CRM Software

Are you a small business owner or an entrepreneur? If so, you know how valuable it is to save time and money. That's why in this video, I'm gonna share with you seven different types of software that every single small business needs to know, and I'm gonna be giving you a recommendation in each of those categories.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And if you own or operate a small business, well, then you have customers. And if you have customers, you need a customer relationship management system, better known as a CRM.

Why is a CRM system so important to you? Will you need a centralized place to keep track of all of your clients, even if many of them are just prospective clients? And when you're dealing with clients, you need to deal with, well, deals getting to the end sale, no matter what that product or no matter what that service is that you're selling.

Here I am within the Bigin CRM system, which is especially designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs. Now, Bigin is developed by Zoho CRM, which is one of the most popular and well-reviewed CRMs on the planet. However, Zoho CRM, along with some other CRMs, such as Salesforce, may be much too much for your needs and also a little expensive.

So at the fraction of the cost and with small business owners in mind, Bigin might be the ideal solution for you. So, here we have a list of different deals that I have going on. And why is this so important within your CRM system? Well, you want to know exactly where someone is within your funnel, within your pipeline as we see here.

So for example, I've got a client which is qualified. Maybe they've reached out to me for an initial conversation, but then I've got other clients here where I've actually given them a quote or a proposal. I can quickly and easily see where people are within this stage and hopefully, move them on along this process until the deal is won and they actually become a paid customer.

But the great thing here is that all of your contacts and those contacts, if they belong to other companies, stay in a single place. So for example, if I open up this deal right here, I can see further details in terms of the history of this deal, when it was added and what was going on within this deal. I can take notes and even see an email history here right here within Bigin.

But the great thing is, is that my contact information stays here as well. So if I click on Alison over here, I'm gonna jump over to the Contact section. I can see all that information here as well. So whether she is a brand new customer, whether she's a returning customer, I've got a complete history here, right within my CRM system.

Calendar Scheduling

Now, the second type of software, I think every small business needs is a scheduling tool, a quick and easy way for you to book things with your clients, or maybe just people that help you with your business. In my case, my recommendation is Calendly. I've been using Calendly for a number of years to make booking, meetings, and also booking consulting sessions with myself that much easier.

And you've probably booked a Calendly meeting with someone else, even if you're not currently a Calendly user. So for example, I can share this link, and my users can go directly to this screen and book times that are most convenient for them. Now, the great thing is, is that I can set up a number of rules as to when someone can book me, not just the times of day, but also which days of the week and how far out they can book.

In this example, you can see that no one can book me on Mondays or Wednesdays, I've reserved that for other activities, but you can also see, they can't book me beyond the 13th of October, why? Because I've set up a rule that I only want to allow people to book me 21 days in advance. So it's convenient for me, the person sharing that link, but it's also convenient for the user who can pick a day that suits them.

They can pick a time and select Confirm, and then enter in their details here. And added bonus is that Calendly makes it very easy for us to add payments directly to our booking. So in this case, if I am hosting or inviting someone to a consulting session, and I want to make sure that they complete payment as a part of the booking process, I can do so right here within Calendly.

Video Conferencing

Now, setting up your meetings is one thing, but next up, you're gonna have to actually have these meetings. So the next essential piece of software is a video conferencing tool. Now, there's a number of tools for you to choose from, but for me, my standard has been Zoom Meetings. In fact, I've been a zoom user since roughly 2016.

I use it for virtually all of my meetings and also for hosting my webinars and other events. Zoom is my choice because not only is it easy to launch a meeting and manage an admin and set all of the controls here, but I also find it's easiest for my clients to engage with. Let me start this new meeting right here, and let me say hello, there I am within my Zoom Meeting.

So of course, you want to choose a tool where it's easy and quick for you to set up either a one-time meeting or recurring meetings, but maybe just as important is how easy it is for your clients or the people that you're meeting with to join that meeting. And in my experience, Zoom is the easiest of all of the major players.

It doesn't matter if the people that I'm meeting with have advanced technology skills or they're basic users. I find that everyone finds Zoom very easy to deal with, and it has become just such of a standard over the past two years. So you're looking for something that is quick, simple, and easy, Zoom Meetings would be my video conferencing tool of choice.

But now that you're having all of these meetings, you probably have a number of projects on your plate. So let's see what I recommend when it comes to project management.

Project Management

Now, there are many different project management tools to choose from but if you're a small team, if you have less than 10 employees, my recommendation would be to start off with Trello, why? I find that Trello has the shortest learning curve so that you and other members of your team can get going and actually get stuff done in the first few days.

You don't have to wait weeks or months to get used to the system, you can start seeing the benefits right away. Now at first glance, you may think that this looks an awful lot, like the CRM we looked at at the beginning of the video. And in many ways, most Trello boards are designed for a similar concept of dragging a task or dragging a project from left to right.

But unlike the Bigin CRM that we talked about earlier, in this case, we are talking about projects. So these don't represent new deals, in this particular example, this represents things that you're actually working on. So maybe you need to redesign your website, maybe you need to use a project management tool to manage all of your content, for example.

Trello is an ideal place to make sure that everyone is on the same page and that you can move things through their different processes. Trust me, as someone who's been providing Trello consulting services for nearly 10 years, I have yet to find an industry that cannot benefit from using the Trello system.

