you can also customize the label. So I just gonna say Eastern ET, as an Eastern Time here. Okay, that's gonna be the label that I wanna see on my screen.

So if I go back to my calendar here, now you can see I've got home, which of course is where I am currently, but now I've got Eastern Time here as well.

So no longer do I need to do the math, or if I'm on a phone call and say something like, "Hey Scott, can you meet at 4:00 PM Eastern Time?" I can just look at my calendar and say, "Ah, yeah, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, yeah, looks open, sure, we can definitely set up a meeting at that time."

So this can be really helpful, especially if there's a particular time zone that you're needing to calculate or figure out what their time is as well.

Viewing World Clocks on the Calendar

But let's look at another way in which we can utilize time zones or take advantage of time zones here on Google Calendar.

If we go back to Settings, we're gonna stay here in this time zone area. Actually, we're gonna come down to the world clock, which is just below.

And here we can check this box that says, Show World Clock. Now, of course, you can choose how many of these different times that you would like to display, and you can customize which ones you want to display.

I'm just gonna leave them at the default here for this example, we're gonna show the UK, we're gonna show Alaska and we're gonna show New York.

Now, if we go back, nothing has changed in this area here, we still have Eastern Time displayed, but on the left-hand side, we have a live world clock.

So now if I need to debate, like, "Is it too late to call someone in the UK? 5:56, someone might still be in the office." Yeah, it's alright, "I can give them a phone call there right now."

So you can have a live world clock here on the left-hand side of your screen.

Now I'd love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite Google Calendar view settings, or what's a question that you have about Google Calendar?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Email Tracking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Schedule Send

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signatures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And yes, a customer relationship management system.

Why a Sales CRM is important

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

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

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

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

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

Viewing leads & sales pipeline in Pipedrive

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

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

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

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

Viewing deals & client records in Pipedrive

About Pipedrive is its simplicity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so that's gonna be important.

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

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

Sales forecasting in Pipedrive

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

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

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

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

So we can't count on these numbers here.

We need to do some forecasting.

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

I can give things new names if I need to.

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

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

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

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

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

Setting custom notifications in Pipedrive

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And that's just based on history, right.

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

Taking action with activities in Pipedrive

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

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

What do all of these mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

What should I be doing next?

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

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

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

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

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

And so now that little green icon turns to grey.

That means that I have an activity coming up.

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

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

That's good, what about red and yellow?

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

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

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

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

I've got nothing planned for this client.

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

Adding products to Pipedrive

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

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

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

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

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

And now that is listed here as my deal.

I've already given it a preset price.

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

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

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

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

In fact, it's very simple.

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

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

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

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

How to check for Zoom updates

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

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

Make sure that you're on the latest release.

Okay, next up let's hit that gear icon

Upload a profile picture to Zoom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Touch up your appearance in Zoom

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adjust for low light in Zoom

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

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

If we want to get a sliding bar here.

Now that's a little bright, right?

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

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

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

Show video preview when joining Zoom meeting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, the next one in our list.

Suppress Zoom background noise

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

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

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

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

So what does this setting do?

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

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

Now, we have a few different choices here.

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

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

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

Hold space bar to unmute yourself in Zoom

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

Now, again, this is typically selected by default.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Zoom video filters

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

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

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

But something that Zoom just added frequently was video filters.

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

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

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

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

So be sure to click that playlist for more.

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

In fact, it's very simple.

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

Well, then this video is for you.

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

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

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

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

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

Question types for self-graded quizzes

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quiz question examples

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

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

How to enable quiz & quiz settings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to select answers & point values

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

And down below, we now have this answer key.

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

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

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

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

So in this one, the correct answer is Ringo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The other two are from the White album.

And so those are the correct answers here.

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

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

It is going to be an all or nothing answer.

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

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

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

You can always manually change that if you need to.

So again, I'm gonna hit done.

There you see the correct answers and my answer key.

Answer key for short text question

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

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

We're not giving them any choices here.

They need to type in the question itself.

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

I'm gonna select the answer key.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now by default, it's gonna be unchecked.

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

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

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

The question or the answer will be unscored.

If I check this, it will be scored.

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

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

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

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

Our quiz is now ready for us to try out.

It's ready for us to test out.

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

How the quiz looks to respondents

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

It's gonna open up in a new tab.

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

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

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

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

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

And I'm gonna hit submit.

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

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

I have to hit submit first.

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

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

The first one was just my first and last name.

Here we go, I answered this incorrectly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Viewing quiz results and scores

The person who is managing this quiz?

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

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

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

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

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

Edit quiz scores after submission

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Private Zoom Chat Messages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Renaming Zoom Participants

So that moves us on to tip number two.

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

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

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

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

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

View Zoom Participants in Different Ways

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

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

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

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

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

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

Broadcast to All Break Out Rooms

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to reuse Zoom Polls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Unsubscribe

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

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

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

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

When to Unsubscribe

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

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

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

Cold Sales Emails

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sane Black Hole

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

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

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

SaneBox is something that works with every single email client.

You actually don't need to install anything special.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now it appears in my SaneBlackHole folder.

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

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

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

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

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

But BlackHole is going to do this automatically for you.

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

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

Let's pick another one here as an example.

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

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

And I've told them to stop emailing me.

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

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

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

They don't even have that option in there.

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

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

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

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

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

In fact, it's very simple.