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Schedule send emails for the future

This video is sponsored by NetHunt for Gmail. More about them a little later in the video. If you can learn to automate more features as a part of your day, you're going to automatically save a lot of time, so in this video, we're looking at several different ways in which we can automate functions right here within Gmail.

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

And we're going to be looking at everything from creating templates, snoozing emails, scheduling emails in the future, and a whole lot more. So let's dive in with tip number one. And yes, we're talking about scheduling emails in advance sometime in the future.

So let's take a look at this example. In this case, I want to remind a client

that we are meeting sometime in the future. And let's say that I'm thinking about this.

I'm thinking about sending Ted a reminder on Monday, but our session actually isn't until later in the week; it's not until Friday. So I've already written the email, what I can do is come all the way down here and instead of hitting Send, which, of course, will send it immediately, I can hit this dropdown arrow and select Schedule send.

So if I want him to receive this on Thursday, for example, the day before, I can select that time.

Now, you will be presented with a few default options here. So, for example, I've been given tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, and Monday morning. Well, that's way too far in advance, and these two are too early, but Gmail tries to be helpful by giving us a few suggestions.

In most cases, I'm going to come down here and select Pick date & time. So in my example, yeah, I want to send it out on Thursday and I can adjust this specific time if I want.

Maybe 1:00 pm is a little later in the day than I would like, so let's make that 10:00 am. Perfect, and then I can select Schedule send. Now the message is gone, essentially it's off of my screen as if I sent it.

But over here on the left-hand side, you can see that we have this Scheduled area or this Scheduled menu item. If I come here, I can see a full list of all of the messages that are scheduled to go.

And over here, it's showing me May 5th. That's the date as to when that message will be sent. So if I need to come in here and edit it or change when that message is sent, I can always do so.

Auto forward emails to another address

Now the next tip on our list has to do with automatically forwarding certain emails

to someone else, such as a personal assistant, a virtual assistant, or maybe some other member of your team, or maybe just your own personal inbox or some other email address that you manage.

Now, in order to get started with this, we need to come up to the gear icon and select See all settings. And then we're going to come over here to Forwarding because we need to make sure that we've added that email address to our forwarding section.

Now, in my case here, I already have the address that I want to forward to, but if you haven't done so before, you're going to need to come down here and select Add a forwarding address, enter in that email, and then it will confirm it with that other address.

Of course, you can't just put in anything here. You need to make sure that that other individual, or perhaps the other account that you manage, is going to accept forwarded email messages from yourself. It's a pretty straightforward process.

But now that we have that email account added here, take special note of the two radio buttons. Now the first one is actually what we want in this case, and that is Disable forwarding, meaning we don't want all of my email forwarded to this account.

If I did want that behavior, well, then I would select this second option down below. But in this case, we want to keep it at Disable forwarding because we're only going to forward certain messages.

If you've made some of these changes, make sure to come down to the bottom and select Save Changes before we head back to our inbox. Now, in this case, what I want to do is forward any emails that are coming from Trello, coming from the trello.com email address.

So I'm going to come up here to my search bar and I'm going to start with an asterisk, so that's going to be a bit of a catch-all in this case and then use the @ sign and then put trello.com. Remember, you can use that asterisks as a wild card in a variety of ways. So no matter who that message is coming from,

as long as it's from @trello.com, it's going to be captured in this filter. So whether it's support@trello.com whether it's info@trello.com, or help@trello.com, it's all going to be included here.

Now we can hit Enter at this stage if we want to just sort of double check what kinds of messages will be included. Here you can see, we've got everything from Taco from Trello and a few other ones that are simply listed Trello.

This is perfect. This is exactly what I want to be forwarding to maybe a personal assistant or someone else who is managing my Trello boards on my side. Next up, we want to come up here and show my search options.

So we have the Has words *@trello.com, that's what it's going to be looking for, but here in the next step, we want to select Create a filter. Now I know in most cases, when you hear that term filter, you might be thinking of filtering messages out of your inbox or maybe adding something else to it.

Remember, in Gmail, they sort of use this term filter for a catch-all of a number of behaviors. So in this case, we are given a relatively long list

of different things that can happen to this email, but where we want to pay attention

is about the fifth one down, Forward it to, and here is where we can choose an address. Now, if you still haven't added a forwarding address in the previous step, you can do so here as well. but since we have, I'm going to have this dropdown menu.

I only have the one to choose from at this point, so I'm going to select that in this case. Now I can choose to add a few other things here as well if I want to maybe delete it after it arrives, or skip the inbox, or add a particular label, but let's keep it very simple in this case.

What will happen now after I have created this filter is that whenever I receive an email from trello.com, it will automatically forward that same email to this other address.

Again, that can be very, very helpful if you are working with an assistant or maybe other members of your teams and you want to make sure that they're on top of specific emails, whether that's from a specific sender

or maybe it just includes specific words in the subject line. Now, if you're enjoying today's Gmail tips, you're going to love this ebook from my friends at NetHunt.

NetHunt has put together The Gmail Book: How to turn Gmail into a sales management tool. And if you'd like to gain access to it, you can do so for free.

Now this guide has more than 50 pages on how to get even more automation out of your Gmail account and is especially helpful if you use Gmail for your business, or for sales, or for marketing. If you'd like to get your free copy, be sure to click the link in the description down below.

Adding and editing template messages

Now, if there's one automation feature that I don't think gets enough attention within Gmail, that is templates, being able to repurpose a certain response or a certain email over and over again.

Now, step one in creating a template is that you want to go into your settings and make sure that you've enabled templates. So here we want to come all the way over to the Advanced tab and here you will see the Templates option.

Make sure that you have this enabled so you can start using templates and start saving a whole lot of time. Now, when we go back to our inbox, let's hit the Compose button here. I'm going to maximize this for just a second, and all we need to do is come down to the lower right-hand quarter, pretty close to the garbage can,

pretty close to the delete. But here we're going to select that More button, and here you can see that we have a Templates option.

Now, in my case, I've already created a few different templates, and these save me so much time so I don't have to write out the same message or maybe most of the same message but I can still make edits to them. So, for example, I've got one here called Learn more about Simpletivity.

And if I select that, you can see I've got several sentences written here, I've got a couple of links, I've even got my logo as a part of this template. So when someone asks me a particular question, I can just hit this template and then send it off.

I don't have to write out the full thing, I don't have to go somewhere else and copy and paste it; I have it here right at my fingertips. But the great thing is, is that we can edit and have as many templates as we want. So let me just delete this for a moment.

I'm going to hit that Compose button once again, maximize here and come back to our template. So in order to create your new template, all you need to do is, well, write a new message.

Now, we're going to want to start with the subject, and this is very important because the subject of your email is going to become the name, it's going to become the title of the template. So, in this case, I'm just going to say New Template Example so it stands out from the rest of mine.

And then, of course, down below, I can add as much as I want as a part of my template. So again, links, images, full product descriptions, whatever you want to add as a part of this template, you can add it here. Now, when I come down here and hover over that Template option,

instead of inserting a template, I want to hover over the Save draft as a template.

Now you're going to see that it's going to give me the option to overwrite any of my existing templates. In this case, I don't want to do that. I'm going to say Save as a new template.

It will give me an option to rename this in this case, but keep in mind that the name of your new template, by default, when you first create it, is going to take that subject line.

So I'm going to hit Save in this case, and now when I come down to Templates, you can see that I have that as an option here, my New Template Example.

Now, if I want to change this template, let's say I've added a lot of great information, but I want to add a little more, for example, and yeah, we're going to use a capital U there in but.

Let's say I want to add a little more to this template, what do I do now? Well, all I need to do is use that overwrite feature. I'm going to say Templates here, and I'm going to say Save draft as a template, but instead of saving a brand-new template, you know what, this is just an enhancement.

This is really just a version two of New Template Example, so I'm going to choose that one here. It's going to give me a prompt, "Are you sure you want to overwrite this saved template?" I'm going to say Yes, and beautiful, now I've got that template saved here as well.

One quick tip for you when you are creating your templates is to make sure that you actually remove your email signature, and I'll show you why. Let me get rid of the text here, let me get rid of the subject, and I'm going to add that template that we just created.

Remember, New Template Example. and what you're going to see is that it's including the email signature within the template. So what I should have done when I was creating that template from scratch, I should have just got rid of my email signature altogether.

And that goes for when you're updating your template as well, otherwise your signature will become a part of the template and you probably already have your default signature listed here for each and every new email.

So that's a pro tip when you are creating or modifying your templates in the future.