Email Marketing

So now that your business is up and running, and you have customers, and you're selling products and services, it's so important for you to keep in touch with your customers or to reach out and communicate with prospective clients. And with that, you're going to need an email marketing tool.

Now, there's a number of tools out there at various price points and different features but Mailchimp might be the best place to start. It's almost that perfect balance between costs but also with how easy it is for you to set up and get going. So here I am within my Mailchimp dashboard, and the great thing about an email marketing tool is that, it manages all of those subscriptions and people who sign up for your newsletters or future announcements, which you want to send to.

But the great thing is, is that not only does it make it easy for you to send out mass communications, you can see detailed statistics on those messages. So for example, here, I'm taking a look at some data from a previous campaign, I can see quickly and easily, what was the open rate, for example, on this particular email, What were the clicks per unique open?

How many total clicks? And other statistics that are gonna be helpful for me. But if I click this campaign in particular, I can go into a little more detail as well. Now, one of my favorite pieces of data that I like to look at right here within MailChimp is Click Performance. Meaning, where did people actually click on the email itself?

So in this particular campaign, this particular message which I sent out, I was encouraging people to go to this link. In fact, there was only one destination within this email, but if I view the click map, you can see, I actually gave them a few different places to access that link, a few traditional links here, I also included a button.

And now beside it, I can see what percentage of the people who clicked, chose which option, so this is gonna be really helpful for me as I'm creating new emails and new campaigns in the future. So for example, it looks like this Register Now button with this green color right in the middle, was perhaps the most successful but not too far behind was this very first link here as well. So great data, great details that I can use to market to my clients and my customers.

Social Media Management

But of course, email is not the only way in which you run your business. You want to make sure you have a presence on social media as well, so you're going to need a social media manager. In this case, we're taking a look at Buffer, which I use to manage and schedule out all of my social media in advance.

So, if you're not familiar with a social media manager, what you can do, is connect your various social media accounts. So for example, here, on the left-hand side, I have a Facebook account and Instagram account and a LinkedIn account, and then I can create content and schedule it or set it up in a queue, so it goes out at specific times or specific intervals.

So here you can see in the next few days on the next week, I've got some specific pieces of content, which will be posted on my Facebook channel. And if I want to, I can post the exact same thing across my channels, or be a lot more specific. If I click on the calendar up here at the top, I'm just gonna take a glance at the month view.

Here, you can see a history of all of the things, which I've posted in the last month. So I can go back and review and also see the data from those postings as well. Something like Buffer makes it so easy for us to create new content, all I need to do is click up here on this space, select which channels, for example, I want to include, maybe I want all three, maybe I want just two.

Write my content down below, maybe add an image or a video and then schedule it or just send it all right here from within Buffer. So not only is it going to save you time, it's going to keep you engaged with your audience on your various social media channels.

Accounting Software

Last but not least, if you run a small business, you need accounting software, you need a tool, which is going to give you an accurate representation of where your money is going and where your money is coming from. Now, my recommendation for you is to use QuickBooks online, not only for its ease of use, but also for the number of integrations in which it connects with other tools that you may already use, including your bank accounts, credit cards, and other tools that you're using to receive payment.

Trust me, you don't want to wait too long before starting to use a real accounting piece of software. You don't wanna miss out on those tax advantages and you also don't wanna come up short at the end of each month. Now, if you have questions about any of the app categories or the specific tools in which I've mentioned here in today's video, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

I hope you subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and give this video a like. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Battling background sound in meetings

If you work with a computer, I can pretty much guarantee that you're involved in a lot of online meetings, whether that's Zoom, Hangouts, Microsoft Teams, or any other app you're meeting with others virtually.

But even if you have a great camera, even if you've invested in good audio, what about all of those things that are out of your control?

And yes, I'm talking about background noise. I'm talking about noisy neighbors.

I'm talking about a spouse or a roommate or a pet or maybe even construction that is going on outside.

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at Krisp, a simple but very easy-to-use technology which is going to remove all of that background noise.

No matter how noisy it is in your environment, you're going to sound clean and professional to everyone that you're meeting with.

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

At first glance, you may think that your home office or your home environment is the only application for Krisp.

But I think there's two other areas that we need to keep in mind.

Number one, what if you happen to be working from a different remote location, such as a coffee shop or maybe a noisy airport?

A location where you need to take that call but you have very little control, if no control, over those background noises.

Krisp is fantastic for those situations.

Lastly, even if you work in a traditional closed-door office, that doesn't make it immune from an awful lot of noise.

More and more of us work from an open office concept, and that means a lot of noise from your coworkers, from people walking by, from maybe other meetings or other phone calls within the vicinity, and you can't control that noise either.

So whether you're at home, at a remote location, or even in the office, Krisp might be the best solution for you.

How to setup Krisp on your computer

So how does it work?

And maybe more importantly, does it really do what it promises when it comes to removing background noise?

In order to install Krisp, all you need to do is go to krisp.ai.

The great thing is that they have a free forever plan, so you don't have to pay for anything if you don't want to.

Krisp is available for both Mac and Windows.

Once you've installed it, you can open up the app.

