Unlock Efficiency: Elevate Your Skills with Our Training & Videos

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

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

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

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

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

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

Easy time tracking for staff & managers

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

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

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

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

Employee view of OnTheClock app

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Manage PTO with OnTheClock

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

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

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

And then they can request it through the system.

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

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

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

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

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

Use GPS tracking for accuracy and limits

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

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

That's great.

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

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

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

They have to be within a particular location.

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

Accounting & payroll integration

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

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

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

Access OnTheClock from any device

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

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

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

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

Do you wanna view your inbox in a different layout?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gmail Quick Settings

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

Now recently, this settings area was altered.

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

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

Change Inbox Density in Gmail

Convenient for us to use.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit your Gmail theme

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

Change the Inbox Type in Gmail

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to customize your inbox type settings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edit the inbox reading layout and split pane in Gmail

That comes along with it.

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

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

Which is pretty standard within an Outlook world.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Toggle between split views with the quick icon

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

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

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

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

Conversation view and email threading

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minimize the Gmail label and menu bar

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

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

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

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

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

But let me open this up again.

How to hide Meet and Chat section in Gmail

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

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

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

I want to be able to click them more easily.

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t forget to hit “Save changes.”

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

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

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

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

Do you wish your meetings were more engaging?

Are you tired of people not participating?

Even though you know that they have something to say?

Well, in today's video we're gonna solve that problem by using Slido.

A guaranteed way to make your meetings, whether they're in person or virtual, more engaging.

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

And Slido is a tool that I use on a regular basis.

So let's get started.

Here's a quick example of what Slido can look like for your participants.

Here I've set up a poll, and this is actually a poll I delivered recently, where I asked a question.

Sort of a great way to break the ice, at the beginning of the presentation, or something that you're delivering.

Whether it's a town hall, or maybe a brainstorming meeting.

And I asked my participants,

Create an event

"Hey what are the most common sources of your interruptions?"

And this is what they said.

And the great thing about it, is that it's interactive, and it's live, and your participants don't have to download or install anything.

All they need to do is use their phone, or other device that they may have with them, and go to slido.com.

So let's get started.

Once you've signed up for your Slido account, what we need to do is come in here and we're gonna select, Create an event.

And a couple of things that we need to do here.

Number one, let's give it an event name.

Now you wanna name it something that you're gonna be familiar with.

So you manage your different events here within Slido.

But also keep in mind that this is something that your participants are going to see as well.

So let's say, I'm gonna call this one, a Brainstorming Session.

I don't mind if they see that.

Maybe you have a catchier title, or something else that is relevant to your subject.

Next up we need to select a start, and an end date.

And you can see that many of these end dates, are a few days out.

Because if you are hosting a conference, or maybe you're holding several meetings,

over the course of several days, you wanna use the same polls, or ask the same questions, or collect the same feedback.

So you can either set the start and end date to the same date, or, I'm just gonna leave it as is here.

From July 2nd to July 5th.

And then the last thing we need to do here is either confirm this event code.

It's gonna give you a random number.

This is how participants are going to access Slido, so that they can participate.

But I recommend that you use something custom.

You use something that is very specific, and also maybe simple for your users to remember.

So in this case, I'm gonna say, brain, I don't know, that sounds a little funny to me, I'm just gonna say brainstorm.

Now if someone else who uses Slido, is going to be using this event code in the same time frame, it will not be made available.

And Slido will tell you that up front.

But it looks like I'm safe.

For these three days I can use the event code, brainstorm.

Let's hit, Create Event, and now we're ready to set up our event.

Whether that is setting up our Q and A, or maybe asking some live questions, as in the poll that I just stated here.

So here on the right-hand side.

Q A

This is where our Q&A will be displayed.

But why don’t I show you what it’s going to look like for your participants?

The great thing about Slido is that your participants can participate anonymously.

This means they can ask questions they might be a little embarrassed to ask live, in person, or if their username is attached in a video conferencing setup.

So, I’m going to click “Try Sending a Question.”

We get a preview of what Slido will look like on users' phones.

Typically, you’ll have two options up here at the top: the Q&A, where people can ask questions throughout the presentation or brainstorming session, and the polls.

We haven’t set up a poll yet, but we’ll do that in just a moment.

Let’s pretend we are participants.

I’m going to type, “When are we launching the next product?”

I have the option to add my name, but most people prefer to ask anonymously.

As a presenter, I often encourage anonymity to encourage more feedback and more frequent use of Slido throughout the session.

I’m going to hit “Send,” and you can see on the right-hand side that I can view the questions as they come in.

Below, participants can see their own questions as well as everyone else’s.

Let’s ask a few more questions: “When is lunch?”

There’s always someone asking about the break.

And maybe, “Can we release these notes to our friends?”

Participants can see everything coming in.

Now, I’m going to go over to the right-hand side and go into present mode.

This is what you will share with your viewers, whether you're live, in person, or sharing via video conferencing.

Here, you can see the top questions listed.

I only have three questions in this case, but the great thing is that whether you’re presenting on a large screen or via video conferencing, everyone sees what’s rising to the top.

People can vote on these questions using the thumbs-up icon.

We haven’t upvoted anything yet, but if I go back to the preview and upvote a question, it moves to the top of the list.

This encourages participants to get more involved and read other people’s questions.

You can display about three to five top questions on your screen, prompting people to upvote what interests them most.

This helps you, as the presenter or moderator, see what’s most relevant to your audience.

As a presenter or moderator, you can hover over questions to see options.

For example, clicking the up arrow will bring a question to the top and give it a different color, notifying the audience that this is the question being answered now.

If you like, you can hit the checkmark to remove that question from the list, so only unanswered questions remain.

But it gets better.

As a moderator, you get this preview view on your smart device or desktop.

I love opening up the Q&A early in my presentation to review questions throughout.

I don’t always show this screen to the public; I might be showing my slides or video as I talk.

However, I can preview all the questions coming in and adjust my presentation on the fly based on audience feedback.

This is useful even in large crowds where you might not hear from many people directly.

You can get a sense of what’s going on and address the most relevant concerns or interests first, rather than just responding to the quickest hand-raiser.

Polls

To be quiet, and keeps talking over everyone else.

So a fantastic tool for engagement.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Let's go over here to Live Polls, and see if we can set up a live poll, like I showed you right off the top.

Now there's a few different polls that we can create here.

Multiple choice, is a great ice breaker, it's very engaging, it's very easy for people to use right?

'Cause they don't have to enter in any text.

But there's some other good ones you wanna keep in mind as well.

You can create a word cloud.

This is great if you're asking a question such as, "In one word, how would you describe this?", or "In one word how would you describe how you're feeling today?"

The reason why I suggest using the one word, for the word cloud is that, of course, the answers that are given multiple times are going to grow, and they're gonna show bigger, like we see here on this example with clear goals.

You can add a quiz, which is relatively new here within Slido.

You can add a rating, you know, "Out of four stars", or "Out of ten stars, how are you feeling today?"

Another great ice breaker.

Multiple Choice

And you can also just do open text, which is similar to Q and A, although you can't vote on these ones.

So this is more just bubble text that will be appearing.

But probably the one I use most often with my meetings, with my presentations is multiple choice.

Now it's fairly straightforward, but let's just go through the different features, the different options here, so you can create your own multiple choice questions like a pro.

So, multiple choice, let's say, let's do something very, very easy here, "What is your favorite pet?" okay, we'll say "What is your favorite pet?"

And of course we gotta give a few different options here, so I'm gonna say, dog, cat, I'm gonna say fish maybe, and let's say other.

Let's give another other option as well.

Now, there's a few other choices here.

We can say, mark the correct answer, if this is more of a quiz format, right?

If you want to try and see, maybe you wanna test your audience, halfway through, or part-way through your presentation.

Have they been listening?

Give them a multiple choice question, and see if they can guess the correct answer.

I'm gonna leave this one unchecked for now, but the one below, can be very helpful, depending on what you want to have your participants' feedback with here.

Do you want to allow multiple options?

Now, by default this is gonna be unchecked, but you can check this, and then also set a limit.

So this can be great if you wanna maybe ask a question like, "What are your two favorite pets?" Or "What are your two most favorite, or three most favorite?"

And then you can say what that limit is, so that they can't choose more than that.

I'm gonna uncheck it in this particular case, I just want them to pick a particular option here.

And all I need to do now is hit Save.

So now my multiple choice is ready to go.

By default, my Q and A is gonna be the thing that is presented, when I go into this presentation view.

And as I mentioned before, your participants will never have to worry where they need to go.

Whether they have a phone, any device with a web browser, just go to slido.com and here is going to be the event code listed right below.

But let's say I wanna ask this multiple choice question.

So in the administrator view on my phone, or here within the desktop version.

I just need to hit, Play.

And by hitting Play, the right side of my screen is going to showcase this, but you'll see, if I go back to the presentation view, it is now gonna show the poll.

It's gonna switch over from the Q and A, and show my poll.

And the great thing about it is, that you can see if the majority of people are coming into the poll, because this little ticker in the right-hand side, you can see over here, if I go to my first example, I had 19 people participate in this poll.

This ticker will go up live, so you can tell if people are having trouble, you can tell if the majority of the room, or the majority of your audience is coming in or not.

But the other great thing is that this poll is dynamic.

