While working remotely, managing the never-ending chores eats up your time and energy. To tackle this issue of time management, tons of useful tools are available online. But Google Calendar is one of the more popular tools for optimizing your time and eliminating time wastage.
So this article will introduce you to some cool features, tricks, and extensions you can use to make the most of your remote working hours with Google Calendar.
Google Calendar’s New Features
Google is continuously updating Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and adding new features to its apps, including Calendar. Let’s discuss some of these features and their benefits.
1. Schedule Calendar Events From Chat
When messaging your colleagues or clients in Google Chat, you can schedule Google Calendar events directly without leaving Chat. This handy feature saves a ton of time and the hassle of changing tabs now and then.
It’s available to all Google users, regardless of their Workspace plan. In the Chat’s compose bar, there’s a calendar icon. Clicking on it will open Calendar in the side panel (on desktop) with the event. By default, it will add all chat members as attendees, but you can always make changes.
2. Pre-Schedule Google Meet Breakout Rooms
This feature allows you to set up Google Meet Breakout Rooms in advance through Google Calendar. By pre-scheduling Breakout Rooms, you can maximize your meeting time and avoid the hassle of creating rooms during the call.
The option to set up Meet Breakout Rooms is available to all users except the Workspace Business Starters, Education Fundamentals, and G Suite Basic Users. This article on scheduling Google Meet Breakout Rooms will guide you on how to do so.
3. Share your Availability Easily and Precisely
Remote working allows you to set your hours. But letting your colleagues know about your ever-changing availability becomes a challenge.
Now, you can communicate your availability to your co-workers using the two new options in Google Calendar: repeating out-of-office entries and splitting your work time into multiple segments a day. While enabling out-of-office entries, you can choose whether to decline all meetings or only the newly added ones.
4. See Google Chat Suggestions Based on Your Google Calendar Events
When you have a meeting scheduled in Google Calendar, Chat will show a chat suggestion shortcut at the top of the chats section. This shortcut will appear 10 minutes before the event and will remain there for 10 minutes after the event/meeting.
Thanks to this feature, you can share files and follow-up documents without hassle. Updating the attendees of any changes to the time or agenda also got easier with this feature. Everyone, excluding users with personal accounts, can use this feature.
5. View Personal and Business Calendar Together (Android 11 and Up)
This one was perhaps the most-needed feature in Google Calendar. Instead of toggling between your personal and work calendars, you view both your calendars together.
Unless you’ve shared your personal calendar with the work account, Admin or your colleagues won’t see your personal engagements. Although all Google users can benefit from this feature, it’s available only on devices with Android 11 and up.
Note: Both Admin and users should turn on this feature before any user can use this feature.
6. Get Notified When Someone Subscribes to Your Calendar
By subscribing to your colleague’s shared calendar, you can stay updated on the changes they make to their calendar.
Aiming to ensure transparency, Google has announced that now you’ll receive an email if any of your co-workers subscribe to your Calendar. This feature is available to all users.
7. Support for Multiple Exchange Endpoints on Google Calendar
With the rollout of the Calendar Intertop feature, you can sync your Google Work Calendar with multiple Microsoft Exchange endpoints and view each other’s availability. The feature works for Exchange on-premises and Exchange online servers.
All users from both sides will be able to view each other’s calendars, but you can still hide any event by marking it as invisible.
This feature is available to all Google users except for Workspace Essentials, G-Suite Nonprofits customers, and Enterprise Essentials.
Other Handy Features in Google Calendar
Besides the new features we outlined above, Google Calendar also has a collection of other features that can make remote work easier. Here’s a rundown of more Google Calendar features you should take advantage of when working from home.
1. Schedule Zoom Meetings Directly From Google Calendar
Zoom Scheduler browser extension, developed by Zoom itself, enables you to pre-schedule Zoom Meetings directly from Google Calendar.
When setting up a new event in Google Calendar, you’ll see an option to set up a Zoom meeting in advance, just like a Google Meet call. Zoom will collect all the information from Calendar Event and give you a meeting link. It’s a simple feature but a true time-saver.
Download: Zoom Scheduler for Chrome | Outlook | Firefox (Free)
2. Email an Agenda to Yourself
Whether you’re a scatterbrain or an extremely organized person, you’d love to receive a morning email with the day’s agenda. Luckily, Google gives you the option to do so. By turning on this option in Google Calendar, you’ll receive your day’s schedule in your inbox at 5:00 am every day.
3. Use Find a Time Feature to Schedule Meetings
When your team works remotely, finding a time slot for meetings becomes tricky. With this smart feature, Google will check the calendars of attendees and show you the available slots. Thus, you can quickly arrange meetings without worrying about the availability of participants.
4. Make Calendar Events From Email
Received an email with the details of an event? Add it to Google Calendar directly by clicking on the three-dot icon above the email and save your time.
5. Use Toggl to Track Calendar Time
Working remotely, it’s essential to track how much time you’ve actually spent attending meetings or appointments, especially if you are paid per hour. In this case, you can use Toggl to track the total time you spent on Google Calendar events.
Download: Toggl for Chrome | Firefox (Free, subscription available)
Use These Features to Work Smartly
Whether you’re working remotely or in-house, Goggle Calendar is a great tool for collaborating with your team. These new features have further facilitated remote working, allowing you to stay on task and track.
Although all the tricks and extensions mentioned above can boost your productivity, you can’t make the most out of your time until you learn to use the keyboard shortcuts for Google Calendar.