Here I am within my Windows machine, and I'm opening up the taskbar and selecting the Krisp icon.

It's just a small application that sits on your computer with a very, very simple interface.

The idea is that you're going to run or choose which microphone is going to go through the Krisp software.

So, for example, here within the Krisp dialog, I've got a microphone section here and I've got a speaker section down below.

Here I can choose which microphone I want to be using.

I want to keep it with my Yeti.

I actually do want to keep it as my default here for my speakers as well, but you can choose whatever you have connected with your system.

It'll even give you a little helpful idea here as to what is currently being used with that microphone.

In my case, because I'm recording this video, it's using Camtasia to record what's going through my microphone at the moment.

Below you can see there is a very simple toggle switch where we can remove the noise.

We can turn this on or we can toggle it off, so you don't always have to be using Krisp if you don't want to.

But I think what you're gonna find out is you're probably going to want to leave this on, especially when you're in meetings.

Now, the Krisp interface does give us the ability to test out its noise cancellation ability in advance.

This is probably a good choice before you use Krisp for the first time just to see how effective it is going to be within your environment.

But why don't we take Krisp through a real task?

I wanna use the actual toggle here and not just the test functionality.

Testing how effective Krisp is with noise

What I've decided to do is to pull up a video on YouTube.

It's something that is called 10 hours of busy coffee shop background noise.

No, we're not gonna use 10 hours to do so, but something to recreate that background noise.

When I turn this on, I'm gonna put this just a few inches, like literally maybe 9 to 12 inches from the microphone just to see how effective this can be.

I'm gonna press play and I'm sure you can see what or you can hear what's going on at the moment.

You can hear that there's some dishes clanging in the background.

There's some muffled conversations that are happening there as well.

Now remember, remove noise is toggled off.

This is basically just my live microphone with this noise going on in the background.

Now with that background noise continuing to go, let's hit our remove noise toggle and hear the difference.

Is it gone?

It's almost gone completely.

I can't hear it at all.

Can you hear it on your end?

You may notice that my voice sounds slightly different than it did before or earlier in the video.

There's a reason for that because Krisp is having to use that technology to remove that background noise.

But now you can focus on me and what I'm saying and what I have to share within the video conference.

Let's stick with this and I'm gonna hit the remove noise toggle again, so now that background noise has returned, right?

It's back in the picture.

You can hear it.

It's probably distracting you in addition to distracting me as well.

If I turn it on, once again, instantaneously, it's removed all of that background noise even though this video is still playing just a few inches from the microphone.

How Krisp removes participant noise

Not only will Krisp help you to sound and look more professional, but you can actually remove background noise from other people that you're meeting with.

You're probably curious as to why under the speaker section there is also a remove noise option.

What this is going to do when you toggle is going to remove the background noise from the people that you're meeting with.

Perhaps your colleague just can't keep their dog quiet.

Or perhaps someone else is working in an area where there's a lot of construction going on outside.

You can hit this switch and remove their background noise as well.

Keep in mind, this is not going to have any effect on anyone else in the meeting.

This is just for your speakers or for your earbuds.

But it's gonna help you to focus on the conversation at hand.

You won't have to go searching for the mute button or asking someone to mute themselves constantly despite their noisy background.

Krisp plans and pricing

Taking a quick look at pricing, great news!

You can use Krisp absolutely free and free for forever.

Their personal plan costs you absolutely nothing and gives you 240 minutes a week of noise removal.

That's four hours each week for either microphone or speaker noise removal.

If you're needing more than that, more than four hours per week, you can upgrade to their Personal Pro plan, which is just $5 per month billed yearly.

You can see that their Teams option is the exact same price as the Personal Pro option.

It's just easier to manage and gives you a few more team management features.

So if you'd like to stop worrying about all that background noise and also stop getting angry at your kids and pets, you can download Krisp for free and start using it right away.

Be sure to click the link in the description below for more details.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Everyone uses a calendar

It doesn't matter if you're a student, a business owner, an employee, or a stay-at-home parent, you've got a calendar to manage.

If you use Google Calendar, sometimes those things and events can get out of control.

So in today's video, I wanna give you some tips and tricks to get your calendar back into control so you can get the most out of your day.

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

Perhaps your Google Calendar looks like a bit of a rainbow.

Maybe there's a number of different colors, a number of different events, appointments, and engagements.

Reduce the number of calendars you manage

My first tip for you is to ask yourself, how many calendars do you actually need?

Let me explain, here in Google Calendar, one of the benefits is that we can have multiple calendars and by doing so, we can toggle them on or off at any given time.

This can be a great advantage to see just a certain type of events at any given stage.

But far too often, I see that people have way too many calendars, whether it's something that they've subscribed to or calendars that they've shared with others.

My question to you is, how many do you actually need?

For example, I've seen people create a separate calendar just for their baseball practices.

However, those practices just happen two times a week.

Do you really need a separate calendar for something that happens as little as once or twice a week?

You could probably add that to your personal calendar or to some other calendar that also includes those events.

The other nice thing by reducing the total number of calendars that you have to manage is that if you do happen to unable or hide one of these calendars here, and then you won't forget, or at least you reduce your chances of forgetting something that should have been made available to you here, but was actually hidden here on the left-hand side.