So, as people start to vote, these bars will start to expand, or get smaller, depending on what is most popular.

And I find time and time again, people really, really enjoy this.

When I use Slido at a conference, or in a live situation, people are often laughing, they're having a good time, sometimes they change their decision, based on what they see up here.

It's often a fight to the end.

You know, is dog gonna win, is cat gonna win?

And it comes right down as a nail-biter.

People really, really enjoy the engagement level, here with Slido.

Now if you wanna make your online meetings more engaging, I would encourage you to view my video on how to use breakout rooms in Zoom.

It's a fantastic way to get the conversation going.

Or you can click the video to the right, to watch the latest video, right here on Simpletivity.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Do you like wasting time? No, I didn't think so.

So why do we waste so much time when we're managing all of our cards and lists within Trello?

Well today I'm gonna help you save time by showing you some of my favorite Butler automation tips.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Pipedrive! Pipedrive is the easy-to-use CRM system that integrates directly with Trello. To learn more, go to Pipedrive.com.

When it comes to saving time in Trello, using Butler automation, we want to look at things that we do most frequently or most often.

Make Trello Due Date complete when moving into a List

And so my first tip for you has to do with dragging something into your final list.

In many cases your final list will have a title such as "Completed" or "Done" or "Finished" and when you drag something into that list you often will have a due date remaining and isn't it time consuming for you to not only drag it over there, but then we have to open up this card, then we have to come over here and check off this due date so we can get into this green state as we see with these other cards below.

Why don't we just have that happen automatically?

Well, let's do so with Butler.

What we're gonna do is that when this gets dragged over into my completed list I wanna have that due date checked automatically.

So let's open up Butler and we are gonna select Rules and we need to hit that Create Rule button and add our first trigger.

We're gonna stay on this first option which is Card Move and we're gonna actually look at the second choice down below.

When a card is and we're gonna select moved into, we have to pick a particular list when a card is moved into the Complete list and I'm gonna say by anyone, not just by me, but in case I'm working with a team or if I happen to add other individuals to this board.

So when a card is moved in the list Complete by anyone I have to make sure to hit this green button.

So that's my trigger at the top.

Now I have to tell Butler what is going to happen.

So in this case we actually want to select the Date field because although it is a checkbox, it's attached or it's associated with that completed field or with that due date.

So the very first option here is mark the due date as complete. That's exactly what we want.

Come over here, hit that green plus button.

We can scroll to the top just to review both the trigger and the actions, and let's make sure we hit that Save button.

So now, if we come back to my board, let's take a look at that exact same card, remember it's unchecked.

It's due in a few days.

I'm gonna drag it over here into complete and boom!

There it is. It's changed to green.

It has been completed for me.

So, I don't have to go

Move Trello Card to a List when Due Date is complete

And open up that card anymore.

But how about something else?

Here's another one that we have with a due date attached and what if I'm inside this card and I see that everything has been completed and I want to come up here and check off this due date?

Wouldn't it be great by just checking this box? It would automatically move this card into the Complete list.

Well let's make that happen.

Once again let's open up Butler and we are gonna stay with our Rules.

Now in this case we're gonna create a new rule and we have to pick a new trigger.

So we're gonna say add a trigger and this time we're gonna come down to Dates.

And we are gonna say when a due date, the second one here, when a due date is marked as complete in a card, once again, I'm gonna select by anyone.

That is gonna be our trigger. I'm gonna hit that plus button and now we need to tell it what is going to happen.

And what we wanna do is we wanna select this first option here under the Move tab.

Move the card to the top of the list or the bottom of the list, that's up to your personal preference.

I'm gonna say to the top of the list and we are gonna select that complete list.

Don't forget to hit that green arrow at the end because some of these have multiple options.

You have to choose multiple choices here, but make sure you hit that green plus button that will actually add it to your automation.

So, when the due date is marked as complete in a card by anyone, we wanna move that card to the top of the list Complete.

Let's hit Save and we'll close out our Butler dialogue.

So here we go.

Here is this one. Instead of dragging it over into Complete, what I want to do is I'm gonna come in here and I'm gonna check off this Due Date box.

And what's gonna happen?

It's not only completed, but you can see up top here, it's already moved us into the list Complete.

I don't even have to close out this card yet.

We've already been moved into Complete and if I do close it, here you can see we are moved to the top of the list.

It has been moved to the top of the Completed list.

Add Trello Due Date and Member when Custom Field is checked

Just by hitting that checkbox sorry, within that due date.

All right, let's go one step further here and let's take a look at how we can add some automation to our custom fields because one of the great things about using custom fields within Trello is that you can add some specific information such as Client Name.

Here I have a checkbox called Approve.

I can even add a particular Start Date or have multiple dates or due dates here in addition to the main due date within a Trello card.

But let's take a closer look at this Approved checkbox.

Perhaps you have a Trello board where there's a process where it gets to a particular stage, a particular part of your workflow, and then you want some specific actions to be taken.

So in this case what I wanna do is that when this Approved checkbox is checked I want the due date to automatically go to 72 hours from now and I want to assign myself to this particular card, okay? And we wanna do that all with just a single action, just by checking this box.

So let's close down this card and let's go back into Butler.

We are gonna stick with Rules. This is gonna happen under our Rules and we’re gonna select Create Rule once again.

Now we wanna add our trigger.

Now when it comes to custom fields within the Butler dialogue or within the Butler interface, don’t be confused, we are not going to Checklist. This is a checkbox. It is not a checklist.

Custom fields will appear under this last option here labeled Fields. So we’re gonna select Fields and we might have to scan down here just to see which one best suits us.

Now in this case, we wanna come down to about the fifth or sixth one here which says when custom field, blank Field name is checked by me or of course, we can choose anyone. We can choose different options here. But let’s select the proper field name.

Now since it’s the only checkbox, it’s the only custom field checkbox I have it’s gonna be my only choice here. So when custom field Approved is checked by anyone.

Now, don’t forget, you can actually have different rules for when things are unchecked. But in this case we wanna say, when the Approved checkbox is checked by Anyone, let’s hit that plus button, that is the trigger.

Now, what do we want to have happen?

Well, let’s start with the due date. We’re gonna come down here to Dates and we’re gonna set that due date not to now. We wanna open up this dialogue and give us a few more options here.

Now I could choose three days if I wanted to. I can change the duration or the scheduling value here, but in this case I’m gonna say 72 hours. I’m gonna be really specific. 72 hours from when that checkbox is selected.

I’m gonna hit this plus button here which is only gonna add it to this level here. Don’t forget to hit the green plus button. Set due date in 72 hours which is actually gonna add it as an action.

But we’re not done just yet. We wanna go to Members because I wanna add someone specifically to this card. The third one down says add member @.

Now this is great if you have other members of your team. Maybe you have a sales associate. Maybe you have a support team member that needs to address these cards when a particular checkbox is selected.

Now in this case I’m just gonna select myself, but don’t forget, you can choose specific people if you like. So, I’m gonna say add member myself to this card as well. Hit that green plus button and now both of those actions are going to take place.

Don’t forget, if there is a specific label you also want to add. If there’s a comment you would like to add, you can do that here as well. But in this example we’re just gonna leave it for these two.

I’m gonna hit Save and let’s close out our Butler dialogue and see what happens.

So we’re gonna come up here to this Contact client about meeting and let’s say it is Approved.

So I’m gonna select this checkbox and let’s see what happens.

Up top, first the date quickly jumped in at 72 hours from right now and I have been assigned to this card, all by a single action, just by checking a single box.

This is a great automation to add to some of those processes where again, you need multiple things to happen and you don’t want to waste your time clicking all over that card or even moving things around within your Trello board.

Next, let’s look at something that’s perhaps.

Add new Trello Lists on a regular schedule

A little more advanced, and that is adding new lists to your board along with adding some variables.

If I scroll over here to the left hand side of my board, you can see that I've had an automation working for me over the last few days.

I've been adding a new list with a very specific title for each of these days.

So how this particular automation is working and I had a great question just a week ago about someone who is using Trello for their own personal to-do list and the way they like to manage it is that they have a new list that they create for each and every new day.

But they want that to happen automatically.

Well, we can do that here within Butler.

Here you can see each morning at a time that I specify I am getting a new list created at the beginning of my board, but not only is it just a new list, but it has a very specific title with actually that date attached to it.

So how did I do it? Well let's go and create it for ourselves.

Once again we're gonna come into Butler, but unlike the other rules that we looked at we are not going into Rules.

Or I should say other automations.

We are not going into Rules because this is happening on a scheduling basis, we want to select Calendar this time.

So once we're in Calendar we want to select Create a Command.

We start with our trigger as always and this one's pretty straightforward. We're gonna just do this one every day.

It's gonna be the first one here, every day.

Now what you might want to do is click on this little clock icon and specify when this is going to happen. So, let's say I'd like this to happen pretty early in the morning.

I'm gonna say every morning at 5:00 a.m. That’s when I want this new list to appear. So I’m gonna hit that plus button. That is our trigger and now we have to determine what is going to happen.

So in this case, I wanna choose the third option over which is titled Lists.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this first option which says create a new list, okay?

So I wanna create a new list named.

Now here is where we’re gonna give it a specific name. Now in many cases, if you’re creating a new list on a regular basis you probably don’t want to use the exact same name, right? It’s gonna become confusing. Especially if you’re creating other automations or other rules to have lists with the exact same name.