Snoozing emails for a better time

Next up, let's take a look at one of the easiest automations to implement but also perhaps one of the biggest time savers as well.

As you're processing and going through your inbox, you're probably going to come across several emails that you need to reply to or you need to address but you just don't want to do it at the moment. You'd like to do it sometime in the future.

Now for many of us that may require adding a particular label and moving it somewhere else outside of the inbox.

But the risk is that you might forget it and you might not come back to that particular label. Instead, what we can do is use the snooze feature right here which is listed on every single email. Now we can either do this one at a time.

In fact, you can often just scan or glance at your inbox and say, "Yeah, I need to address that, but I'll do that a little later," and hit the snooze icon here. Or what I can do is actually open up any email and you'll see that snooze function here at the top as well.

But perhaps the fastest way to use snooze is to take a look at maybe those several emails that you want to address a little bit later in the day, select them all here with the checkbox,

and then come up and select snooze. Now, wherever you decide to select snooze, you're going to see an option something like this. Gmail's going to give us several suggestions as to when we would like to snooze.

Now there's a couple of helpful defaults here, including later today, tomorrow, next weekend, next week, for example,

but you can also come down and pick a specific time. Now you may be asking yourself, "Why is it suggesting 6:00 am for all of these options except for the one that is, of course, later today?" Well, here's another pro Gmail tip for you.

If you want to adjust these default times,] you need to go into your Google Keep account. Yes, these times are tied with your Google Keep reminders. Let's jump over to my Google Keep account and show you what I mean.

If I come up here to my settings, you'll see that I have a few different options but about halfway down, I've got my Reminder Defaults. So here you can see 6:00 am is my morning reminder.

So as long as both your Keep reminder settings and your Gmail snooze settings are similar, or you'd like to keep them the same, you can make those changes here. So, let's say for example, 6:00 am is too early for me, I'm going to adjust this to 7:30 and I'm going to hit Save here.

If I jump back to email, I might have to refresh my screen, so let me just refresh my inbox here. But I'm going to go back and I'm going to select a couple of my messages here, and then I'm going to hit snooze.

Now, you can see, as a part of the defaults, it's providing 7:30 am as the time as to when it will come back to my inbox.

So I'm just going to say, "Yeah, let's deal with these messages a little later this week," I'm going to select that option. Those selected messages are now removed from my inbox and will be returned at the time that I specified.

But what if I want to address them sooner or just keep tabs on all of the messages which I've snoozed? Well, on the left-hand side, our third option down is Snoozed. So if we select that option,

here you can see all of the messages which are scheduled to come back sometime in the future. So I can go and address them now if I want to or I can just review them here.]

On the far right-hand side, you can see the dates as to when they are scheduled to return to my inbox. So don't worry, they're not hidden. You can always go find them. You can always respond to them even at an earlier date.

Now, if you've made it this far into the video, I want you to prove it to me by adding the word automation in the comments down below. And while you're there, why not ask me a question or maybe provide a suggestion as to what other Gmail-related content you'd love to see right here on the Simpletivity channel.

Using multiple email signatures

Now for our last tip today, we're taking a look at something that is maybe not necessarily automation but something that will certainly save you a lot of time right here within Gmail, and that has to do with managing and inserting multiple email signatures.

Many Gmail users don't realize that they can have more than one email signature, but also change them on the fly, depending on who they're responding to

or who they are writing to right here within their inbox. So here, I've got my default email signature here, but depending on who I'm writing to, I may want to change that.

Down below, you can see that we have this little pen icon, which is the insert signature icon. And if I select that, you can see the list of all of my signatures here.

So for example, maybe I don't want a signature, I can always choose that option. Or maybe I want to give this particular person a special discount, so I'm going to give them this simplified signature, but it has a link right in the signature.

This is very, very helpful, especially if you're giving a discount or a special offer for a limited time, so you don't want to use this as your default signature but maybe just for certain clients or for a certain period.

So where do you go to change and manage and add your email signatures? In order to do so, we need to go back to our full Gmail settings,

and near the very bottom of the screen, we have the option to manage our signatures. Now, here, in this case, you can see that I already have about four listed here, but if we want to create something new, all we need to do is select this Create new button.

And as you can see, I've got a simple one here. I've got a reply one here

with maybe a different set of icons or a different invitation, or here's that special discount signature, which I can add on the fly. Now down below, you want to pay special attention to the For New Emails Use and On Reply Use This.

So now once you've created your email signatures up above, you can choose from any of them as your default, but also, you can choose a different one for your reply.

So again, depending on your audience, depending on your purposes, then you can manage your email signatures right here within Gmail. And don't forget, you can grab your free copy of The Gmail Book from my friends at NetHunt absolutely free.

Just be sure to click the link in the description down below.

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

Why you need an appointment booking system

Do you run a service-based business? Perhaps you're a coach or a consultant?

Maybe you're a personal trainer or a massage therapist? Or perhaps you're a tutor, or providing some type of medical services? Regardless of the type of service you provide, you need a booking site that not only you can rely on, but makes it easy for your clients to book and pay for your services.

So in this video, I'm going to show you

how to create your own custom booking site, so you can proudly share your link with your customers. Now, first things first, you may be asking yourself, can't I just use something like Calendly for my booking page? Well, you could, but you know what?

Then your booking site is going to look like, well, everyone else's booking site, and they're going to come to a screen just like this, and you're going to have very limited options to present to your clients.

Instead, wouldn't you rather build something that is customized to your needs, and actually looks like a full-fledged booking site, which makes it very easy for your users to book the services and have you list the services that you provide.

So, in order to create a booking system which will make your clients want to book with you, we're taking a look at SimplyBook. SimplyBook is an online booking system specifically designed for service-based industries.

That's right, for collecting payments, for integrating with social media and giving you very in-depth reporting capabilities. This is so much more than just setting up a quick meeting with a client or a colleague. This is a full-service online booking system. So let's take a closer look.

Custom templates and style for your site

So here we are within my SimplyBook account. And right off the bat, there is a large number of templates which we can choose from. In fact, you want to make sure

that you don't look like a cookie cutter or like everyone else. You can choose from one of these existing templates, or start to customize your own down below. So whether it's a banner image, look at all the different color options that we have.

We can even customize the calendar layout as well. But the bonus is that it also gives us a nice preview down below. So here, for example, is what my services will look like, but how will they look like on the phone? Well, they look great and easy to get to and navigate.

Best of all, I can actually play with this in the mobile mode so I can see what my users will experience. I find that many booking tools promise a great mobile experience, but only a handful will deliver. But before we dive deeper into the features on the back end, let's take a look at what your users will experience.

Appointment scheduling user experience

Here we are within an example booking page, which I've created in less than 30 minutes. And yes, this is one of just many templates. And within each template, everything is customizable.

Everything, from the text color, to the background, to the layout of the screen in front of you. And the great thing is, is that you can add so much further details than just a plain Calendly page. So for example, I can add a full description over here.

I can include my opening or operating hours, and all of my relevant contact information. In fact, what you can do with SimplyBook is even replace or use it as your primary website.

Over here on the left-hand side, you can see I've added a few additional pages, but I can add as many different or additional pages as I like. But of course, when you're a service-based industry, first and foremost is to get your clients to book now.

So let's go through the process. I'm going to start by selecting that book now button, and I'm presented with the different options. So here I have three different service options available.

And of course, I can give each a full description, but this is a lot more detailed, right? It's got the price of everything, it has how long the duration is of all of these different engagements.

The additional benefit of using a tool which is specifically designed for service-based industries is that you can walk them through a specific workflow.

So as you can see here on the left-hand side, even before I choose my selected service, I can see the order of what's going to happen. I'm going to start with a service, then select a provider, and then select the time. So for example, I'm going to start with selecting

this coaching opportunity here. And now, it's given me the choice as to who would I like to do that coaching session with? So you can add a full description of your employees, or you can skip this step altogether if you are the only service provider.

Remember, all of this, including the workflow order is customizable. So I'm going to select, Jane, in this case, and I'm brought up to her calendar. So I'm going to pick something, oh, maybe next week on the 12th of May.

And here are the available start times. 10 to 11 looks good to me. Perfect. Now, I'm brought to a screen where I can fill in my contact information. Bonus, this will create an account so they can come back in, review all of their bookings and their history, and then, of course, you get to keep all this valuable information as well.

Over here on the right-hand side, I can purchase this and confirm my booking, and I can ask them questions such as, would they like to opt in to my mailing list or maybe some other promotions which you would like to add as well.

Last but not least, I'm going to confirm this booking. And then I can proceed with the payment side of the transaction. Now, you don't have to accept payments if you don't want to, but of course, SimplyBook is designed so you can integrate your payment processor.