So this might be a great time to audit all of the calendars that you've created, or perhaps the ones that you've subscribed to, and actually remove some of them, so you can remove some of the clutter here.

Events are not your only option

My second tip for helping you keep your Google Calendar under control is to keep in mind that not everything needs to be an event.

Often, we're so quick to add things on our calendar that are not necessarily time-specific and really what we're wanting is a reminder instead.

Let's remember that Google Calendar has a reminder function built right in.

The great thing is, is that if you don't acknowledge that reminder, it will carry over into the next day.

So let's say, for example, I want to call someone later this evening.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on the desire time, I'm gonna click on 7:00 PM.

But instead of creating an event, I'm gonna come over here and select Reminder.

Right away, it's a lot easier because I've got much fewer options to choose from.

I'm gonna say Call Bill in this case and I can make it repeating if I want to, but I'll gonna leave it as is and hit Save.

Now you can see, I've created this reminder for 7:00 PM.

I will receive a notification not only here on desktop but especially on my mobile device, so I can make that phone call.

But if I don't acknowledge it, if I don't check off the reminder, here you can see if I open it up, I can select Mark as done.

If I don't mark it as done, this will carry over into tomorrow and will show as an all day event.

The great thing about reminders is that they don't get left behind.

Keep in mind that reminders do not have to be time-specific.

Maybe there's just something that I'd like to do tomorrow.

All I need to do is click on the all day event area, select Reminder, and I'm gonna say Email Craig regarding the meeting.

It's as simple as that and I can get on with the rest of my day.

Many times, I'll have many more reminders as all day events keeping the rest of my schedule nice and cluttered free.

But again, these won't be left behind because if I don't accomplish it on Thursday, it will automatically transition to the following day.

Customize your notification settings

Now, another great way to get your calendar under control is to change when you receive reminders and notifications.

For example, if I click on this event here, I can see that I'm gonna be notified 10 minutes in advance.

This is the default when you first signed in to your Google Calendar.

However, you can not only change this default to something that is more meaningful to you, you can also change it for the different calendars that you manage right here within Google Calendar.

In order for us to do so, we wanna come up here to the gear icon and select Settings.

On the left-hand side, we first need to start with the calendar in which we want to change those default notifications.

Here I've selected my personal calendar and under Event notifications, I'm gonna say, you know what, I'd rather be notified just a few minutes in advance.

Three minutes is a enough, so I'm gonna leave at three.

I don't have to hit Save or anything else on this screen, it's now gonna be a default of three minutes.

However, if I go to something like my Exercise Calendar, maybe I want a notification further out.

In this case, I'm gonna ask for a 45-minute notification.

You can also add multiple notifications if you like, including email notifications.

So maybe I want to remind myself a full hour and a half via email that I'm gonna be exercising later today, I can do so here as well.

So don't be afraid to change your default event notifications if you find your existing ones are not as helpful as they could be.

Now, if you're dealing with a very busy calendar,

Quickly find the event you're looking for

you're probably also wasting a lot of time because it can be difficult to find that particular appointment that you're looking for, whether it's far into the future, or maybe sometime in the past.

You're probably already familiar with the search feature here in the top right-hand corner.

If we select the magnifying glass, the cursor is ready and waiting for us to input some information.

However, don't forget about the dropdown area here, which will give us some more advanced search options.

For example, we can just search the active calendars, meaning the ones that we've checked on the left-hand side, or we can search all calendars or just a specific subset or a specific calendar.

We can also choose to include a specific keyword, search who is a part of the event or where that event is happening.

We can also eliminate some words but perhaps the most powerful of all is to set a date range or a date spectrum to see where you want to search.

So if you're having trouble finding that particular event, be sure to use the advanced search feature.

Of course, I'm very interested to hear on how you manage your calendar as well.

And if you have tips and tricks to provide to the Simpletivity community.

If so, be sure to include them in the comments down below.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Is your project software too simple or too complex?

You have an awful lot of choice when it comes to your project management tools.

However, some may be too simple for your needs.

Even though Trello, Asana, and Notion are very popular, they may not give you all the features that you're looking for.

But on the other side of the spectrum, something like Microsoft Project may be too advanced.

And let's be honest, your parents probably used MS Project, maybe even one of your grandparents.

So in today's video, we're taking a look at GanttPRO, which is maybe the ideal middle ground.

It gives you more features than Trello and Asana yet is not as complex and much easier to use than MS Project.

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

I'm going to assume that you're somewhat familiar with what a Gantt chart is.

A Gantt chart gives us a view of our projects, our costs, and our time commitment here on a timeline view.

However, don't let the name GanttPRO fool you because GanttPRO is so much more than just this view and just looking at your projects and all of your tasks here.

Why a Gantt Chart view is so important

First, let's answer the question: why is a Gantt chart view so important?

You may recognize with some of the other tools that you use, that they will have a timeline view or some type of Gantt chart view, but it's usually an afterthought.

They started to build their project management system, and then they've got requests to give them a Gantt chart view.

However, you probably are not seeing as many details as we see here.

The fantastic thing about a Gantt chart is that you can see the dependencies in terms of what has to happen first before something else can happen.