So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say Tasks for and so I can get the accurate date, so I can get that day’s date, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna insert a curly bracket and I’m gonna say date, d-a-t-e short. S-h-o-r-t. All one word, no spaces. Dateshort and then I’m gonna close it with another curly bracket.

This is what’s called a Butler variable. So what it’s gonna do it’s gonna put in that day’s date in a somewhat shortened or abbreviated month format as you saw on my board before.

So that’s all we need to do. This is the action. Tasks for, and it’s gonna put in the date for that day.

I’m gonna hit that plus button over here to the right and don’t forget to hit Save.

Now this one’s a bit harder for me to show you live because it’s not gonna happen until tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m., but what I’ve already shown you is this is how it’s going to look. It’s dateshort because as you can see it’s only giving me the three letter abbreviation of the month, instead of the e on June it’s just giving me J-u-n.

But let’s take a closer look at where you can find out how to add these variables and many more

Full list of Trello Butler Command Variables

to your Trello board.

On the official Trello support website you can find a full list of all of the variables that you can include within your Butler automation.

Now you can also simply do a quick Google search for Trello Butler variables, and you'll come directly to this page or I should say it'll be the first option in those search results.

Once you're here you will see the full list of all the variables in which you can include.

So here under Time related, if we scroll down here you can see that dateshort, which I just included in my Butler automation. If I wanted datelong I could just input that and then I could get the full month, maybe I just want the datenumber format, I can do that as well.

But whether it's time related, and yes you can do the day before or weeks after or number of days after. You can give it board data. You can even include card data.

In fact, this is some of the variables that I will use if I'm creating a custom email notification or adding a comment within a particular card. I can actually add specific links or I can add other information about that card.

But you can scroll and find the full list of all the variables in which you can add here, within your Trello Butler automation data.

Now if you wanna see your sales data clearly and feel organized every day you should check out Pipedrive.

Pipedrive is the easy to use sales tool that you don't need an IT degree to work with. You can visually track your leads, pipelines, and communication in one place, and never forget what to follow up about.

Pipedrive automates your day so you can spend more time focusing on your customers. You can try Pipedrive free for 30 days and then get 25% off your first three months.

Click the link in the description to take advantage of this special offer.

This video is sponsored by Sagenda.

Sagenda takes care of your booking schedule so you never lose track of your appointments.

Learn more at Sagenda.com.

(air whooshing)

Google Forms is a great way to create easy contact forms, quizzes, samples, surveys, and so many other things.

So in today's video, I wanna share with you five of my favorite tips to get the most out of Google Forms.

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

Email notifications for new Google Forms responses

And let's dive right in with tip number one, and that has to do with our responses.

Now, once you've set up a form and you've shared it with others, you can always come up here and click on the Responses tab.

And it gives you a great summary, whether it's a chart format and telling you how individual users or the group as a whole has responded.

But what if you can't wait or what if you want to reply to that individual as soon as they send the form? This is especially helpful if you're setting up a contact form.

Well, over here under the Responses tab, we wanna select these three dots. We've got this option to Get email notifications for new responses.

Now this is essentially just a checkbox. If I click on this, it has been unchecked, but if I come back and click on it, you can see that it has been checked.

Meaning now for every time that this form is submitted, someone submits this form, I'm gonna receive an email notification.

Now just make sure that you know that this notification is gonna be sent to this email address. Wherever you have created this form, that is where that notification will be sent.

You don't yet have the opportunity to customize or change the email address, but by selecting this, you will get an immediate response whenever someone completes your form.

Add Google Forms to your website

Now, speaking of completing their form, what about if you want to share this form in a different format?

One of the most common ways to share our form is to come up here and select Send, and we can either send an email directly, but probably more frequently, we are sharing this link.

And don't forget to hit the shortened URL option here. So you can share this via social media or it just looks a little bit cleaner.

So you can copy and paste this link and send it to those who you would like to fill out the form.

But what if it's something that you'd like to include on a web page, such as your website? This is very useful, especially if you're creating a contact form.

Well, the third option here is to actually embed your form. You can embed the HTML of your form.

Now, if you need to, you can try some trial and error with the width and height here to see what best suits the page that you're gonna paste this.

But all you need to do is select Copy, which is going to copy this piece of code and then bring it into your website editor or wherever you would like to include it.

So let me just delete this for a second. I'm just using a quick and easy HTML Code Editor to show my example here.

So I'm gonna paste the HTML here on the left-hand side, and we're gonna get a preview on the right-hand side.

So if I paste this, here you can see my form the way I've designed it. It's gonna be displayed just the way I like, everything from the formatting, the colors, and the behavior of that form.

So instead of creating a button on your website and instead of just creating a link, you can actually embed the form itself.

So they don't have to click anywhere else or go to a new page, they can fill out your form. All you have to do again is come up to Send, choose that last option, and copy this piece of code and place it on your website.

Create an auto-grading quiz in Google Forms

Now tip number three is especially for teachers or for those involved in training, or maybe you just want to quiz the people that you've been speaking with or who have been taking some of your training or reading some of your content.

You can turn any form into an auto-grading quiz, and this is all you need to do to make use of this. Here, I've created a quick and easy sample quiz with just a few questions based on this video.

So in order to do so, what I need to do is come up here to the Settings, and I'm going to choose the third option, which is Quizzes.

And I can say, "Make this a quiz." If I select this option, I get a number of different options down below. Number one, do I want to release the grade or release the scoring immediately after each submission? Or do I want to wait until I see it and then tell them when I've reviewed it and released their score?

Down below, we also have a few options in terms of what the respondent can see. Can they see the missed questions? Can they see the correct answers? And can they see the point values? You can determine what you want to allow those who are participating in the quiz to see. Make sure you hit Save before leaving this page.

Once you’ve saved this setting, come back to your form. Now, remember, I haven’t actually set this one up as a quiz yet. So now what I need to do is click on these questions, and down in the left-hand side, you can see, I want to click on the "Answer Key."

If I click on the Answer Key, I’ve got two options here. One, I can say how many points this question is worth. I’ll say that this question is worth five points. And next, I’m going to say that Yes is the correct answer. If they want to get the five points, they have to click Yes.

Come down here and say Done. Now I can see the point value here and this little check mark indicating what the correct answer is.

Let’s go down to this second question, which is different. It’s not multiple choice. I’m going to click on this, again click on the Answer Key, and I’m going to give this one, oh, I don’t know, I’ll give this 10 points because it’s not multiple choice.

Here I can add one or more answers as the correct answer. So in this particular case, I’m the one who created that video. So I can say it’s Simpletivity.

If you want to add other variations, maybe you think they’re going to have trouble spelling the name or if it's the first and last name or just the first name, you can choose to add multiple correct answers and say, "Mark all other answers incorrect."

I’m going to check that box and say Done. So here I can see the answer key when I’m previewing, or if I’m wanting to add more questions to this form, I can do that as well.

Now I can send this as a quiz, and after it is submitted, the person who has filled it out will receive that feedback immediately. They’ll see how many points they received and what the correct answers were.

Give specific questions based on Google Form answers

Now, tip number four is something that many of you have been asking me over the last several weeks and months, and that is, "Scott, can I use logic branching within Google Forms? Can I give someone some special questions depending on how they've answered an earlier question or something else in my survey?"

And the answer is absolutely yes. Let me show you how to do this.

Here, I've got a sample survey. The key to logic branching, or presenting other questions based on their earlier answers, has to do with sections.

So a reminder, on the right-hand side, the very last option is to add a section. You can add as many sections as you want. This is often used to break up your quiz or form into more manageable or digestible chunks. For example, maybe they answer three questions per page, and then they go to the next section.

To use logic branching, you need to create sections for the different places you may send respondents based on their answers. Here I have section one of two, which is the main quiz with a simple yes or no question. I want to send them to section number two if they answer No. If they answer Yes, the quiz or form is complete, and they can go on with their day.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Add Sections: Create a new section by selecting the last option on the right-hand side.
2. Set Up Questions: For the main question in section one, click the three dots next to the question and select "Go to section based on answers."
3. Choose Actions:
   • For the answer “Yes,” select "Submit form" to end the form.
   • For the answer “No,” select "Go to section [number]" to direct them to the next section where you can ask additional questions.
4. Configure Subsequent Sections: After each section, you also need to choose what happens next. In this example, you can choose to submit the form after section one, but ensure the logic still applies if they answer “No.”

Let’s see it in action:

1. Preview: Click on the Preview button.
2. Test Responses:
   • If "Yes": The form will end after showing a thank you message.
   • If "No": It will direct them to section number two with additional questions.

By using logic branching, you can create dynamic and responsive forms that adapt based on the answers given, making your surveys or quizzes more engaging and tailored to the respondent's input.

Add video to Google Forms

Now, the last tip I want to give you today is about adding something that can really enhance your forms: embedding videos. Adding a video can often spruce up your forms and make them more engaging.

Here's how you can do it:

1. Add Video: On the right-hand side of your form editor, select the fourth option down from the end, which is "Add video."
2. Search for Video: You can do a video search directly within the form. For example, search for "Google Forms tutorial" if you're looking for a specific tutorial.
3. Select Video: Once you find the video you want, click "Select." The video will be added to your form.
4. Position the Video: You can drag and drop the video to the desired position on your form. For example, you might want it to be the first thing respondents see.
5. Add Instructions: While the video itself isn’t a question and can’t be graded, you can add instructions above or below it. For instance, you can write, "Watch this video and then answer the following questions."
6. Preview: Click the Preview button to see how the video will appear to respondents. They can watch the video directly within the form and then proceed to answer the questions below.