Now, when I go over to my bookings, I can see a full list of all of the things that I've booked with this business. So if I want to maybe book multiple coaching sessions in advance, I can do so. And I always have a place where I can come back and review that information.

This can really make your business stand out and look more professional, because your clients can then log back in, manage all of their bookings, and see a history. It's so much more than just one and done.

They now have a place where they can manage both their existing and future bookings. On top of that, SimplyBook makes it easy for them to book an additional service with you, which, of course, is going to be helpful for any business.

Last but not least, they make it easy for your clients to add that booking to their calendar, regardless of the type of service which they are using online. How important is it that they have the correct information, and that they can add it easily to their calendar?

Editing and viewing appointments

Now, back within the administration page, SimplyBook makes it easy for us to see all of our bookings. So for example, here I have both of my service providers, Jane and Brad, and I can see how they're booked later this week. This can be especially helpful

if you accept phone reservations or changes via the phone. So for example, if someone calls in and says, I can't make it for 10:00 AM. Can we do 11? All I need to do is click and drag it, and I can move it that quickly, that easily.

Or I can quickly and easily see where all of my service providers are available. If someone is requesting for 9:00 AM on that day, I can tell them that Jane is booked, but I'd be happy to book them at 9:00 AM with Brad.

All I need to do is click on that space, and I can instantly start to book that appointment right over the phone or in a manual fashion.

Dashboard view and custom reporting

The SimplyBook dashboard also makes it super easy for me to see all of my relevant information. So for example, here on the right-hand corner, I can see all of my upcoming bookings and my recently added bookings.

And if I scroll down, I can see some relevant information, which will help me make changes in the future. So for example, I can see my most popular services for this month, and I can also see that Jane has about 75% of all of the bookings so far. So helpful data, helpful information,

which I can use to optimize my business.

Add-ons and integrations

Now, something that I appreciate with any piece of software is when they allow you to choose which features are enabled or disabled for your use. So for example, instead of having everything listed on the left-hand side, and you only using a fraction of those features, SimplyBook allows you to enable or disable certain things

that are specifically needed for service providers. So for example, if you'd like to add an intake form, where you're asking specific questions to your clients, you can enable this.

Multiple locations and you need to change based on the services or service providers, you can do that as well. In addition, SimplyBook allows you to create memberships, and perhaps even restrict certain services only to certain members.

And, of course, it has SMS or text messaging built right in. So if you'd like to send reminders or send special promotions through text messaging, you can do so as well. So if you are needing a booking system that will increase sales for your service-based industry, be sure to check out SimplyBook.

Click the link in the description below to start your free trial today, no credit card required. And if you enjoyed this video, you'll love the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel.

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

Purpose of limiting choices in Google Forms

Google Forms is great for so many different purposes including collecting responses,

submitting surveys or for using as quizzes, but what if you want to limit the number of responses for a particular question or a particular answer, well, that's exactly what we're going to address in today's video. Hello, everyone.

Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done, and enjoy less stress. And in this example, I have a course signup, and one of my questions is that I'm going to be asking my participants, "Which session will you be attending?" And I've given them four different dates, but here's the catch.

I want to limit the answers for these particular dates. For example, once three people have signed up for May 4th, I don't want to give this option anymore.

I want to force other participants after this is filled to only see the other three options, and maybe I want to give different limits depending on the answer.

How to install the Choice Limit add-on

So how do we accomplish this? Well, with the addition of a Google Forms add-ons.

Here you can see in the top right-hand corner, I've got a little puzzle piece, which signifies that I have the Choice Limit Add-On installed. However, if you don't have any add-ons installed, you won't this icon.

So how can we make use of add-ons and extensions right here within Google Forms? Well, we want to start with the more option here, and come all the way down to the bottom, and select add-ons. And yes.

Just like how Gmail has extensions, and Google Chrome has extensions, Google Forms has extensions as well. So you can see a large variety of different extensions which we can add.

Now in our case, I want you to type in the word limit or choice limit, and you're going to get to the one that we're after. Yes. Choice limit. It's the second one here. And here you can see, I already have it installed. So now that I have

the Choice Limit Add On installed, I'm going to come back to this add-on option.

I'm going to choose that particular add-on. Remember, you may have others listed here as well. And all I have to do is select start, and what that's going to do. It's going to overlay my screen with a few more options here in the bottom right-hand corner.

Editing the choice limit options

Now I can start to apply some of these settings to my particular form. So right off the bat, you will see that it actually lists the different questions that I have in my form.

And yes. If you have a large number of questions, they will all be listed here as well.

But you can see that my second question is just a short answer question. So it's not really going to be applicable for this add-on because we need to be using either a dropdown, checkbox, or a radio button such as in my case here.

So any of those three will work with this add-on. So in this case, what I want to do is I want to determine if I want to make a number limit or a value limit. Now, in order to enable a value limit, you're going to have to connect a worksheet, a spreadsheet in order to make this happen.

So in most cases, we're going to make use of the number limit because the value limit is a little more complex, and I don't think it's necessary

for within Google Forms. Now, the next choice that we have to make is whether we want a generic limit or an individual limit. If I select generic limit, what it's going to do,

it's going to limit all choices by a certain number. So let's say for example, I want to have three in each of these sessions. Well, I would just select the number three,

and it's going to limit all of these options to only three. But if I want to be a little more specific I can choose the individual limit. And here you can see all four of my choices are listed. So maybe I only want to have two in the May 4th session. Maybe I've got a little more space in the May 5th and 6th,but I only have two in my last session as well.

So you can be as specific as you want here. Either for each actual answer, or you can choose just the same number for all of your answers here. The last thing that we need to do in order to enable this add-on, and enable these limits is to toggle the little radio button here at the bottom.

You can see by default, it's going to be turned off when you first install, and when you first choose the choice limit add-on

but here I'm going to say, "Yeah, let's turn that on." It's now telling me that the number limit is on. The last thing that I'm going to do for you

What users will see when using the form

is show you exactly what people will experience to see if this is the right extension for you. So now that the number limit is on, let's go ahead and book two sessions on May 4th, and see what happens.

So I'm going to the preview button here, which is essentially the same thing as working and dealing with the live form itself. And let's say, I'm the first participant. And I'm going to say, "Yeah, I want to participate in May 4th." I'm going to hit submit.

Perfect. I've been signed up in this case. Let's go back to our form. You can see that first response has been recorded. And let's say I'm now a different participant. And yeah, I also want to go to the May 4th session.

So I'm going to hit submit as well. Let's go back to our form, and you can see that two responses

have now been collected, but look what has changed. "Which session will you be attending?" Now May 4th is no longer an option. It's doing exactly what we want it to do by limiting those sessions to just two. If I go back to the preview one more time,

you can see that the next participant doesn't even know that May 4th is an option.

They will only have the other three options here or if they start to fill up, maybe it will be reduced to just

Additional limit features and options

one or two options. Now, if you need to make adjustments to your settings,

you can always come back into this dialogue box and either select reset where you can change all of the numbers, and reset to zero. Or you can toggle the numbers individually here as well.

And if you need to turn off the limiter, you can come down here to the toggle, and simply select this, which will turn the limiter off for this particular form. Also keep in mind.

Under the settings option, you can choose if you want to be notified when that is reached. This can be very helpful to keep you on top of how many people are using that form, and what are they selecting, and what is no longer available to them as well.

Now, if you enjoy this video, be sure to let me know

in the comments down below. And if you have other Google Forms questions, I'd love to hear from you.

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

Why your time is worth money

Not too long ago, I posed a question right here on the Simpletivity channel and I asked you would you rather make more money or have more time? And after more than 1,000 votes, I was a little surprised by the results.

Yes, make more money edged out having more time. So if you'd like to make some more money by doing just what you would regularly do online, you're going to love today's extension.

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

And here I am doing a Google search and let me search for something like the best TV streaming service. And you're probably already familiar with the first set of results that I see here.

They are all ads. In fact, I only see a sliver of the first search result

that isn't an ad all the way down at the bottom. About 90% of my screen are advertisements. Now, not only can it be frustrating to have so much of your screen taken over by ads, but in my experience, many of these suggestions are not even relevant to my search.

They're not even something that I'm looking for or that I might be interested in clicking on, but in the chance that one of them is interesting to me and I decide to click on it, I get nothing out of that interaction.