And then on top of that is allocating all of your resources.

In most cases, those resources are human-based—who is working on this project?

Do they have enough time to commit to it?

And if everything goes as planned, when should this project be due?

The great thing is that it's very, very visual.

Here we can see in this case, if I drag over to the right-hand side, we can see that this project should be finished by October 20th.

If everything goes as planned as we've estimated here, we can finish up near the end of October.

However, as things change and as certain things are either delayed, or maybe if certain things finish earlier than others, then this due date is going to be dynamic, and that it's going to adjust forward.

So you can see these things in real-time, and every member of your team can update their status and see what is going on.

Different views of your project and resources

However, if you don't need a view like this, or don't want to see this view at all times, GanttPRO has you covered.

There is a board view, so if you are more familiar with a kanban style of working with your projects, the idea of dragging things over into a done column is available.

For example, if I want to open up this target markets task, I can open up and see all of the details within.

Here I can change the status of it.

I can add a description, add attachments, and even add dependencies here at this level, not always needing to view that Gantt chart view.

In addition to our board view, we can also see what the workload is for our staff members.

You don't know how many times someone has asked me, "Scott, how can I allocate resources appropriately within Trello?"

Well, here within GanttPRO, allocation and workload, including cost and time allocated, are built right in.

Here we can see how many hours everyone is scheduled or projected to work on this particular project.

The bonus is that we get to see when someone is over-allocated.

For example, here I can see that Ralph has a few hours over top of what he's actually available on those days.

I can either have a discussion with him and say, "Are you willing to work some overtime, or do we need to spread this out?

Or maybe can we assign some of these tasks to someone else on the team?"

In fact, it's perhaps the resource management and the people management which is such a great bonus here within GanttPRO.

Reports and budgeting in GanttPRO

For example, I'm gonna come over to the left-hand side of my screen and select reports.

Under reports, one of my favorites is called budget analysis because with any project that you're involved with, you're dealing not only with time but also cost.

I'm gonna minimize some of the other projects that I've been assigned to and take a look at our product launch.

This is what we were just looking at previously.

The great thing here is that I can see that it's going to take my team a total of 200 hours to complete this entire project.

I can also see that because of this and the different rates of each of my staff members, it's going to cost us just a little over $10,000.

However, up to this point in time, it has actually cost us $3,000 based on how much time and effort everyone has put in so far.

So with just a few clicks, I can see our resource management.

I can see if we're within budget, and I can appropriately and accurately tell my clients or tell my management team how much this project is going to cost.

In addition, if I return to my product launch screen, I can click on the people tab and actually see each member who is a part of this project.

In turn, I can adjust the cost per hour for each of my resources.

This is where that costing and budgeting information is coming from.

Now as someone who is responsible

Viewing bottlenecks and critical paths

for the outcome of a project, you wanna be able to quickly and easily see what is overdue and where you need to focus more of your team's attention.

GanttPRO makes it very easy for us to do so.

Here in the top left-hand corner, we can quickly and easily see which are the overdue tasks in this particular project.

You can see that immediately this required materials task is highlighted as being overdue.

So again, I may wanna have a conversation with my team members and investigate as to what is going on here.

GanttPRO also makes it easy for us to identify what is the critical path, meaning what is going to prevent us from moving forward.

In this case, I can see that this features and functions area of the project is currently our critical path.

Meaning that if something is delayed here, it is going to back up the rest of our entire project.

Share project status with public URL

Another great feature here within GanttPRO is the ability to share your project with others.

What I mean is sharing with those who are not directly involved with producing the project.

Obviously, all of the team members that you see here have access to GanttPRO and they're updating things along the way as they progress along their project.

But what about upper management or perhaps what about a client who would also like to have some insight as to what's going on here?

You may be hesitant to give them access because you don't want them to start adding notes or to adjusting certain columns or other attributes within the project.

But what GanttPRO allows us to do is to create a public URL.

So within this dialogue, I have the choice to either share without a filter or use the current filter that we're viewing this project with at this time.

I'm just gonna call this one, maybe project updates, something along those lines.

I can either create a snapshot in time, or I can give them a public URL, so as things change, maybe between the time when I send them the link and when they receive it, they can see those updates as well.

All I need to do is select this button, and as you can see down below, it's added to my list of other public URLs.

Now, at any time I can either delete or just turn off one of these URLs in case of privacy, in case I don't want to make them available to those who I've sent it to.

But in this case, all I need to do is copy this to my clipboard and then paste it within an incognito window, just so you can see what another individual will actually view here within GanttPRO.

It'll take just a few seconds to load the project depending on the complexity and the size, but here you can see now they can view the project and see the details as well.

People who now have access to this public URL can see the entire project, including the GanttPRO view and other details listed here.

However, it is a true read-only view.

You can confidently share your project with others outside of the given project team and know that they will only have a read-only view and can see those details

Importing data from Excel or MS Project

but without the ability to change them.

Best of all, if you're already using Excel, MS Project, or JIRA to manage your projects, you can quickly and easily import your project directly into GanttPRO.

And if you use something else such as Trello or Asana, you can export that information into a CSV file and then easily convert it into a GanttPRO project.