Embedding videos is a great way to provide context, instructions, or additional information, making your forms more interactive and informative.

If you need clients to book time with you, be sure to check out Sagenda. Sagenda is the scheduling system that integrates directly with your website, so you can fill up your calendar without the extra work. Learn more and get started for free at Sagenda.com.

Are you wanting your users to book time with you? Are you a consultant, a freelancer

Or maybe you're just looking for more leads and allowing people to easily and professionally book time in your calendar? Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you

Everything you need to know to use Calendly.

Overview

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

And I've used Calendly for a while now.

It is a quick and very easy tool to allow people who are interested in my business and in my work to book time with me.

So I wanna show you how to get things started.

So we're gonna get things kicked off by going into our menu, into our account once you've signed up with Calendly.

And one of the first places that you're gonna wanna go

Calendar Connections

Is up here to your account.

And we want to go to calendar connections because really everything is based around your relationship with Calendly and your calendar.

So the first thing that you're gonna wanna do is make sure that you add one or more calendar accounts.

This not only allows Calendly to book those appointments directly to your calendar but it also allows Calendly to check other bookings that you may have going on.

And what I mean by this, is things beyond just Calendly appointments but things that are happening perhaps in your personal life or other meetings that come up as a part of your day.

Down below here, you can also check for conflicts.

You can use multiple calendars to check for conflicts more than just the one that you have selected up here and you can also specify which calendar to add those appointments to.

So this is definitely gonna be your very first stop to make sure that you have your calendar connections set up correctly.

Just select add calendar account here and you can authenticate with any calendar service including Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook.

Next up, we wanna stay with our account settings

Account Settings

this time we're gonna go to account account settings and I just wanna encourage you to upload an image. So if this is meetings or appointments that people are going to be scheduling with you, I recommend that you put your nice profile picture here

along with your name and perhaps a welcome message just when they land on your beginning page.

Branding

Next step, you also wanna make a quick stop at the branding page to add your company logo or some other image that you would like to add here. And lastly, we can click on the my link. Now this is probably more important than you think.

In most cases, you're gonna wanna put the name of your business or maybe it's your full name. But remember, this is the URL that you are gonna be sharing with users.

This is what you can link from your website or your social media accounts or you can just copy and paste this and give it to people directly so that they can land on your Calendly page.

Landing Page

All right, once you've been finished with your account settings, let's go back to the home screen. I just wanna show you where some of those changes take place.

I'm gonna click on my link here just to show you where this shows up. So this is the initial landing page where people are gonna see my profile image, my name

and that welcome message. I've got two events currently that people can choose from and when they click on one of those events they are also gonna see my branding here. This is where the logo comes into play.

Events

But now let's move on to the events themselves and how can you set up one or more events so that it's as easy for your prospective leads or for your clients to come in here and book time with you.

So let's go back to our menu within our account screen here.

And this is really our main page here on the home screen where you can add and edit existing events.

I've got two events that I'm using at the moment but let's go and create a new event from scratch.

We gonna select that new event type, which is gonna open up a new screen.

We've got two choices here, we can either create a one-on-one meeting or a group meeting.

Now a group meeting lets multiple invitees meet with you at a single time.

This may be great for a teacher or if you are providing a group webinar or something along those lines here.

But in most cases, the majority of people are using Calendly for one-on-one meeting.

So let's say create for one-on-one.

On this screen, the first thing that we need to do is give it an event name.

Now remember, this is more than just your reference.

This is what people are gonna be seen when they land on your Calendly page.

So I'm just gonna call this one, Meeting with Scott, really simple here.

So I can identify, oop, Meeting with Scott.

Let's keep that in there.

Our second step is to add a location and you can see we can tell our users upfront, is this an in person meeting, a phone call or is it gonna be a specific conferencing meeting such as using Google Meet, Zoom, GoToMeeting or maybe something custom, something that's not even listed here.

In our example, I'm gonna choose phone call in this case.

And in many cases, depending on the option that you choose, you may have some additional options waiting for you.

For example, do I wanna choose if I will call my invitee in this case, it's gonna require the person who's booking that time to list their phone number.

I need to know who I'm calling or I can choose this option, my invitee should call me.

In this case, I can add my desired phone number here and the great thing with Calendly is that it's not going to display this number until they have booked the appointment.

So if someone is considering booking time with me, it's not as if they're gonna see my phone number or my dial in number right away, it's only after they've booked the time will this number be revealed.

But in this case, I'm gonna say, I will call my invitees 'cause I'm gonna ask them to provide their phone number.

I'm gonna say update, that's gonna save that option here.

Down below we can add a description which is something you don't wanna overlook especially if you have multiple events that you're gonna be offering to your users.

So I'm just gonna say, this is a meeting with Scott for a consulting session, something like that, just something so they can differentiate what this event is about compared to maybe some of the other events that I have available.

And then just below the description, we have our event link.

Now we already talked briefly about having your domain name or your business name or maybe your full name to get them to your main Calendly page but this is something that you can share in addition, a separate URL.

So in this case again, you wanna try make it as specific as possible.

So maybe I'm gonna say, meeting Scott, something like that, something that's so easy for me to identify but also if I just copy and paste this link, they know what they're getting as well.

And lastly, we can choose a different color.

This is very helpful if you have multiple events, I'm gonna choose red in this case just so it stands out from the other events that I've already created.

Now once we hit next, we're gonna get to the nuts

When Can People Book an Event

And bolts of our event.

In this menu screen called when can people book this event.

So by opening this app, you're gonna see a lot of detail and you wanna make sure not to skim over this because this determines how long of an event it's gonna be and other specific details including how far out someone can book you.

So first up is event duration and by default, it's usually set to 30 minutes, in this case I wanna make this 60 minutes for my event.

If you don't see a default time here that works for you, let's say for example you want to set up a 90 minute meeting, we can select the custom minute option here.

Now date range is also very important.

Here it says events can be scheduled over 60 calendar days meaning they can book me out up to two months in advance.

Let's say that's a little too much.

I wanna select edit here and I'm gonna choose this to 10 rolling days meaning they can only schedule me within the next 10 days.

Now you can also change it from rolling days to a specific date range.

This can be helpful if you have a special set of office hours, maybe a two week period where you are just offering a special service, you can do so here.

The third option is also to choose indefinitely, I would be very hesitant to choose this option.

Basically this means that they can book you any time in the future.

So rolling days is typically the most standard option here.

I'm gonna say 10 rolling days and hit apply and the nice thing about this screen is if you scroll down, it can actually show you what that looks like on your calendar.

So if I say show more, the things that are grayed out means that that's past the 10 day rolling period.

So this shows where people can book me as of today.

So if you need to take a glance or preview that you can always scroll down and do so.

Now event time zone by default, it is gonna show in your time zone which you set in your account settings and your invitees will also see it in their default or local time zone which is typically ideal.

You can edit this if you want to, you can lock the time zone but that is really only recommended if this is gonna be a physical meeting that you're meeting at a specific address or location.

For most of us, we are meeting via video conferencing or via phone so you wanna keep this at local so you don't have to worry about making the configurations or the calculations of the time zone difference and they don't have to either.

It's just gonna show up in their local time zone.

Availability

Next we have our preview calendar under availability and this is really core.

First off, I recommend that you select some of the specific days.

This is where you're gonna set the actual available hours that you can be booked.

Now before we do this, I just wanna remind you that, remember, this is syncing against your calendar, the calendar that you set up in your account settings.

So it is never going to double book you.

If you have set which calendar for it to check, it is not going to double book if something already exists there whether Calendly booked that for you or whether you have booked that or other people have booked your calendar in advance.

But what we wanna do here is set what is the time limit on specific days?

Or maybe you have the same timeframe.

So here, if I click on this date, I can say, you know what?

On Mondays, I don't wanna start that early.

I don't wanna be able to be booked that early in the day, I want to be 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and I can say, I can apply it only to this day or can I say apply it to all Mondays.

I got to say apply it to all Mondays but then going forward, I can change these dates as well.

If nine to five works for me, that's great, I can leave it as is or maybe I want to be available nine to seven on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I never want to be available.

So if I click on Wednesday, for example, I can say I'm unavailable, I can say, apply to all Wednesdays.

And now you can see that date is blocked out completely.

So you can make those changes in terms of specific hours of availability either on a specific date on a recurring day or even for the entire grouping as you go forward.

Advanced

But we don't wanna move on just yet, we wanna make sure that we click this advanced tab because there's some other details that you don't want to forget.

First up is availability increments, meaning, how does you want this to look to your participants?

The people who are booking you, do you want them to only be able to book you on an hourly basis like 1:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m?

Or do you want to also add 30 minute increments such as one, 1:30, two, 2:30 et cetera.

You can make that change here.

Next up is event max per day meaning for this particular event, how many do you want to be allowed to book you in a given day?

So maybe I only want to allow two of these events to be booked.

Even if my schedule is wide open, I only want people to book this particular consultant session two times a day.

If you don't wanna set a limit, you can just leave that blank and it will adhere to your other rules such as the amount of available hours.