Maybe I'm going to look a little bit further and see if it's the right solution for me, but the advertiser, the provider of that ad is benefiting from my click. Well, what if we could do something

a little bit differently? Rather of them being bombarded with irrelevant ads, what if I could get recommendations that were specific to my needs, but I could also be paid for clicking on the recommendations that I'm actually interested in? Well, that's precisely where the Comrade browser extension

How Comrade works and earns you money

comes into play. Comrade is a free browser extension available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge users that not only gives you more relevant recommendations, but also pays you for your time and attention.

Let's take a quick look at how it works as a part of just your regular day. So here I am within the Google search bar and let's say I'm searching for a savings account for my college student son.

I'm displayed with the regular Google search results, but within just a few seconds, based on my search criteria, I'm given a very targeted recommendation. And by clicking on this recommendation from Comrade, not only am I given something that is helpful to my search, but I am paid and added to my balance immediately just by clicking on this recommendation.

Comrade settings and privacy

So now that we know how Comrade is going to interact with us and give us some very targeted recommendations, let's take a look at the Comrade interface so we can adjust a few specific settings. Number one, I like that it keeps a recorded history.

I don't know how many times that I've been browsing through a social media feed or I've received some other recommendation, and then I've wanted to go back to it sometime in the past.

In fact, maybe you just saw some type of advertisement on this YouTube video and you're going to remember it sometime in the future.There's almost no way for you to find out what that ad actually was, but with the Comrade extension installed, you're going to get a complete history.

So here I can see a few days ago, I was not only presented with this recommendation, but I did click on this recommendation. So if I want to go back and visit it again, or I can choose to delete this history as well, I can do so here, right here within the Comrade interface.

Of course, when it comes to installing any browser extension, especially those that are making recommendations to you, you probably have a question about privacy, but the great thing about Comrade is that it does not store any of your activity, and in fact, the recommendations are delivered based on real time activity, so that recent search that you made.

The actual activity that you are doing, it can produce a relevant and a very targeted recommendation without the need to store any of the data on their servers.

Editing how often you receive recommendations

Another very important one here is the reach frequency. So for example, how often would you like to receive a recommendation? We can choose to set this from one to five per day, six to 10 per day, or you can choose unlimited.

So if you feel that you are receiving too many recommendations, you can always reduce this. In my case, even when I set things down to about six to 10 per day, I found that I was only in reality receiving about three recommendations, and the great thing is, is that all three of those recommendations were very relevant to what I was searching

Payment and withdrawal thresholds

or for what I was doing at that point in time. Now of course, when you are signing up for a service which is going to be paying you, there are going to be some thresholds

before that payment is made. The good news with Comrade is that those thresholds are relatively low. When you first create your Comrade account and add the extension to your browser, you will be able to withdraw at just $50.

And for some of you, that might be just a few weeks of activity, but if you do decide to complete your entire profile and invite five friends to also use Comrade, you'll be able to make your first withdrawal at just $25, so you don't have to wait to 100 or $200 before you have access to your balance. So if you'd like to receive more helpful recommendations

and get paid for your time and attention, go to cmrd.com and install the Comrade extension today. And if you're looking for more ways to save time and get more done,

subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel.

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

View only specific calendar dates

Do you want to look like an expert and save time with all of your meetings, appointments, and reminders? Well, in this video, I'm sharing with you seven tips and tricks that I think every Google Calendar user should know.

So let's dive in. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And the first tip has to do with navigating and viewing only the days that you want.

Now you're probably already familiar with the dropdown menu in the top right hand corner of the screen. We can alternate from a day view to a week view,

or a month view, whatever you would like. But if you would just like to see a specific set or a specific group of days? Well, a little known tip is to use the mini calendar here

on the left hand side. And if I just want to see Wednesday through Friday, I can click and drag across those dates, and now I'm just seeing Wednesday through Friday.

What if I just want to see Tuesday and Wednesday of next week? Just those two days, drag across them, and now I'm just seeing those two days. How about the last two weeks? Well, just drag over top of them and now I've got that view in front of me here,

Not the full month view, just those specific two weeks. So if you're just after a few set of days, be sure to make use of this mini calender under view here by just clicking and dragging your mouse.

Create & dock new calendar events

Now, the next tip on our list has to do with creating new events while still seeing information that is relevant to you. Now, for most of us, when we're using Google Calendar on our desktop, we're going to click on the area where we'd like to add that new event and I'm just going to give it the title of New Event.

Now immediately, it is blocking some of my calendar.

Now I can click and drag this if I want to move this around on the screen, if I want to reference perhaps other information or other events, but another thing you can do is either drag it all the way over to the left hand side, you can see that it gives us a bit of a highlighted area in order for us to do so,

or you can click this little dock to sidebar icon in the top left hand corner. And what that is going to do is to dock that new event here on the left hand side while you can see your entire calendar here on the right, and yes, we can continue to navigate to other weeks or other days.

We can even switch to a day view if we want to, but still have that new event listed here. Now you will also notice in this dock view that it will provide you with a bit of a flashing shadow here on your event calendar.

So as you're adding details here, you can see exactly where this event will appear once you have saved it.

Now you can always click this icon again to undock that event if you want to go back to that traditional view but either you can click this icon here or click and drag it all the way over to the left hand side, if you want to dock this event, if you want to go and use and see other things in your calendar while you're creating such an event.

Adding notes to meetings with Meetric

Now the next tip on our list is all about adding notes to a particular meeting. Whether you're wanting to do that in advance or maybe you want to go back and review the notes for a particular meeting.

And for this purpose, we're going to be using an extension called Meetric. With the Meetric extension installed within your Google Calendar account, when you select any of your events, you will now see a take notes button available to you as well. By selecting this, we get a small slide out which allows us to add as many detailed notes here on the right hand side.

And you can add anything, including links, bullet points, really anything that's going to help you prepare or perhaps if you're taking notes during the meeting.  And the great thing is that all of the notes that you record here will stay synced to this particular event.

So whether you want to share something in advance or if you want to review something that has happened in the past, you can do so right here with the Meetric tool. Best of all, you can also do it in full screen. So for example, later today, I've got my team standup meeting and maybe I want to add some more details to this list

or maybe we're going to ignore a particular question for this particular meeting. I can view and access all of my events because remember it's synced directly to my account. Let's go down to this coaching session, for example, and I can review the things that I want to discuss with this client. I can even assign myself specific tasks

and give them a reminder or a due date so I can use it for more than just notes,

I can use it for a to-do list and to remind myself of certain tasks. And when the meeting is over, I can always choose to share those notes either via a link or send them directly via email. Now, if you'd like to start using Meetric with your Google Calendar, you can go to Meetric.app or see the link in the description below.

Google Calendar keyboard shortcuts

Next up on our list, let's see how we can save time by using the variety of shortcuts

right here within Calendar. Now, I could tell you about some of my favorite shortcuts

but if you want to see the full list yourself, all you need to do is select the question mark key on your keyboard. And that will bring up the full list of all of the great keyboard shortcuts right here within Google Calendar.

Now note, you may have to go into your settings menu and then come down to keyboard shortcuts and make sure that this is enabled. If this check mark is not checked, you will not be able to see this quick reference list.

So be sure to check this first and then you can choose to use the question mark key. Now, one of my most used shortcut keys is the letter G, as in go to date. By selecting G on your keyboard, you're presented with a small dialogue here

where you can type in basically anything that you want. So if someone's asking me, what am I doing in November, I can type in November and immediately jump to November of this year.

If I want to go back to today, I can simply say today and it's going to bring me right back. And what about, I don't know, Christmas 2024? Well, let's go and find out, no, it looks like I'm pretty free at the moment.

So the next time you want to jump back and forth quickly and easily, simply select G on your keyboard and jump to the specific date that you want.

View the Google Contacts sidebar

Now, if you're dealing with a lot of meetings, that also means that you're dealing

with an awful lot of people, and sometimes we can forget in terms of who we are meeting with and why, and what exactly is the relationship with that individual?

Well, instead of having to jump back and forth between your email account or your contacts tab, we can actually access that information right here from within Google Calendar and in order to so, we're going to use the sidebar feature here on the right hand side.

You'll notice that there's a Google contacts icon in which we can open up. Now, if you don't see this sidebar come all the way down to the bottom right, and make sure that you've expanded this little arrow, that's going to allow you to see this sidebar on the right hand side of the screen.

So for example, maybe I am looking at this meeting with Scott and I'm not exactly sure who this Simple Scott is and what is the relationship. Yes, I'll get some details by hovering over here but if I click on the context on the right hand side and then click that meeting I will also see the full list of all of the attendees.

And here I can go one step further, I can click on the individual itself, I can see their full list of information but I can also see some of the recent interactions.