So if you're needing a project management system with advanced features yet still keeps things simple, be sure to check out GanttPRO.

You can start absolutely free using the link down below.

If you have any follow-up questions, be sure to let me know in the comments.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why backing up Trello is important

If you use Trello, you know how important all of your cards, lists, and multiple boards are to your business, your organization, or maybe even your personal life.

But what happens if something goes wrong?

What if someone on your team makes a mistake and deletes a whole bunch of cards?

Or what if you make a mistake and can't get something back?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at how to safely and securely back up all of your Trello data with Rewind Backups.

Hello, everyone.

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

Backing up our Trello data is so important.

For many of us, Trello is the lifeblood of our business or our organization, or even how we manage our personal life and our daily activities.

But what happens if something really, really bad goes wrong?

How are you going to get it back?

How to manually backup Trello boards

Well, there's a few manual ways in which you can back up your data.

But I'm gonna tell you upfront, it's going to leave you not only wanting more, but it's probably going to waste a lot of your time.

The very first option is for us to manually copy our boards from time to time.

If you open up the Menu on any of your boards and go to More, we can come down here and copy this board.

Now, I could give it a name such as Version Two or maybe the date in which I made this copy.

However, I'm gonna have to do this for every single one of my boards.

And I gotta have to remember to do this every, I don't know, every couple of days, once a week.

I've gotta come in here or assign someone else on my team to do this manually.

The other manual process we have available to us is to export our boards.

If I come over here and select Print and export, I can either export it as a CSV file, which you'll be able to view within your spreadsheet, or a JSON file, which is a lot more technical and a lot more advanced.

And you know what?

Congratulations, if you even know what a JSON file is.

In both of these cases, you are gonna be able to export this information, but not only are you only going to be able to do it one board at a time, Trello has no import functionality.

So, even though you can get this information out of Trello, there's really no way for you to revive that information other than manually heading this back in a worst-case scenario.

Automated Trello backups with Rewind

So, what do I recommend to my clients?

I recommend that they use Rewind Backups for Trello.

Why?

Because Rewind has been providing backup solutions for other products, such as Shopify and QuickBooks Online for years.

So not only can you trust them, but this is all that they do is back up resources for business owners and users like you.

Let's take a closer look at what Rewind Backups looks and feels like when it comes to backing up Trello.

Here I am within my Rewind Backups Vault, and what we're viewing here is actually all of my cards across all of my backed-up boards.

I can go through and look at the individual changes and make sure that certain things have been backed up.

The way that Rewind Backups works is that it will automatically back up all of the boards which you select on a nightly basis.

You don't have to remember anything at all.

Rewind Backups will always back up all of the boards which you select on a 24-hour basis.

However, maybe you've made some very significant changes, and you wanna make sure that they're backed up earlier than perhaps midnight this evening.

You will always have this Backup Now button available to you here, so you can do so at your own choosing.

As I go through and look at some of these individual cards, here I can see that this card was updated.

If I wanna view the versions, I can see the live version here on the left-hand side and the selected version or the version which was last backed up.

If I come over to this dropdown, I can see that there is actually a previous version, which did not contain a description.

So, this can be a quick and easy way for me to find out if I want to revert back or to see what's going on through the updating process.

You'll have a full history whenever you do so here within Rewind Backups.

If you're looking for something specific, you can always use the search field here to search for a certain keyword.

So if I type in something like vendor, I'll bring back all of the cards which have either been added or updated right here.

It'll also give us a filtering option.

So, if we want to filter out specific content, label changes, or a date range, we can easily and quickly do so right here within the Rewind Backups dashboard.

But perhaps the most powerful feature when it comes to Rewind Backups is the ability to restore our boards.

How to restore Trello boards to a previous version

Let's take a look at a quick example.

I've decided to use a split screen view so you can see this happen in real time.

On the left-hand side, I have one of my travel boards, and on the right-hand side, I have Rewind Backups opened up.

Let's say within my Trello board here, I'm gonna do something like archive everything in this list.

Everything in this list is going to go, and maybe I'm gonna start moving some other things from this pending list into that new list.

And of course, I could make a number of other changes as well.

I could delete cards, change labels, due dates.

Do absolutely anything here.

Once I've changed everything, what if I say to myself, "Oh, you know what I really would like to go back."

I shouldn't have done any of those changes, or maybe someone on my team made a big mistake.

All I need to do is come over here to Rewind Backups.

Under the Advanced Restore tab, I can come down here and select which of my boards I would like to restore.

In this case, yes, I want to select the example board, and I can now choose the date in which I'd like to go back to.

So here, I've got a choice of a number of different times.

I wanna go back to my last backup, which was actually just a few minutes ago, right?

Just a few minutes ago before I made those changes.

So, 11:58 is the most recent backup.

I'm gonna select that.

Then, I'm gonna select Restore Items.

It is going to give me a prompt, which I think is great.

Letting me know what is going to happen at this point.

It's going to try and restore everything back to exactly as it was just a few moments ago.

I'm gonna say yes, go ahead and start the restore process.

Now, it may take a little while…

Actually, nope.

We're back.

(Scott laughing)

Didn't even take a few seconds, no more than maybe three or four seconds, and we are exactly back to where we were before.