Next up is minimum scheduling notice and this is really important to pay attention to as well.

The default is four hours away, meaning that someone could book me four hours from now.

So if it's 10:00 a.m., my time 2:00 p.m. would be the earliest that they could book me today.

If I think that's too close, if that's too soon, well, then I just need to increase this number maybe I stretch it out to 16 hours, 18 hours, maybe I prefer 24 hours so that no one can book me within 24 hours that are always gonna be booking me for at the very least tomorrow.

Maybe I need some time to prepare, I need to send them a questionnaire.

Whatever the case may be, you can adjust that here.

And then our last option has to do with event buffers.

Meaning if you don't want meetings to be scheduled back to back to back, you can add a buffer before an event but also after an event, this is very helpful if you have a habit of having your meetings going over time or maybe your clients push those meetings over time.

If you don't wanna bump into your next meeting, you can add a buffer for either before or after that event.

Invite Questions

We're gonna hit save and close and that brings us to four additional options down below.

The first one is invitee questions.

So when someone comes to book your event, what will they have to provide?

Now name and email is going to be mandatory.

If we click this little gear icon we can say that we don't want to allow them to add guests.

If you don't want them to add other email addresses or guests you can do so.

You can also change if you want both first name and last name as separate fields.

I like to try and keep it nice and simple.

So I just leave this as name but you can choose what you desire.

You may recall that we are requiring our guests to add their phone number because I want to call them, they need to provide me with a number.

So here, this is gonna be here by default.

If I didn't need that, if I didn't make that choice earlier then I could choose if I wanted to add phone number or not.

And then the last one here is just an open comment field.

Please share anything that will help prepare for our meeting.

I can change the text, I can change the wording of this question, I can just delete it altogether if I want to or I can add additional questions.

If I wanna add a few preliminary questions in advance, this can be helpful if you wanna get some more information, maybe find out what they're after, what they're looking for you can add questions here.

Notifications Cancellation Policies

Save and close, next is notifications and cancellation policy.

So how do you want these events to look on their calendar and how do their email reminders or their email notifications, how do you want them to look as well?

Do you want something specific in the title? Do you want a specific wording?

Here in the right hand side, we can select personalize and you'll see how it's gonna show up to that individual.

What it's gonna look like when they receive these calendar invitations, you can always change these defaults as a part of your setup.

If I close this and we select switch to email confirmations, I can select personalized and this is how their email reminders will show up in their inbox.

Again, if I don't want it to start with confirmed, if I wanna change what the event name and what it's gonna look like, I can add links, I can italicize and add other formatting.

I can do all of that right here as well.

Now down below, we've got some other things that we can set up such as email reminders in terms of when they are sent email follow-up and even text-based reminders.

If you wanna send them a text reminder as well.

By default, these are all set to off but you can turn them on and make adjustments as you wish.

The last thing that we wanna look at here is the cancellation policy.

So if you want to include something like you must notify me 24 hours in advance or else you will be charged the full amount or something to that effect, you can include your cancellation policy here.

Otherwise, you can uncheck this box and not have anything show up as a part of that cancellation policy.

Confirmation Page

Next up is the confirmation page. Now by default, it's gonna show just a standard Calendly confirmation page but if you would like to send them somewhere specific,

you can choose redirect to an external site, maybe you want to send them back

to your website or to a social media page or maybe you have a custom thank you page. You can include that here as a part of a custom link.

Payments

And then the last option that we have available to us has to do with payments.

Now this isn't gonna be applicable to every user and yes, you must have a pro account in order to use payments. But if you want to require your users to pay you

via PayPal or Stripe or some other method, you can do so here so that they have to pay prior to confirming that event, you can make that connection here within this window.

Meeting extension

So now that we are done with this event type, let's go back and see what it looks like on our page.

So now we see we have this red meeting with Scott, this is the one that we just set up.

Here is the extension, right. It could be calendly.com/simpletivity/meetingScott.

That's what it's gonna look like so if I click on this directly, it's gonna bring me to this meeting invitation and here you can see, Monday, I'm booked the rest of the afternoon.

So the reason why this is not available is because I have other bookings going on.

Even though I said, I wanted to start a little bit later, I've got nothing more available today.

And remember I said, I don't wanna meet on Wednesdays so you can't meet me this Wednesday or next Wednesday but I do have some availability on these dates.

So if a user clicks on the ninth, here they'll see my availability for that day and they can choose any one of these days, they can confirm it and continue with the process.

I hope you found today's video helpful and if you have further questions about how to use Calendly, 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.

Google Chrome extensions can make our lives so much easier.

There are so many different tools to make us more productive, and just to make browsing on the web so much more convenient.

Well, in today's video I wanna show you five of my favorite extensions.

Everything that will save you time.

To manage all of your tabs in a convenient manner.

So, without further ado, let's dive in.

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

Minimize and save your Chrome tabs with OneTab

And the first one on my list today, has to do with tab management.

Does your browser ever look like what you see here?

You perhaps have 10 or maybe many, many, more tabs open at any given time.

Now, not only is this a little distracting, as you go looking for where you need to be, or what's listed here, this can also be a bit of a resource hog.

Because having all of these websites open, each and every one of them can take up valuable processing power.

Well that's exactly where OneTab comes in.

So here you see the OneTab in my extensions list, if I select it, what it's gonna do, is it's going to condense everything that was open into a single tab.

Now you may notice that this very first one, this very first tab that I have pinned, did not get collapsed.

You can change that setting if you want, but I've changed the setting here in OneTab, that anything that is pinned, I don't want to collapse it.

But, now, I've got everything in a convenient single tab.

So if I wanna continue, I can open up a new tab, and go to work the way that I want.

But, I can always come back here and say, "You know what, I do wanna go back to LinkedIn."

Let me click on that one, and it will open up that tab for me.

So, it allows me to minimize and condense all of the tabs open, that I have here.

And if I ever do wanna come back here, and just say, "Restore All", well, I've got that option as well.

And I can restore all of those tabs in the same order, in the same way that they were displayed in the first place.

So if you're wanting an easier way to manage all of your tabs, and also keep a history of them, be sure to check out OneTab.

Disable less used Chrome extensions with Extensity

Now the next one on our list today, also has to do with improving the performance of our browser experience.

Sometimes when you have all of your extensions installed, they can start to weigh down, and slow down, your Chrome experience.

Well that's where Extensity comes into play.

When you have Extensity installed, what you get is a nice convenient list of all of the extensions, and all of the Chrome apps that you currently have installed.

But what Extensity does, is allow you to disable them, when you want to, or when you need to.

So for example, here you can see I have several of my extensions grayed out.

That means that they're currently disabled.

They not only do not appear up here, but they're not running in the background either.

Maybe I don't need "Full Page Screen Capture" all of the time.

But when I do, all I need to do is click on Extensity, come in here, click on this, and now it's available to me.

Now I can go ahead and use that extension.

When I'm done using it, maybe I only use it once a week, or once in a while, I can come in here and disable it immediately, so no longer is it going to be a resource hog, as a part of my browsing experience.

The other nice thing is that it gives you this nice convenient gear icon.

So if you need to change settings immediately, sometimes it's faster to click on Extensity, and come down here to the gear icon.

So if you want a better way to manage all of your extensions and also disable those ones that you only use from time to time, be sure to check out Extensity.

Record your screen with Screencastify

Now the next one on our list has to do with screen recording.

And this is a question I get very, very often.

"Scott, what do you use for screen recording?"

Well, when it comes to my videos here on the Simpletivity channel, I use Camtasia.

But if you need a free solution, and especially if you are only needing to record short videos, then I would recommend that you check out, Screencastify.

So with Screencastify installed, when selecting it, what you will get, is a small menu here, allowing you to choose what you want to record.

Make sure that you've set up the correct microphone, and if you want to, you can record your webcam as well.

Now Screencastify is absolutely free, for videos under five minutes in length.

If you need a longer video, you can always upgrade.

But what I like to use Screencastify for, is to record those short videos.

If I'm needing to help out one of my clients, and I know I can describe it to them quicker and easier in just a short video, I'll use Screencastify.

So with everything set up here, all I need to do is select this big blue "Record" button.

I can choose what I want to record, in this case I want to record my entire screen, I'm gonna hit "Share", and now, in, three, two, one, I am recording.

So now I am capturing everything that I'm doing here.

I can point to certain areas of the screen.

I can narrate, and ask questions, if I'm, you know, again, if I'm asking questions of a client, or pointing certain things out.

Down below here, I can hit this "Pause" button if I want to jump to a different tab, or set myself up for the next part of my recording.

The other nice thing is, you can add some features here, such as a focus mouse.

So if I want to show the focus of the screen here.

Let me hit "Play" again, so I've resumed my recording, now I can use this focus mouse to point out certain areas of the page, or certain things that I'm speaking of.

When I'm all done, all I need to do is come down here and hit "Stop Recording", that will immediately open up the editor window here.

So what I can do at this point is, I can review my recording.

I can see what I've done, and if I need to, I can even trim certain sections of this recording.

And in the top right hand corner, you get a "Copy Shareable Link".

This is ready to share immediately.

Why, because Screencastify links directly to your Google Drive account.

So these videos are automatically saved to your Google Drive account, so you can start sharing them immediately.