So here are some of the other meetings that are coming up with this person, here is the last email that we've had and I can click on that and go directly to the email.

I can even read some of the notes down below and yeah, maybe I want to stay away from this guy at the next cocktail party. And when you're done accessing

or reviewing all of the information here, all you need to do is select the contacts icon again which will close that sidebar. So a quick and easy way to find out more information about those whom your meeting with.

Share Google Calendar with others

Next, let's take a look at how we can share our Google Calendar with others.

Now, why would you want to do that? Well, of course, you may want to share your calendar with your coworkers or maybe with just someone that you're working with for a period of time.

Now, the good news is that you don't have to share all of your details. Google Calendar gives us a lot of options.

So whether you want to share just a read only version, or maybe you just want to show when you're busy or perhaps you're working with an assistant and you want to give them full control, Google Calendar gives us a lot of flexibility.

The first thing that you're going to want to do

is pick the specific calendar which you want to share because maybe you don't want to share everything here but just your main booking calendar, for example. So I'm going to click on the More button and then select Settings and sharing.

We can still get to this from the main icon from the home page, but this is going to bring us directly to that particular calendar. Then we want to go and select Share with specific people. And here you can see we can add as many additional people as we want.

So yes, I am the owner, but I'm going to say add someone, and I'm going to add that Simple Scott, once again, I can add multiple people here if I want but where we want to pay careful attention to is the permissions dropdown.

So here we've got a few different things to consider. The first choice is to see only free or busy information. So they're not going to see the name of the event. They're not going to see any of the guests, they're just going to see when things are booked on your calendar.

The second option is to see all event detail. So yes, they are going to see absolutely everything as a part of that event but they won't be able to edit anything. Next, we have make changes to events, which yes, they're going to see it, and they're going to be able to make changes to those events.

And lastly, we're basically giving them full control, by selecting this option, they will also be able to share your calendar with others. So make sure that you're making the best choice for yourself.

We can select that here and then select Send which is going to send them an invitation so that they can have access to your calendar.

Change calendar email notifications

Now, one of the biggest pet peeves for many calendar users are the number of notifications and email alerts that you receive for all of your calendar events,

whether you're invited to something new, someone changes their response, or gives you an accepted confirmation, sometimes we don't necessarily need all of this email data and it can really contribute to email overload.

So in order to make these changes for a specific calendar, once again, we want to select on the More buttons, then select Settings and sharing. And this time we're going to come down to Other notifications.

Now here, you can see there are five different events or five different triggers, which will send an email. But the good news is that you don't have to receive all of these events. So for example, event responses is one of my pet peeves. I can always go back into my calendar and see who has accepted or who has declined.

I don't necessarily want to receive an email response when someone has committed to that meeting. So I can come over here and select none as an alternative. And we've got a few other options here as well including new events, changed events, or canceled events.]

So if you want to customize how many emails and for what purposes you are getting in your inbox, be sure to come to the Other notifications area and choose what's best for you. Now I'd love to hear from you next.

What was your favorite tip from today's video or what other problem are you facing in Google Calendar and you can't quite seem to figure it out? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

And if you enjoyed this video, you'll love my other content right here on the Simpletivity channel.

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

Analyze your Trello list workflow

This video is sponsored by Rewind Backups for Trello, more about them a little later in the video. If you clicked on this video, you're probably already using Trello for your project management needs, but are you getting the most out of this tool?

Well, in this video, I want to show you five different things you should be thinking about so you can get the most out of Trello whether you're managing a small business or an entire team, five different steps you should take so you can optimize your Trello setup.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And let's dive in with the first step or the first thing I want you to think about and that really is your lists or your different stages.

At its core, Trello is based on the Kanban method, the method of moving cards or moving tasks through different stages. However, I find that far too many Trello users are not using it or optimizing Trello in such a way.

In this particular example, you can see I have a fairly straightforward setup. I've got five different lists, Ideas, Tasks, In Progress, Pending, and Complete and the goal is to create cards on the left hand side of the screen

and move them over to the right hand side. However, you want to be very specific

as to what each of these stages represent, making sure that you don't have too many or too few for your needs. So for example, many people ask me, "Scott, why do I have a Pending List, or sometimes I'll label this Waiting For?" I find this can actually be one of the most valuable list in all of my Trello setups.

Sometimes there can be a card which is simply out of your hands at the moment. Maybe you've ordered these books and there's nothing else you can do at this point in time until they arrive, or maybe you're still waiting to hear back from these vendors so I don't want to leave them in In Progress because this might build up very, very lengthy and may not tell the entire story.

This is a perfect opportunity to split or separate these lists so I can tell this information not only to myself but to every member whom I'm collaborating with.

So if you happen to have a list which is growing exponentially, that may be a clue for you to split that list into another list, making sure that you can come into Trello at any point in time and get a great snapshot view of what is going on.

Add estimated effort on Trello cards

Now in step number two, we want to add some more valuable information to our cards. You're already going to be familiar with adding things such as a due date

or labels or members to your cards. These are essential aspects to get the most information out of the tasks and the things that you're managing here within your Trello board, but often something that is missing is how much time or how much effort is going to be applied to those cards and how much time been spent actually working on those cards as well.

So in this case, we're going to make use of a Power-Up called Card Size by Screenful. Now the good news is is that this is a free Power-Up so it will not cost you anything additional.

So let's go in here and look at this card here and let's say there's this New Article, it's assigned to me but I want to estimate how much effort it's going to take. Well, here under the Power-Ups header, you can see that there is the Card Size button.

If I open this up, it gives me three different fields which I can start filling in. So maybe in this case, I'm going to say that this article's probably going to take me a total of six hours. Immediately, it's going to fill in the remaining slot here, meaning that there are six hours remaining.

I'm just going to hit Save here so you can see what this looks like on the card itself, so not only can I see it here within the card, but if I close the card, I can see that it has an estimated time of six hours.

Now, if I come up here to the Card Size icon, I can click on Settings, and I can choose to add other things to the front of the card as well, including the amount of time spent or the amount of time remaining, but I'm going to leave those unchecked here just at the moment.

Let's go ahead and add another one here. I'm going to add a size here to this one. Maybe this one is going to be only three hours in case, I'm going to hit Save here and let's go back, and maybe this Redesign website which is going to take an awful lot more time.

I'm going to come down here to Card Size and I'm going to pick another number.

One of the things that I like is that it will include some of the more recent sizes as well.

So maybe you have some standardization or some common size durations, you can easily click them down below here. In this case, I'm going to say 12 and I'm going to hit Save. So not only can I see the differences in these sizes between these cards

but Card Size also allows us to view this data in a few different ways. So I can see that I have assigned about six hours of work, but there are a total of 15 hours which are not assigned.

I can also filter this by label or I can filter it by list so if I want to see where the bulk of that load is. But let's go back into this first one where I said it was a size of six but maybe I've spent about two hours today on it so I'm going to select two.

You can see right here it's immediately going to show me how much is remaining

so it's going to calculate this data automatically as I adjust the amount of time spent

on this particular project so I can keep track of it along the way. This is a fantastic way to get the most out of Trello and making sure that you're not overallocating

or underallocating your staff along the way. Now, whether you choose to install

the Card Size Power-Up or some other Power-Up, you may be fearful that those changes may alter your Trello boards, or maybe you're a little worried about inviting new members to your boards and what they might do as a part of the editing process.

Well, that's nicely why I use Rewind Backups for all of my Trello boards and why it's one of the top three most installed power ups right now. If you want to back up all of your Trello data, if you want to go back in time in case you make a mistake,

you can do so with Rewind Backups for Trello. And if you're not already using Rewind

for your Trello boards, you can go to rewind.com/scott-friesen and get $50 when you subscribe on this page. Be sure to see the link in the description for more details.

Add automated Trello rules

Now, the next step in getting the most out of your project management right here within Trello is by adding automation.

How often have you told your team or maybe just told yourself that when I move something from this list to this list, I need to remember to add this label, I need to remember to add a due date, I need to remember to add myself or do something else along the way, and how often have you or some member of your team forgotten.

Well, by making use of Trello Automation, we can add a variety of rules to any Trello board

which was going to make your life so much easier. No more forgetting a certain step,

no more forgetting to add a particular individual. Let's go back to my board here

and show you a quick example. So let's say in my case, when I drag something into my Task List, I want to remember to add the New Project label, I want to remember to add a due date of let's say three days from now, I also want to remember to add myself to that particular project. Well, that's a lot of things which I could forget

or I could waste an awful lot of time with, but with Trello Automation, it is so much easier. Let's add a new card for this example here. So this is a completely new task.