We've got the four cards that we had in this list.

And those two cards which I'd moved over are now back in this list as well.

So, that's how easy and how quickly you can restore any Trello board to its original point, depending on how frequently you want to restore your boards.

Remember, Rewind Backups will do so every single day, every single night, but you can choose to back up more frequently manually if you like.

Selecting which Trello boards to backup

Now, within the Rewind Backups dashboard, you have the power to select how many of your boards you would like to back up at any given time.

Here you can see, I currently have 26 boards selected, and I can either easily select an entire Trello workspace, or I can select or de-select individual boards.

In this case, these two boards will no longer be backed up.

The great thing about this is that you only have to pay for what you actually need.

Rewind Backups for Trello is only $1 per board per month.

That's right.

It doesn't make any difference as to how many users are on those boards.

It's $1 per board per month at a minimum of $5 a month.

Special offer for Simpletivity viewers

However, I have an extra special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

If you go to rewind.com/scott-friesen, you'll receive $50 in cash when you sign up for Rewind Backups.

And no, that's not $50 off of your subscription.

Rewind will send you $50 in cash for you to spend any way that you like.

So, if you're looking for a safe, secure, and easy way to back up all of your Trello boards, 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.

How Text Blaze saves you time

If you wanna save time while working at your computer, you need to stop touching your keyboard so often.

So in today's video, I'm gonna show you how Text Blaze can help you reduce the number of keystrokes and make your life so much easier.

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

In today's video, I wanna show you what Text Blaze is, how it can save you so much time and help you complete your emails, your chats, your documents, that much faster with text expansion.

So, let's dive in.

How often are you asked the exact same question via email?

Here's an example where someone is asking me about my pricing options.

At first glance, I may say, ah, this is gonna take me a few minutes to properly describe my packages, give the pricing, maybe include some links.

Well, there's a much better way.

When you have something like Text Blaze installed, all I need to do is type in just a few key letters and I've got everything here, and now I can hit send and move on to my very next email.

Yes, I just hit three keys on my keyboard, and I've got a complete response here, including formatting, including links, I've got all my pricing information, and now I can move on to the rest of my day.

So, how does Text Blaze work?

Well, let's jump over into the Text Blaze dashboard.

Text Blaze dashboard and snippets

Here you can see I've got a number of different snippets that are already set up.

The one that we just used here is called Quote Options.

So I took a little bit of time crafting the ideal message to the questions that I most commonly receive.

In this case, it has to do with my packages and my pricing.

So I've spelled out the different packaging, I've included the links, I've even formatted things, including bolding certain things and maybe italicizing certain things so it looks great and professional.

But all I need to do is select this shortcut key /QO.

I've chosen the letters QO to represent quote options so I can input this wherever I go.

If things change, I only need to go to one place here and maybe update some links or adjust my pricing, and then I can use this going forward.

Email is a classic example where text expansion can come into play, but let's take a look at a few other examples before we look at how we can set this up for ourselves.

Here's another one that I've created called /VC for video conferencing.

So many of us are sharing the details of our meeting rooms, whether you use Zoom or Teams or Hangouts, and here I've just taken a moment to include those details here.

So let's go back to an email example, I'm just going to delete the contents here.

This time I'm gonna go /VC, which stands for video conferencing.

Now I can input this wherever I want.

If someone's asking me for my details via a chat, I can do so.

If I wanna include this within a document, I can do so as well; just a couple of keystrokes on my keyboard, and then they have direct access to my meeting room.

Use Text Blaze for labels or common phrases

Another example that I love to use is for using Text Blaze for labels and here I'm gonna use an example within my calendar.

As you can already see here, I like to add some emojis to some of my calendar events, just so they stand out a little bit more.

One of those other examples is I like to use an emoji and maybe a term or a word in all caps for certain tasks just so they stand out and I can recognize the difference between them.

For example, let's say I wanna make a phone call later this afternoon.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna click on my calendar to open up this event, but I'm just gonna type in /P.

This brings up my emoji and call, and I can say call Jane regarding the meeting, that's exactly what I want to do at that time.

So this is really helpful to me because whenever I want to add something like this, let's do another one, maybe on a different date here.

Again, it's as easy as just typing in that letter, and I can call Bill regarding the email discussion we had last week.

So now that you know some of the benefits of using Text Blaze, let's take a look at how we can create our own and add even further functionality so that your snippets, the things that you input into your documents, your chat window, or anywhere on the web, can be that much easier and that much more customizable.

How to create Text Blaze snippets

Here within the Text Blaze dashboard you can see that I have a list of my snippets here on the left-hand side.

You can see the names which I have given those snippets, and then on the right-hand side, you can see the shortcuts which will be used.

Of course, Text Blaze also gives us the option to create multiple folders.

So if we want to create our snippets in different categories or different themes, we can do so to make it that much easier to manage.

But to start your snippet, all you need to do is hit this plus button here, and we will be provided with a new window to give it a new label.

Again, this label is gonna be something just for yourself.

So in this case, I'm gonna call this one review process.

Next, we need to choose a shortcut key.

You'll notice that many of mine start with a forward slash, and there's a purpose or a reason behind this.

It's often not a great idea to use shortcut keys without some type of special character prefacing those letters.