If I select "Copy Shareable Link", what I can do now is paste this into an email, I can share it via text, and they can now access and watch this short video.

If I want to, I can also do other things, such as publish it to YouTube, or get an embed code, or even download it to my system.

So for a quick and easy video capture, you'll be wanting to check out Screencastify.

You know, I just wanna take a quick moment to thank all of you who provided comments, and suggestions, for today's video.

And if you have a particular extension, or a particular app that you would like me to feature in a future Simpletivity video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Find business email addresses with Hunter

Next up on our list is for anyone who is dealing with sales, or leads, or just needing to contact someone and not sure where to find their contact information.

And for this purpose, we're gonna use an extension called "Hunter".

So here I've landed across a particular website, and let's say that I'm wanting to get in contact with someone who works at this business, or at this organization, but I don't know what their email address is.

I can't seem to find them on LinkedIn, I'm not even sure, perhaps, who I need to contact with, but I just know it's someone at this organization.

Well with the Hunter Chrome extension installed, all I need to do is select it, and what it's gonna do is, pop up this menu.

And it's gonna show me all of the publicly available email addresses, related to this organization.

And here you can see, it's gonna show me 251 results, just for this organization.

Now for privacy reasons, I've decided to hide the actual information here, on the left hand side, but let me give you a quick run-through.

So right at the very top, it's going to tell me that the most common pattern for this organization is, first initial, plus the last name, at their domain name.

So even if I can't find the particular person that I'm after, if I know their name.

If I know their full name, or perhaps I can find it elsewhere, such as LinkedIn.

I've probably got a really good chance of getting to them with that email format.

And I can use this search bar here to see all of the 251 that they have listed here.

But the other nice thing, is that, as I review this list, you can see that it'll sometimes even give me, the title of that individual.

Here we can see that this person is actually a sales rep, and they've been verified.

So how have they been verified?

Well on the right hand side, what Hunter does is show you, all of the different sources, where they found this information from.

So if I click on this down arrow, it's telling me, that here are some of the public websites and webpages, where it has found this person, and this email address.

So no, Hunter is not combing through confidential, or private information.

These email addresses are being pulled from publicly available websites, but they've just made it that much more convenient for you to use.

There's also this handy "Plus" button here, so if you want to save your leads within Hunter, all you need to do is hit this plus button, and now you can easily go back to those leads.

So for anyone in sales, or looking to find certain individuals, Hunter is an extension for you.

Resize your tabs and split-screen with Tab Resize

Now the fifth one on our list today, has to do with, again, convenience.

And especially if we are managing multiple sites, and multiple tabs up top.

This one has to do with resizing our tabs, and splitting our screen into as many different quadrants, or columns, or rows, as we like.

So let's say I want to have two websites side by side.

All I need to do is select "Tab Resize", and what it's gonna do, it's gonna give me a few handy presets here, of the different ways that I can display these websites.

Or, if I'd like to, I can create my own custom layout.

Let's go with this default here, of one by two.

If I select it, it's immediately gonna take the last two sites that I visited, and split them side by side.

So now I can look at this on the left hand side, and start editing information on the right hand side.

I can make that comparison.

I can just, I can choose this again if I want to Tab Resize, and choose any type of dimension that I want.

This is so helpful, especially if you have a wide screen, or have been thinking about getting a second monitor, but maybe don't need it.

If you have a convenient tool, such as Tab Resize.

Well, there are my tips for today.

And I would love to hear from you next.

Do you have some of your favorite Chrome extensions that I didn't include in today's list?

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.

Sharing your screen in Zoom is a must-know skill, but do you know these seven tips?

In today's video, I wanna show you not only everything that you need to know about screen sharing, but things that are gonna make it so much easier for you including how to prevent participants from doing certain things.

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

And let's start off with a shortcut key.

Keyboard shortcuts for sharing your Zoom screen

to make your life so much simpler. So for example, you are probably very familiar with how to share a screen. All you have to do is come down here and select this button, share screen, and that's pretty easy to bring you up to this dialogue prompt.

But, isn't it a bit easier if we just put alt S on our keyboard? Alt S will also bring up that dialogue box whether you have this window maximized or maybe you have this minimized. Maybe you're somewhere else. I can just put alt S or if you're a Mac user, you can select command shift S, and that will immediately bring up your share dialogue. But there's something else that I like to point out with this is that often I will give this tip to some of my participants, if I want them to share their screen. You don't know how many times I have been trying to tell them or try to help them navigate where to find this share screen button. It's so much easier if I just let them know,

hey just hit alt S on your keyboard and we can get right to sharing your screen.

How to stop participants from Zoom screen sharing

Now let's move on to tip number two and this actually has to do with the opposite.

That is actually preventing someone from sharing their screen.

Because you wanna be in control, right? You want to say who and when can share their screen. Instead of them taking over your meeting.

So what Zoom has done is they've conveniently added a security button here in our tool bar.

And we select on security, you can see that there's a few options here including the ability to allow or not allow participants to share their screens.

So here you can see I have it unchecked, meaning, anyone who is in this meeting with me, they cannot share their screen unless I come in here and select this.

If I check this, now my participants are allowed to share their screen with me and share their screen with others.

However, this is probably on by default. So what I like to do is going into my Zoom settings and change it so this is unchecked by default so I can always make sure that I remember I don't have to remember, I should say, to come in here and uncheck that.

So let me show you how to do that. Here I am within my Zoom settings, within the Zoom.us website.

And after you've logged into your account, you want to select settings and we are wanting to scroll down a little bit to the second header which is called in meeting basic.

Now we wanna scroll down just a little bit further here until we get to our screen sharing settings.

Most likely this is already set, right? 'Cause that's a standard feature within Zoom to be able to share your screen.

But it's the second option, who can share? By default it probably is set to all participants.

Now you may be hesitant to say host only, only yourself or if you make someone else a co-host.

But remember, this doesn't actually prevent other users from sharing, what it means is that that checkbox that I just showed you is always going to be unchecked.

So whenever you start a meeting, when you have host only set on your user account, on your settings, this is always going to start a meeting with this unchecked.

And then when you want to allow someone else to share their screen, you can come in here, select security and turn that on.

So a helpful tip, especially if you don't want other people hijacking your meeting, even though they were supposed to be in your meeting, you don't want to allow them that control to start sharing whenever they want to.

How to optimize Zoom screen sharing for video

Now let's go to another screen sharing tip.

This one has to do with sharing video because we often wanna share a YouTube video or maybe some other type of video that you already have on your machine.

And many people have been complaining that oh it's really either fuzzy or it's choppy or they can't quite hear the audio.

Well before you share your video, whether it's online or on your system, be sure to come down here and check this checkbox.

Optimize screen sharing for video clip.

You wanna check this box which is also going to automatically check this one, share computer sound, because we obviously want to share the audio when we're sharing that video.

But, this is going to increase your chances for the best viewing experience for your participants.

Now it's not going to guarantee that it's a flawless experience because remember, your bandwidth but also your participants' individual bandwidth is going to contribute to how they view this or what type of quality they experience.

But to have the highest quality, to optimize your video clips, make sure you check this box before you go and select YouTube or before you go and select something on your screen.

How to share only a section of your Zoom screen

All right, we're gonna stick here within the sharing dialogue for tip number four.

And this one has to do with sharing just a portion of our screen.

So let me cancel out of this for just a second and let's say that I've opened up a PDF document. However, I don't wanna share the whole toolbar, maybe I have some notes or other things here on the right hand side, I just wanna share the text, but I don't wanna hide all this other stuff because I might be doing other things, I just don't want them to see that.

So when I go to share, when I go back here, let's open up our share screen here.

I'm gonna click on advanced. Basic is the one that we always see by default, but let's click on advanced and here we have the option to share a portion of our screen.

So by selecting this, we go back to our PDF example here, and here you see I have a green, rectangular area here, and the green means that this is what I'm sharing in the moment.

Now that green color is key and we're gonna see that on a future tip as well.

What I can do is I can click on this larger part here at the top and I can drag it around. Now while I'm dragging it turns yellow, that means that my screen sharing is paused, they're just seeing this while I drag things around and when I release it, we're back to green. Now I'm only sharing this area here.

So I can go over here and make changes or reference things or go up to the file menu and they're not gonna see any of that.

Now you can always resize this window. If I wanna drag this over and make sure that I'm capturing everything here.

You can resize it at any time, just remember while you're resizing it's gonna be paused as well, green means go, green means that you are sharing at that point in time.

So if you only wanna share half or a portion of your screen, that's gonna be something that's very helpful to you.

How to poll your Zoom participants

Now, let's move on to tip number five, which is going to greatly enhance your meetings especially if you want to get your participants involved.

And tip number five has to do with polling your audience.

So down below here in my Zoom menu, you see I have a polls button.

Now you may not see this immediately because this is often not turned on by default. Let's go see where we can turn that.

We wanna jump back into our Zoom settings and we are back, this is setting, we are still under the meeting tab and yes, we're actually still gonna go to the in meeting basic header.

And if we scroll down just a little bit further, you're gonna come across this option called polling.

Now as I said, there's a good chance that this is turned off by default, you just need to hit this switch, and you will have polling options available to you.

So how do you create your first poll?

Well, you're gonna wanna stay here within your Zoom account and this time we're gonna click on meetings.