It's fresh, It's got nothing else on it but when I drag it over into the Task List, watch what happens, new project, due date three days from now and I'm assigned to it and I didn't do any of this manually. Maybe you have a certain step or a certain phase

within your project where you need certain things to happen on a regular basis.

Add dashboard metrics to Trello

Now, speaking of making our lives so much easier, the fourth step in our process

is adding some quantitative data directly to our Trello board so we don't have to go looking for it or do some other type of manual count. Wouldn't it be nice if we could put some dashboard information directly here within our project management board.

So here at the top of the screen I've installed the Dashcard Power-Up Dashcard/Track. And with this power up, we can add a number of different customized or template information so we can keep track of what's going on

not only in this board but perhaps across multiple boards. So in this case, maybe I want to take a look at some of the cards which have not been touched in a while.

So in either case, I can choose to customize the options here or I can just add it immediately to this board so it's going to place it in the first list at the very top,

but of course I can drag this and move this wherever I want. Maybe, I'll even want to create a separate list just for my tracking cards. In this case, it's telling me that I have five stale cards on this board.

And yes, this is going to be dynamic so as I edit or change things, this number is going to change as well but it's more than just a number. If I click on this extra special card, you can see down below, it will tell me exactly which of those five cards are stale and if I click on it, it will open up that card directly as well so I can go in, take a look around, and maybe update that particular card.

Now, if I don't like the way that this is displaying this information, no problem.

I can edit this card as well. If I come down here and select Explore and edit, I can take a look at the details So for example, here, it is looking at any card that was last modified earlier than 14 days ago.

Well, maybe that's too much, maybe I want to look at anything that hasn't been modified in seven days or something like that, I can select Edit filters and I can say, let's, yeah, let's bring that down to seven days and save it here and then down below, it's going to show me which of those cards fall into that category so you can be very, very specific.

Keep in mind, you can add as many of these cards as you like. If I come back here to the Dashcards button, I can select Customize, and now I can upload my own background, I can give it my own name

and filter this information any way that I like. So this Dashcards feature can really enhance the level of information and the amount of detail which is shown on any of your Trello boards.

View Trello project timeline

Now, the final step in our optimization process is to look at your Trello data in a different way. Although you may be very comfortable in working with your cards and your lists in this Board View, keep in mind that Trello also has what they call a Timeline view, and it's very much like a Gantt chart view where we're seeing the exact same information that we saw in the Board View, but perhaps in a more meaningful way.

If we jump back to the Board view,  it can be difficult to see that this is actually spanning over a few different days, and this one is actually spanning over several weeks, but if we look at the Timeline view, we can see that a lot more clearly and the great thing is, is that we can work within this view as well.

So maybe this create this onboarding letter is actually going to take a little bit longer than I thought, so I'm going to stretch it out here across the weekend into next week. If I need to adjust the timeframe for this project, no problem, I can drag it and move it to maybe next week sometime.

In addition, Trello gives us the ability to filter and view this information

in a variety of different ways. So whether I want to break it down by member or maybe I want to break it down by the different labels that we have, we can view that information here as well. And of course we can click on any of these cards

and start to work and look at the details within it as well. So for some of you, you may actually end up spending more time here within the Timeline view even than the Board view itself. And don't forget to back up all of your Trello data with Rewind,

go to rewind.com/scott-friesen to receive $50 when you subscribe. Now, if you found this video helpful, you might find the other content right here on the Simpletivity channel helpful as well.

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

Best Website Integration

Calendly is certainly one of the most popular scheduling tools available, but it's certainly not the only option for you. So in today's video, we're taking a look at five Calendly alternatives, many of them offering a completely free version and determining which one is right for you.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And as we go through this list, I'm going to be handing out some awards.

So whether you're looking for the best website integration, user experience, or what integrates directly with your email provider, you'll have a better idea of which scheduling app is best for you. So let's dive in.

Now, the first app on our list is Squarespace Scheduling, also known as Acuity Scheduling. Now there's some confusion over those two names. A few years ago, Acuity Scheduling was acquired by Squarespace.

So if you're a Squarespace website user, you're going to have this functionality built right in. But if not, you'll be using Acuity Scheduling as a part of your interface, basically, still two different names

but the exact same software. So here we are within our dashboard. And what I do like about Squarespace/Acuity, is that it keeps things relatively simple. It's very easy to navigate around. Here, you can see this is my booking screen.

So not only can I see what's happening with my real calendar embedded, but I can quickly and easily add appointments directly here as well. But let's jump to what the client actually sees with our scheduling page link.

And what's really nice about Acuity scheduling is that it keeps it very, very clean. Yes, you can add your own branding up here, but it really walks you through the process nice and easily. So let's say I want to book a coaching session, here's my available times. I'm going to say 1:00 p.m. next week.

I'm going to say Continue. I can start filling out my information here and complete the appointment. Again, Acuity is going to give us the option to add it to our calendar, whether that's Google, or whether that's an iCal Outlook calendar,

and we can even register for an account. So very simple and easy. Now when it comes to some of Acuity's greatest strengths, I would say its customization is great,

especially if you want to make changes here, and then, see a preview of those changes right here on the right-hand side. Too many scheduling apps I find force you to make these changes without having to look or see, so you have to have another tab open, sort of waste a lot of time, and it may not look the way that you're wanting to.

But when it comes to its greatest strength, I would have to go with its website integration. So you can embed your Acuity or Squarespace Scheduling page directly onto your website and give your clients a seamless experience. Next up on our list we're taking a look at SimplyBook,

Best Website Replacement

an ideal solution, especially if you're a service-based industry. So whether you're a personal trainer, maybe you run a beauty salon, are you a coach, a consultant, an accountant, maybe you're offering medical or health services, SimplyBook is especially designed for those who are wanting to book services.

And one of the main reasons for that is because SimplyBook can replace your entire website, or maybe you don't even have a website yet, that's fine. You can create a very simple, but professional website right here within SimplyBook, with a focus on scheduling time with you.

So here you can see I've got all of the relevant information for this sample business, but book now is front and center.

And what I like about SimplyBook is that you can walk through a variety of different scenarios, but also add visuals to those scenarios, whether you've dealt with Calendly in the past, or maybe some other scheduling tool, often you don't get these types of visuals. So in this case, yeah,

I want to select the San Diego location and I'm interested in the blogging for beginners option here. And I want to do the Lifestyle blog course, and I want to do it with Lawrence. So again, you can add a full bio here, you can add descriptions here.

I'm going to add Select. And now that I'm on Lawrence's screen, I can either register for the wait list for today in case there's a cancellation, this is an especially nice feature, which you won't find in many other scheduling tools.

But I'm going to say I'm available tomorrow at noon and I can complete my booking. The other nice benefit for service providers is that you can have your clients create an actual account

so that they don't have to input their information in again and again and again.

This really enhances the level of service and also how professional you look as a part of your clientele. And within the administrative side of SimplyBook, you get so much data that's going to help you make changes and make smart decisions for your business.

So for example, here, I can see how many bookings I've had today. I can see how much revenue I've had this particular week, and I can even go down and filter by who is being booked more often than someone else.

This is especially helpful if you're managing a team. So a lot of great data and reporting here within SimplyBook that you simply won't find anywhere else.

Best User Experience

Now, the next scheduling app on our list is called SavvyCal. And if you want a very simple user experience for both yourself, but also for those who are booking with you,

SavvyCal may be the best choice for you. From a navigation standpoint here in the backend, things are very, very simple so it's easy to get around. We only have a few different menu headings here and it's also easy to edit.

So for example, if I want to edit my coaching session details here, I can come into my calendar and immediately start to edit the different changes here. But let's dive into a user experience because that's really where SavvyCal shines.

So here we are taking a look at a preview of what one of my invitees would see, and everything is nice and clear.

A few things to highlight. Number one, the user can choose different minutes or different durations, which I have selected in advance, where many scheduling apps will force you to create multiple events depending on the duration, here I can offer one event, a coaching session, and then the user can determine what length they would like to choose from.

The other thing I like about SavvyCal is it gives you both the immediate week in turn of the weekday here for them to choose and to click on,

but also a nice mini calendar down below here, as well. So there are fewer clicks,

maybe a little less intimidating for many users, but the last key benefit here is that users don't have to go back and forth between this SavvyCal page and their own calendar. Up here on the top right-hand corner, I can select Overlay my calendar,

and now my calendar, my personal calendar, is overlaid over these available slots.

