Google Calendar probably isn’t the sexiest service offered by the search giant, but you can do more with it than just schedule meetings.
With Google Calendar, you can quickly schedule meetings and events and get reminders about upcoming activities, but you all know that. That’s what you’ve been using it for since 2009. But what else can you do?
Things you can do in Google Calendar
Set up working hours
In Google Calendar, you can set the hours you will be in the office and available for meetings in Calendar by setting up ‘working hours’, similar to Appointment schedules. For example, by setting working hours from 9 am – 5 pm, anyone who tries to schedule a meeting with you outside those hours will be notified if the meeting falls outside of your working hours. This is especially handy when working with teams across time zones.
To use working hours, open Settings, navigate to Working hours and location and begin setting your specific availability.
People who will try to schedule meetings with you outside of these hours will be informed that you are not available at that time.
Keep track of time
Well, sort of. A clock can do that for you. More so giving you a better understanding how you’re spending your time. To help with this, Google Calendar introduced something called ‘colour categorisation’ within ‘Time Insights’.
To create a colour label, head to the Time Insights panel (left of your screen), select More insights. A window within a window will appear on the right of your screen. Here you can filter by type or colour. To add more colours (mine is just the one, boring colour that really doesn’t help at all), select the pen icon. This will allow you to assign colours to certain calendar entries.
Alternatively, on an existing calendar event, right-click on the event, select edit and change the event colour.
Here’s what your Google Calendar will look like once you have a better colour system in place.
Make time for appointments
We know how to block time so people don’t hit you up for a meeting that could have been an email, but you can also block off some time to allow coworkers to schedule meetings with you. To do this, you’ll want to use Google Calendar’s ‘Appointment Slots’ feature. Appointment slots are useful when you don’t know who needs to meet with you, but you want to make yourself available. Keep in mind, though, Google is in the process of changing this to ‘Appointment Schedules‘. They behave much the same way, but the latter is in preview for some users.
Similar to setting up an Out of Office, select Appointment slots‘ when creating a new event and schedule your availability for appointments. Click on a spot on your Google Calendar, then navigate to the far right tab labelled Appointment schedule. Set the duration and BAM, you’ve created a slot that people can request your time in.
To invite others to reserve an appointment slot, you can share the URL of your appointments page with colleagues, students, clients, etc.
Set up working location
“Going” to work doesn’t have the same connotation that it used to. You can now set your work location so people know your location and time zone when inviting you to an event, making it easier to plan in-person things or set expectations in this whole “hybrid workplace” thing. If using the feature, your whereabouts will be limited to people who can already view your free/busy availability. As an extension of this feature, users can also select a RSVP join method to let others know how you’re planning to join a meeting, whether that’s joining in a particular meeting room or virtually.
At the top right of your Google Calendar, click Settings, then on the left, under General, select Working hours & location. Select the days you work (working hours are already selected if your calendar shows working hours) and next to each day, enter your working location. To change your working location, go to a specific day on your calendar and click the location bar. You can apply the change to that specific day or set it to repeat weekly. You can see this in the screenshot shared in the previous section.
Enable and use Tasks
The idea with this one is to keep your to-do list right within your Google Calendar by using the Tasks feature. You can edit or customise tasks directly in Calendar, making it easier to host all your ongoing action items in one place. Recent updates to this feature include managing overdue tasks and customising recurrence schedules directly from your Calendar.
To get started scheduling your to-do list, click on the Tasks icon in the right-hand side panel.
If you’re also using Gmail, your Tasks will automatically update there as well.
Is Google Calendar free to use?
Google Calendar is free to to use for non-business Gmail use. Anyone with a Google account can access the free version, but it does come with limited features that might not be adequate enough for businesses (you also won’t have access to the above).
How to access Google Calendar
If you have a Google Account, you will see the Google Calendar icon from within Gmail by selecting the nine dots up the top right of your screen. Select Calendar and it will open in a new window.