The meetings tab of course is where you're gonna see all of your upcoming meetings. And I've created one here called test meeting. All you need to do is go into your meeting in advance, of course, and scroll down to the bottom.

Now at the very bottom here you're gonna have an option here to add polls.

Now I've already added one here. Let me just delete this one so you can see what it's gonna look like before you create your first poll.

So again, I'm just inside this particular meeting, I've scrolled down to the bottom and it's got this little area that says you have not created any poll yet.

So all I need to do is hit this add button and we're gonna get this menu here where we can set up multiple simple polls.

So I'm gonna create a quick one for you here, I'm gonna call this one phone type, the first field is just the title of the poll, it's not actually the question.

You can choose if you wanna make it anonymous or not. In many cases I like this option because I want people to be as honest with me and everyone else on the call as possible, so you don't need to track or share who said what.

And I'm just gonna say what type of phone do you have? It's a very simple question here.

Now, it's a multiple choice answer as you can see down below. You must have at least two answers, but there is an option here above.

You can either make it a single choice answer or a multiple choice answer. Meaning single choice they can only pick one of your options or multiple choice meaning they can pick more than one.

In this case I wanna leave it at single choice and I'm gonna say Android or iPhone or other, those are the three choices that I'm gonna give them there and if I scroll down to the bottom, I can hit save.

Now you can add more questions that are going to be tagged on to this, meaning that as soon as they answer this question, if you add another question here, they are immediately gonna be presented with that second or that third question, however many you add here.

But in this case, I'm just gonna hit save, I'm just gonna have that one poll question.

So if I come down here, you can see that poll question. I can add another one.

Now the difference here between the add here versus the one that I just showed you, is that it's gonna be a separate poll question, right? Maybe I want to ask them another question later on in the meeting.

That's why it can be helpful to add separate ones here if you don't have ones that should be answered all at the same time.

So now let's jump back into our meeting. We're gonna come down here and select polls.

And this is a different meeting that I'm sharing at this point in time so I got a few different questions here.

This dialogue will pop up but don't worry, no one is seeing anything just yet. Remember that green color, well we're gonna see that green color again just here.

First off, I have a drop down area here, so I can choose. I've got two different polls set up for this meeting. So I can choose which one that I want to ask. Maybe I want to ask polling question number two.

I can also edit my polling questions on the fly, right? If I wanna quickly add another option or something like that. But in this case I'm gonna leave it like this.

Now again, even though I've selected that, no one is seeing anything just yet, nothing until I hit the launch polling button.

I'm gonna select that and there's that green color, right? That's telling us that now this is being shared, now all the participants of this meeting can participate and vote on this poll.

There's a timer here to let me know how much time has passed and it'll also show me what percentage of people have contributed to this poll.

When I want to, when I'm satisfied, I can come down here and select end polling. That green color's gonna go away so once again they're not gonna see any of these results.

If I had participants in this example, we would see the results here, but, everyone else will not see those results until I say so.

If I come down here to the bottom, I select share results, once again there's that green indicator, that green color telling me, okay now this is being shared with everyone, everyone can see the results of this poll.

And when I'm satisfied, I can just come down here and say stop share results. I'm brought back to this menu, which again is not shared.

I can pick another poll question, or close this in case I want to share a poll a little later on.

So something that is fantastic for making your webinars or your meetings that much more engaging here on Zoom.

How to annotate your shared Zoom screen

Next up we wanna talk about annotation, so let's go back to sharing our screen here.

I'm gonna go back to this PDF document. And instead of sharing just a portion I'm sharing my entire screen.

Don't forget about the power of annotating or marking up your screen.

So if I select the annotate button here from the menu I get a great list of things that I can do.

I can draw free hand here, I've got a little pencil. If I wanna highlight or circle something on the screen. If I don't like it I can just say undo or I can hit clear.

You can add text, you can add spotlights, you can stamp things.

This stamp thing I think is one of my favorites, where I can just go over and say okay, point your eyes up here and then I want you to come down and read this and then we're gonna go over here and review this point and that type of thing.

So lots of things that you can experiment with annotating here within Zoom.

But that also brings me to my last and final tip.

How to stop participants from annotating in Zoom

And that is preventing others from annotating on your screen.

I've heard from many of you complain that other people are jumping on and they're adding things and I don't want them to add things while I'm sharing things or while I'm annotating on my shared screen.

Well, all you need to do is come back up here and select this security bar. And when you are annotating you will get another option here that is called annotate on shared content.

You can see it as checked at the moment meaning that other participants right now could come in here and start writing their own text or start drawing.

All I need to do is select that and now that prevents my participants from doing so.

Now there's one other place you can go to make this change and that is under more. And that is allow participants to annotate, 'cause remember, we just disabled it.

I can select this and now they are able to write on my screen. They can share things. So either place, it does the same thing. Either under more, you can say disable or allow. Or under security, you can check or uncheck your options there.

Well I hope you enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you next. What was your favorite tip amongst all of my Zoom screen sharing tips today?

Be sure to let me know down below 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.

This video is brought to you by Pleexy. Take control of all of your tasks across multiple project management tools in your preferred task manager. Find out more at pleexy.com.

Todoist continues to be one of the most popular and full-featured to-do list managers available to you. But don't you hate switching back and forth between your task list and your personal calendar?

Well, in today's video, I want to show you how to set up a two-way sync between Google Calendar and Todoist. So that no matter where you are, you can stay on top of your tasks.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And you've probably heard me say in the past that I think it's important to manage as many tasks as possible, right here within your calendar. And the reason being is so that you can see your tasks on the same screen as all of your events.

Because, for example, if I take a look at my Wednesday here, I've got a number of meetings scheduled, maybe I can't do all of the things that I would like to do because of these events. And so I want to be able to see that and say to myself, "Yeah, I've got some more time here on the 14th, why don't I drag or move this task to the next day."

But the last thing I want to do is come back to Todoist, and go back and forth, and look at my calendar and come over here and do some of my work here, and then do some of my work over here in calendar. Well, that's where the Todoist integration with Google Calendar comes into place.

And the great thing about it is that it's not one-way; it's a two-way sync. So what does that mean? Well, let's take a look at this task here. It says, "email Max regarding a tax refund." It's here on the 13th. And if we go over here, you'll see, yeah, it's here on the 13th as well.

But when I'm in my calendar, let's say I want to push that over to Friday, because I don't have a lot on my plate on Friday. I'm going to click and drag it over there to the 15th. Now, I haven't left Google Calendar, but if I go back to Todoist, let's check out my Friday list. There it is, email Max regarding that tax refund.

And then if I'm perhaps here within Todoist and I say, you know what, I need to push this one here, this, "call Jenny about the HR conference." I'm going to push that to Friday as well, we're going to bump it from Thursday to the 15th. So here, you can see I've made that change here, of course, but let's go now to my calendar, and boom, in just a few seconds, it has pushed it over here to the 15th as well.

So no matter where I want to work, or where I happen to be at that moment, whether I'm here within Todoist, or if I'm here within Google Calendar, I can make those changes. I can even create brand new tasks right here from within Google Calendar, and they're going to show up in my inbox here within Todoist.

So let's take a look and see how you can set this up for yourself. To set up this integration, first, log in to your Todoist account. And then we want to come up here to the gear icon, and select Settings. Once we are on the Settings screen, we want to come down here on the left-hand side and select Integrations.

And here you should see the Google Calendar option; we have the ability here to select the Connect calendar button. Once selecting this button, we should get a pretty standard prompt that you've probably seen before where we want to be able to sign into Google. And here it's given me the choice as to which Google account I want to sign into, we have to give it some privileges here, so it can see what is going on. And of course, add and remove certain items from that calendar.

I'm going to select Allow here, which should take just a second here to connect to Google Calendar. And then this is perhaps the most important step right here in terms of what we want to label things within our calendar and some of the options here.

So first of all, it's going to say pick a calendar. Now by default, it's going to give us this option as Todoist new, but we could sync it with one of these other calendars here as well. So I'm gonna leave it at Todoist new because that's what I want it to see, that's what I want it to show within my calendar.

Now the next option here is what do we want it to sync, all projects, or just a specific project? And this may be key depending on if you want everything synced with your calendar, or maybe it's just a specific project within Todoist. I'm going to select all projects in this case.

Third option, tasks created on Google Calendar will go to, now our default option is inbox. But of course, you can choose a number of the other projects that you are working on here. I'm gonna leave it at inbox as the default. And in many cases, this may depend on what you choose for the sync up above. If you're choosing all projects, it's probably the best sense to leave that at inbox.

In terms of event duration, we can leave this at 60 minutes. If you don't have a duration set in Todoist, they're going to be listed as an all-day event. So this one, I don't typically use that often in terms of how things are set up within the Google Calendar site, so you can just leave that at the default of 60 minutes.

And task without a due time. Remember, many of them do not have a due time, should be synced as all-day events, or should not be synced at all. So you've got a lot of flexibility here. The difference here, just for clarification, is that if there is a due time, this is going to show up on your calendar in terms of an actual event, right? It's going to show up in the middle of the day, that only makes sense. If you have something due at noon, then it's going to show up there. But if you've left it as an all-day event, then it's going to show and appear at the top of our screen here.

Last two options here, what do we want to do when the task is completed? We want to leave it on Google Calendar, or remove it from Google Calendar. And again, this comes down to personal preference. I know a lot of you want things to be removed or taken away, you can do so as well.