So I don't have to be switching tabs, I don't have to be going back and forth to seeing when I'm available. SavvyCal helps make it that much easier for me. So I'm going to hand out the award for best user experience, best end user experience here to SavvyCal.

If you need something very simple for your users, this might be the best choice for you. Now, the next scheduling app on our list

Best Email Integration

is specifically designed for those who want to input or embed options directly within their email accounts, specifically for Gmail users. So here I am within my Gmail account and I'm crafting a message, and I'm wanting to set up a meeting with someone else.

Now I could go and input my Calendly link, or some other scheduling app link here, so that they're taken to another page, but wouldn't it be easier if I could just embed the options directly here within the email and then they could click and make that selection without having to leave their inbox?

Well, with the boomerang extension installed, you can use the new bookable schedule option. So here down below, you can see there's a Meet button. And I've got a few different options, 'cause I can either suggest sometimes, I can share my free or busy time, or I can set up my own bookable schedule which I can use and repurpose again and again.

For this example, I'm going to choose the Share Free/Busy time. And I've already asked if we can meet next week. So here I've given a few different options, so I'm going to choose next week. I want to give them those options.

I can include weekends if I want to, and of course, I can adjust my hours here. It's already going to pull in my availability from my synced Gmail calendar. So all I have to do is select Insert at this time.

And now, that calendar is going to be embedded directly within the email. So they're going to see when I'm busy. Of course, it's not going to display what those events are or the names of anyone who's involved, but they can book directly from their email.

You'll also notice in the upper right-hand corner that they can choose to overlay their own calendar. Something that we just saw a moment ago with SavvyCal.

So this can be a fantastic option, if you are primarily booking meetings with individuals and you want to give them the choice or the availability directly from within your email account.

Best Customization

Next up on our list, let's take a look at the scheduling app Appointy. Now Appointy does a lot of things differently, but in a good way. Let's get started right here in the backend.

So first of all, if you are spending most of your day in meetings or managing your service calls, Appointy is a great option. Here, you can see that we're looking at my dashboard, or really my to-do list for today.

So it's nice and clear that I've got two different sessions, one's a coaching session, one's a deep-dive session here, and I've got all the details at my fingertips. So if I need to, for example, check someone in, say if they arrive late, a no-show, if I want to issue gift certificates, for example, or coupon codes, I can do so right here.

So I really like this sort of dashboard view, something that you won't often find with many other products.

But the other thing about Appointy is that you have almost endless customization,

whether that's from a reporting standpoint. Look at this, we have about seven different just high-level reporting. And then we can get into different filters

and different details. But if you are looking at specific marketing options, such as discount coupons, gift certificates, and other special offers, you can do so here, as well. Now from an end user perspective, Appointy keeps things relatively simple, but also very easy for you and your users to walk through.

So for example here, maybe I want to book a coaching session. I'm going to select Next. Here, I'm brought to the calendar. I want to book something for later this week, let's say 10:30 a.m. And it brings me to this confirmation page, which is very much like a checkout page.

So if you are wanting people to pay upfront, or know exactly what is included in their package, here you can see some of these optional options, such as the gift certificate or coupon, well, then Appointy may be the best option for you.

It's very much a walkthrough process, making it very easy for your users to participate in. Now I'd love to hear from you next. Is there a scheduling app that I forgot or left off of today's list? If so, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

And if you enjoyed this video, you'll enjoy the other videos right here

on the Simpletivity channel.

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

All the designs you need in one place

I'm going to be honest with you. When it comes to creating engaging social media,

I find it very, very difficult and also really, really time-consuming. So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create some stunning content that not only you can create in just a few minutes, but you can share it from the same interface.

So, let's dive in. Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And we're taking a look at a website called PosterMyWall.

Now, yes, PosterMyWall can allow you to create so much more than just social media.

Whether you want to create something printed, or a PDF, or a logo, or almost anything, you can do it with PosterMyWall. But one of their best features is the ability to share it directly to your social media platforms, so you don't have to be bouncing around, and exporting things from here, and then uploading it somewhere else. So, let's dive in.

Templates that make creating so much easier

The first thing I want to point out is the ginormous amount of templates in which PosterMyWall has. In fact, they are approaching half a million templates in total.

And as you'll notice here, many of them are video or animated, which is really, really important when it comes to creating engaging social media. I mean, you know how long you're scrolling through your Instagram feed, how important is it for something to jump out and stand out for you.

Now, you can either search for a particular type of design or you can browse by using their menu here on the left-hand side. So perhaps I'm looking for something like a, maybe a corporate poster or something along those lines. Just going to type in those words and immediately, I've got hundreds, if not thousands, of different templates for me to choose from.

But one of the most engaging type of templates in which PosterMyWall offers is a slideshow. And in this case, we're taking a look at an Instagram slideshow, and you know how important that is that something stands out and pops out to your audience.

So I'm going to select Customize This Particular Design so that I can make some easy tweaks and edits for my own business needs, and then show you how to share it directly here

from PosterMyWall.

How to customize your graphic design

So now that I've selected this design, you can see that we're looking at something

that has a total duration of 30 seconds. Now, of course, I could edit that if I want,

but if I drag this slider over, you can see that there's a few different parts of this particular slideshow, right? So I can identify the different problems] and then, of course, my solution to this particular product or to this particular service. On the left-hand side of the interface, here, we can add or remove as many different elements as we want, whether that's a photo, or a shape, or adding extra text,

we can even add our own videos and audio, especially if you'd like some music

or maybe narration plane over top of your slideshow. And then depending on what we select on the template itself, of course, everything is editable over here on the right-hand side. And don't worry, if you go and try to move something around and say, "Oops, I made a mistake," you always have an Undo button to bring you back to where you were.

Editing and changing design elements

So let's make a few changes to this template. So for example, maybe I think this is a bit difficult to read having this text sort of border between the video and the background down below. So all I'm going to do is I'm going to move this up just a little bit. I think that's going to make it sort of stand out and punch up just a little bit more.

And the great thing is, is that that's going to apply to the other parts of my slideshow as well, so I don't have to go into each stage or into each section. I can just make the change on one end. Maybe another change I'm going to make is going to come up to this logo, and I'm not wild about the effect here. So maybe the opacity is a little too light for me. I want to darken that up just a little bit more.

I can move that to 80. And again, that's going to apply on everything else here within the template. Lastly, let's change the text here in this particular area here. So, "Take charge with," I'm going to say, "with the best online budget planner." How about something like that?

So I've punched up the text just a little bit more. Now I can make specific changes to other parts of the slideshow if I want. If I want to swap out the video here, for example, if I want to change the text, or if I just want to change the background for a particular area.

I can customize this template and add and remove as many different things as I need. Now, if you're wanting to collaborate with others

Collaborate with your team and others

when it comes to your design, PosterMyWall makes that very easy to do so as well.

You can share, either via an email or a link, you can also choose what exactly you are going to share. Do you want to allow them to edit the content or just view the content and give you some valuable feedback? But the other great thing about using a tool,

such as PosterMyWall, is that if you want to repurpose this for multiple platforms or for multiple different needs. So here near the top, we have a Resize option. And the great thing is, is you don't have to remember what are the standard sizes, either for video, for marketing, or for the various social media platforms.

So maybe I forget that Instagram post changed their dimensions a few years ago, or a Twitter header, or a YouTube thumbnail, I've got all of those options available to me here just at the click of a button.

Download design or share to social media directly

When you're finished, what we can do is select the Download button in the top right-hand corner. And yes, we can export an HD video so it's going to look as crystal clear as possible, especially on your viewer's phones, who probably have the highest resolution amongst their other devices.

But if we don't want to go through the process of downloading it to our machines, we can go ahead and publish it directly to, well, almost wherever you want it, whether it's an email campaign, whether it's a webpage, or embedded on a webpage, or link it to your social media.

What I'm going to do is actually choose the first option here, is to post it directly to my social media accounts. So, in this case, I've already created a link between PosterMyWall and my Instagram account.

Of course, I can add as many other social media platforms as I want, so I can create one post and then send it out to multiple different platforms. So before I post it, of course, I'm going to want to add some captions. "Are you struggling

with your budget?" That's what I'm going to say as the caption here. Of course, I can add as much as I want and let's give a title to the video. I'm going to call this the "Flow Finance Video," for example.

And if everything looks great and ready to go, all I need to do is hit the Publish button. And now, that is sent to my Instagram feed or to whatever other social media platforms that I have connected.

And now, if we jump over to my Instagram account, there you see the video that we created in just a few minutes. I can click on it. This is exactly what the viewer is going to see quick, easy, and simple to post to my social media accounts.

Free forever and pricing options

Now, you can use PosterMyWall for your social media needs for absolutely nothing. Yes, that's right, they have a Free version. But if you're needing just a little more, including unlimited high res image downloads, their Premium plan starts at just 9.95 per month.

If you'd like to learn more, be sure to click the link in the description down below. And if you enjoyed this app review and how-to, you'll love the other videos right here on the Simpletivity channel.

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

SMS marketing examples

Text messaging has become increasingly more important when it comes to communicating with your customers but isn't setting up such a system complicated, expensive, and hard to do? No, no, and no. In this video, I'm going to show you how easy it is to set up your own text messaging service for your business. So let's dive in.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And we're taking a look at a service called, TextMagic an incredibly easy way so that you don't have to be bogged down with all the complications of setting up a text messaging or SMS service. So, first off, what are some examples

for when you might want to use a service like this? Well, really the list is endless. Maybe you want to send out a reminder of an upcoming meeting or to make sure that they arrive on time for your appointment. Maybe you want to send out an announcement when it comes to a sale, or a discount or a special piece of news

that is happening with your business or maybe you want to send up some automated reminders so that they can follow up with you at a certain period after a point in time or an autoresponder, so that when they text message you they get a professional text message back even if you can't respond immediately.

How to send a text message with TextMagic

So here we are within the TextMagic interface. And we're going to get into some of these other areas and some of the other features here of TextMagic but let's start with the basics and that's just sending a text message. TextMagic keeps it very, very simple.

So first of all, we can either enter in the specific number but in many cases, you'll want to import a contact list. Now whenever you're dealing with SMS and text messaging you want to make sure that you have the permission to send them text messages.

So perhaps this is something you're going to want to include in your intake form or maybe a box that they check on your website just to make sure that you can send them text messages. But in this case, I'm just going to click my contacts here and let's select this recipient here as our demonstration.

Next, we can choose the, from phone number for where this text will be sent from. Now the great thing is is that TextMagic will set you up with a default number. And it really doesn't matter where you live in the world it match that number to whom you are sending it to.

So for example, in this case I'm going to be sending it to a Canadian mobile number. Therefore it's going to be coming from a Canadian number. A number which is actually going to be localized to this area code, so that this person when it receives my text message can feel com confident that it's not from someone out of country or from the other side of the world. They can be a little more comforted

that it's coming from a local address. Of course, last but not least we need to include our message. So here, we can type or copy and paste anything that we want into this area but in many cases, you may want to include a template. So in this case, I'm going to select, insert template.

It's going to bring up all of the templates that I've already created or I can create a new one on the fly. One of the nice things that you'll notice here is that yes, you can insert tag. So for example, if I want to address my customers by both first and last name or maybe just their first name I can do so here as well.

In this case, I'm going to pick a fairly simple one. I'm going to pretend that I'm an auto repair shop and I'm just letting this customer know that your car is ready to be picked up. So I'm going to insert that there. Now at the bottom of the message

it is going to keep track of your character count. There is a maximum of 918 characters per message but you'll also be notified of the cost in advance. It's going to cost me 4 cents per text message.

So I want to keep that in mind in terms of how many people I'm messaging and what types of things I'm using this service for. But the great thing is, is that I know this in advance. So in this case, I can either schedule this message for some time in the future.

This is great when it comes to things such as promotions. I can set this up a week in advance and then send it out at a specific time or can preview the message.

If I select preview it's basically just going to give me the different details in terms of here is the number it's coming from which is a local area code based on where I'm sending it to.

Here is what the message content is and then some of the other things that we saw on the previous page. All I need to do at this step, is hit send and now that message has been sent to this recipient.

Of course, I've got a full log of what is happening here. I can also view a complete history of all the messages which I've sent. I can dive into any of them again perhaps if I want to repurpose them or send them again some time in the future. But let's take a look at some of the other features

View and reply to text messages online

right here within TextMagic. One of the most helpful ones is the actual live chat menu here. And yes, it actually looks very much like what you would experience on your mobile phone.

What's so helpful here is that I can manage conversations from the convenience of my desktop computer. I don't have to go back to my phone and manage all of these responses. I can do it right here.

And in fact, you never even have to have your actual phone or cell number involved at all. So you're not distracted by incoming messages. You can deal with them all right here within the TextMagic interface.

So for example, here is that John Doe test account in which we just sent this reminder about their car being ready. And they've responded right away, saying "Great. I should be there in about 20 minutes." At this point, if I want to continue the conversation or maybe just send a confirmation that I received their message I can say, "Thanks. We will see you soon." Something like that.

And all I have to do is hit send and that message is sent directly to them. So I can manage all of those conversations here. And on the left hand side very much like your texting experience on your mobile phone you can have all of those messages listed here.

So you can manage them and respond to them as they come in.

Managing and importing contacts

Under the contacts menu we can create as many different groups as we like. So whether that's for a specific promotion whether that's a specific customer type

we can create a number of groups so that we are only contacting those whom we want to. And TextMagic makes it super easy for us to import that information

whether that's coming from a CRM tool or whether that's just a spreadsheet where you would like to include those numbers so you can start communicating with those customers. But perhaps one of the most powerful features

Create an auto-responder for incoming texts

of using a text messaging service is to set up an autoresponder to make sure that your customers feel heard or that you send them information relevant to their request. Here on the left hand side I'm going to click on services and come down to automation rules.

And we're going to set up a new rule so that if someone sends me a message with a particular keyword I can send them specific information back.

And we're going to continue with this auto repair shop example. So in this case, I'm going to call this an oil change request. Meaning that if someone text messages me

with the word oil in it I want to send them something back that maybe helps them along the way. So I'm going to call this an oil change request. Here, I can edit the numbers. Here again, is that default number which is going to be localized for my specific area.

And down here, all I need to do is add one or more keywords. So in this case, I'm going to say, oil. I'm going to say that if they mention oil in that message I want to respond with some information about an oil change. And then I can choose

if I want to identify that keyword either at the beginning of the text or anywhere in the text. In my case, I'm going to say anywhere in the text and then select continue. So now I can decide what type of auto response do I want it to be.

And yes, TextMagic gives us a variety of different choices. I'm going to stay with a text message. As for the body of the message I'm going to paste in some text, in which I created earlier.

It says, "Thank you for contacting our shop. If you are needing an oil change, come right on in there is no need to make an appointment. For all other car needs please reply to this message." It's important when you're sending an autoresponder with text messaging that you may not know the full extent of their message. Remember, we're just looking for that keyword, oil.

And we're assuming because of our business experience that they are asking about an oil change but of course we're inviting them to keep that conversation going if need be. Now we still have other options available to us here including inserting a template or attaching a file. This can be very helpful if there's a specific maybe document or picture, or something else

that you would like to include. And don't forget, you can include links within your text messages as well. And then below the message we want to pay special attention to this checkbox.

Trigger rule only once to new and unique numbers. Now in my example, I'm going to keep this checked. Why, because if this person receives this auto response message and then they reply with the word, oil again I don't want them to receive this message again.

I'm going to assume that they are talking about something else. So in many cases, you may want to keep this checked and only use this type of auto response for new or unique numbers. Under additional settings, we can take some further actions. So for example, I'm going to add a new action here

and I'm going to add them to my customer list because I want to collect that information. But we've got some other valuable pieces of information in which we can create as well including removing contacts from a particular list or removing a contact from all of your list.

Now by default, TextMagic already has built in in the ability to look for things such as, stop as the first word within a message which will automatically remove them from your list. But of course, you can edit that. If you want to add other words or if you want to add some other types of auto responses

maybe where you're asking them yes or no questions and they can be added or they can be sent further messages based on their responses. Then down below, we can also choose if we want to always run this rule or if we only want to run it on selected hours.

Now, in my case, I'm going to keep it as an always run. But maybe you want to tell them that listen, we're sorry that we can't respond to your message right now

we're currently dealing with other customers but you wouldn't want to send a message like that at three in the morning, or at least unlikely. Next, let it's hit continue and get to our finish point here which is basically a review screen just telling us what is going to be happening what that keyword is, and what that message is.

And now I'm going to select, finish and that rule is now in play so that the next time that someone sends me a message with the term, oil in it they're going to receive that professional response from me.

And if you want to see the value and the success rate of your messages TextMagic has an excellent reporting and dashboard system.

So you can see your delivery rate for example and to see how many of your customers are actually replying to your messages. If you'd like to start using TextMagic for free or to learn more be sure to click the link in the description below.

And if you enjoyed this app review and tutorial you'll love the other videos right here on the Simpletivity channel. Remember being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.