And then the label added to Google Calendar tasks. So this is a way for Todoist to sort of keep track of what is going on within your events, I should say, here within Google Calendar. This is not nearly as important as some of the other options here. So you can most likely just leave it as GCal.

All right, here we're going to say Connect. And this may take just a few seconds here, it might take a few moments for that connection to happen the first way through. If you ever need to come back and customize those choices that we just made, you're going to have this option here to customize. We're going to see many of those options remain here again, so we can see that, we can make changes as we wish.

So let's close this, and on the Todoist side, we're not going to see much at all, right? Todoist is going to look exactly the same. But now let's go over to Google Calendar. So now that our sync has been successfully set up, here you can see in the all-day event area, I have my tasks, which are synced directly from Todoist.

Now I often recommend that you choose a more unique color, you can come in here, and I'll just pick something somewhat red-like, actually, I don't like that red, I like this red, there we go, Tomato, Tomato red is a lot more like Todoist. So again, you can see the differences between things that are being synced from your Todoist account, and maybe other actual all-day events, or other things that may appear here, or that will appear on your calendar.

Now while you may manage most of your tasks within Todoist, chances are that you're using other tools such as Trello, or Evernote, or maybe Outlook to manage your other tasks, and that's where Pleexy comes into play. Pleexy integrates directly with your favorite project management tools so that you can bring them all together within your Todoist account. To learn more, go to pleexy.com

Do you wanna get more out of Google Drive? Do you wanna be more efficient when managing all of your files and folders? Well in today's video, I wanna show you seven of my favorite tips and tricks to get the most out of Drive. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

Keyboard shortcuts for Google Drive

And let's get things kicked off with keyboard shortcuts. And no, not all of the keyboard shortcuts, but two of the shortcuts which I use frequently. The first one has to do with renaming a document.

Shortcut key for renaming a file or folder

Now, of course, I could open up the document itself and at the very top of that document I could go up here and rename that document. Of course, when I'm managing my documents, I can just right-click on it and I can come down here and say rename. But you know what? There's something that's an awful lot faster.

If you just hover over or select something here and press N on your keyboard, N as in rename, you can rename your document right here.

Let's say, "Some questions for you," let's just hit N and boom, we have this little rename dialog that pops up so you can rename your files in an instant.

Shortcut key for sharing a file or folder

The other one that I like to use a lot has to do with sharing. And of course we're sharing files and folders with a lot of different people. I could select this and then I could go up here and select the share icon, I could right click and say share here as well. But, why don't I just hit the period on my keyboard.

As long as I've got it selected, it's gonna instantly open up my sharing dialog here.

One more time, here's my test responses file, I'm gonna hit period, and boom, I can instantly go into this sharing window. So, two great shortcuts to make things easier

and move around a lot quicker and be able to do two things that you probably do a lot already.

Share Drive files but prevent downloading

Now the second one has to do with sharing as well. So why don’t I open up this one here.

Let me hit that period one more time so we can get our sharing window back up. And you’re probably already familiar with how to share a file with one or multiple people, but there’s something here that I want to point out to you.

Let me just add someone here as a test. I’m gonna add a test account here. I could say notify, could add a message. Now here on the right-hand side, we’ve got three options: we can allow them to be an editor, we can allow them to be just a commenter, or we can allow them to just be a viewer.

And in many cases, I often only want people to be a viewer. Why? Because I’m often sharing things such as audio or video with people and I just want to be able to share it with them but I don’t want them to be able to download that video because maybe it’s just a draft or something else.

Well, this is where you want to select the additional settings gear up here because here you’re gonna get two additional checkboxes. The first one we really don’t care about unless we’ve made them an editor. But it’s this second one: “Viewers and commenters can see the option to download, print, and copy.” That’s gonna be checked by default, but in my case, most often, I want to uncheck that option.

I want to uncheck that option because when I send it to this person here, I want them to be able to watch it but I don’t want them to be able to download it and then therefore share it perhaps with other people and that type of thing.

So, if you want that extra level of security, depending on what you are trying to share with people, make sure to select that gear icon and you can always uncheck this option down below.

Using the Explore Tool to search the web and your files

Now the third tip I'd like to share with you has to do with something that you may be a little puzzled by or maybe you’ve seen this within some of your own documents but were curious as to what it actually means.

Here in the bottom right-hand corner, there’s an interesting icon called the Explore icon. Let me show you how it works.

If you select this, you’ll get a little search window that pops up. By default, it’ll try to give you a few different suggestions. Now, I don’t have a lot of text in this document, so these suggestions might be rather poor.

What it allows you to do is search your own documents as well as the web. For example, let me type in one of my other favorite tools, Trello. I’m just going to hit enter here.

You can see I’ve got three different tabs:

1. Web: Here, I could go directly to the Trello Wikipedia page or the Trello homepage from within this document.
2. Images: I could find some images for Trello. In fact, I can just drag an image right into the document. It’s one of the easiest ways to get images directly into your document.
3. Drive: It will show related files from your Google Drive. If it doesn’t find anything, you can try different search terms. For instance, typing "team" might show documents related to that term.

The Explore feature can be really handy. Again, it’s located in the bottom right-hand corner, represented by a little star icon. Just click on Explore to access it.

Let’s go back to my file and folder management here.

Adding color to your Google Drive folders

For tip number four.

And this is something that could make navigation of all of your files, and especially your folders, very very convenient.

So, I've got a very small example here, I've only got five folders staring back at me but you probably have something more like, oh I don't know, 30 or 142, staring back at you as well.

Well, if there are common themes amongst them or maybe if you want one of these folders to stand out, why not change the folder cover to a different color.

So for example, for finance, I can just right click here, say change color and maybe because it's dealing with money I want to make it green.

So now that really pops, maybe if this is something that you know, gets lost in the mix for me, or if I wanna find it that much easier.

And again, if I have 50 or 100 different folders here, I can quickly go to finance.

Maybe I want sales to be something like a red color, I can select that red icon or maybe sales and marketing work closely together so maybe I make them both red.

However you want to group your folders together beyond just their naming conventions, you can use colors to sort of spruce things up and make navigation that much easier.

Save images to Drive from websites

Now the next tip on my list may in fact just be my favorite.

And the reason being is that you get to use this one outside of Drive.

Let's say for example that you are browsing the web and you come across an image, such as this one, and I say to myself, oh, that would go fantastic with this document that I'm working on or maybe a slide show that I'm putting together, but I don't have my Drive tab open.

And instead of going up and opening up Drive, all I need to do is hover over that image, right click on the image and select save image to Google Drive.

What this is gonna do is pop open a little dialog box here.

Now it's gonna give the actual name, right this is what this website has chosen to name this particular image.

But before I close this dialog, I can actually say rename it and so here I'm actually gonna rename the entire thing, I'm gonna say, let's call this a matches image.

I'm gonna hit apply and I can hit close and now, when I go back to Google Drive, if I go to my top level drive and we scroll all the way.

In many cases you may have to scroll all the way down to the bottom, you may even have to refresh it if you're doing it immediately.

But here, if I refresh my screen, you'll see at the bottom I've got my matches image, so now I can take this, I can manipulate this, I can put this directly into the files or the other types of projects that I'm working on here within Drive.

So even if you're browsing somewhere else, remember, you can right click over an image and select save image to Google Drive.

Search files within a specific Drive folder

NNow my next tip has to do with finding a particular file or folder within Drive.

Now remember, if you've got a large quantity of files, sometimes the search bar at the top of the screen may bring back too many results.

And yes, it's true, you can filter by the type of file that you are looking for but sometimes you've got a much better idea as to where that folder is.

So what you can do is for example, let's say I know that the file that I'm searching for is within development, all I need to do is right click on it and I can say search within development.

Now, I'm still gonna use the search bar up here, it's gonna open up that particular file, but I can go up to the search bar here and start typing in the words that I'm after.

And now, it's not gonna bring back every single file or document that has team within my entire Drive, it's only gonna search within this file folder.

So if you've already narrowed things down, right, if you already have a good idea as to where that file may be, you can just right click and say search within that particular folder just to narrow down your search results.

Now the last tip that I have for you today is something

Use voice typing to create content faster

That is not used often enough, I don't think, in my case.

And I've been using it a lot more frequently lately, so I wanted to make sure that I shared it with you as well.

And that has to do with voice typing.

All of our devices, whether it's mobile, whether it's our desktop or tablets, are doing so much better when it comes to translating what we have to say.

And Google Drive is no different.

In order to use voice typing, all you need to do is put your cursor where you want to start and hit tools.

And under tools, about half way down, you will see that there's the option of voice typing.

Now it's not going to initiate immediately but all we need to do is click this button.

And immediately it will start to transcribe in real-time what I am saying, period.

So you can continue to write your documents the way that you want, period.

And then you can stop and edit them as you wish, period.

Now when you're finished all you need to do is click that big red button there, over the microphone.

And yes, you may need to come back and do some editing and punctuation and that type of thing, but what I'm so impressed with is how quickly, how quickly it transcribes what I am saying and also how accurately it happens to be as well.

Well, I hope you enjoyed these tips and I'd love to hear from you next, what was your favorite Google Drive tip?

And did I miss anything? What's one of your favorite tips that you'd like to share with me and others here in the Simpletivity community?

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

In fact, it's very simple.