Why? Because what if I create a shortcut key such as TH?

Well, TH is probably risky because anytime I spell the word the or that or those or any other TH word, then this snippet is going to be put into place.

So I'm gonna stick with a forward slash here, and why don't I just put RP for review process?

It can be as short or as long as you like.

Now down below, we can put in whatever we want into this snippet.

In this example, I'm going to assume that someone has sent me a document and maybe as a part of my business, I need to review these files or review this document and I promise to get back to my clients within three days.

Using Forms and Dynamic Content with Text Blaze

So watch how I'm gonna create a customized response, including some dynamic dates, into this message.

First off, I want to address them by name.

So I'm gonna say hi, but what I'm going to do is add a dynamic field here.

I'm gonna add a text and I'm gonna say that this is a name field.

Now this field name is optional.

In fact, all of these three options, the default value and the columns, meaning the width of that text field, are all optional.

I'm just gonna input name at this point, just so I know what this field is for when it comes up and I am prompted.

So I'm gonna say hi, and I'm gonna put a comma after it and then I get to start, oops, that's a period.

I'm gonna put a comma afterwards, and then I'm gonna start my message.

I'm gonna say, thanks for sending over these files.

I will review them and get back to you by…

Now here I wanna put in a dynamic date.

Remember it's all about saving time and making things easier for me.

So I'm gonna come back down here, but instead of using this forms and dynamic content, I wanna use this one, which is called Time and Date Shifting.

You can see there's a variety of different options we can include, including the current date and the current time and other insertion context.

But in this example, I wanna use time and date shifting.

So I'm gonna say in three days, I'm gonna promise or tell them that I'm gonna get back to them within three days.

So now I can insert this, I'm gonna put a period at the end because it's the end of a sentence.

Now that date three days from now is going to be input directly into this response.

But I'm not quite done here because as you can see, the date format is a little, shall we say a little strict or maybe a little too formal.

It's not gonna sound that natural if I tell them that I'm gonna get back to them in this date format.

So all I need to do is select this and come down here and select time-date format.

Here I have the option to change it.

First, what I'm going to do is I'm gonna remove the format that is currently there.

Then I'm gonna come down here and select this one.

This is going to give me a preview so in this case, it's going to say September 10th, 2021.

I like that for the most part but you know what, including the year that might sound a little rigid or maybe someone will clue in that I'm some automation.

So all I'm gonna do in this case is I'm going to eliminate the year and because it's the end of the sentence, I'm also gonna eliminate that comma.

So let's test it out and see how this is going to look.

Text Blaze makes it very easy, you can see we're in the edit version or the edit tab here, all I need to do is come over here and select Preview; and this is what it's going to look like.

I'm gonna have the ability to fill in the name and then thanks for sending over the files.

I will review them and get back to you by September 13th.

That looks really nice and clean, doesn't it?

Okay, let's remember what was the quick key? /RP.

So let's pretend that I've received those files and I'm replying to this client.

I'm gonna hit /RP on my computer and I'm presented with a new dialogue.

And here you can see I've got that name field that I created.

So I can say, hi Bill.

That's all I need to do at this stage and hit enter on my keyboard.

Now it's entered directly into the email and as you can see, September 13th, which is exactly three days from now, is entered into my response.

I can immediately hit send and get on with the rest of my day.

So if you have certain processes, if you have certain replies, if you have certain responses that you'd like to add, you can do so right here.

Adding calculations to Text Blaze snippets

One of the more complex things that you can do, if you really want to take your text expansion to the next level, is by adding calculations.

Here's an example called Forms where you can actually input drop-down options and it will calculate the price for you.

Let's take a look at this example back in our email version here as well.

I'm just gonna clear this and I'm gonna use the /form.

Once again, I'm presented with this dialogue so I can enter in a name.

Here you can see I can enter that name in once, but it could appear in multiple places.

And here I can say, well, a customer bought 13 widgets at a price of 12 per widget and now it's calculated the total price down below.

I can hit insert and now it's right here within my email response.

So you can actually get quite advanced if you like right here within Text Blaze.

Pricing and Plans

Now not only will you save a huge amount of time with Text Blaze, but you will also save money.

Why? Because Text Blaze has a free forever plan.

Now you are limited to only 20 snippets, but you can have up to 2,500 characters in each of those snippets.

If you need more and a few more features, the pro version is only $2 and 99 cents per month.

And for the amount of time that you're going to be saving, this is absolutely nothing.

For the cost of a coffee, a regular coffee, you will be saving so much time using Text Blaze.

If you'd like to start saving time right away with Text Blaze, be sure to click the link in the description below.

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

Crmble CRM

It doesn't matter if you pay for Trello or if you're just using a free Trello account, you now have unlimited access to Power-Ups.

That's right, you can use as many Power-Ups as you like.

So in today's video, I'm sharing with you seven great Trello Power-Ups that won't cost you a thing.

And let's dive right in with Crmble.

Many people have asked me, Scott, can I use Trello as a CRM system, as a customer relationship manager?

I'm often hesitant to say yes, because Trello really wasn't designed for a CRM as the end goal, until now.

With the Crmble Power-Up extension, you can use Trello as an excellent CRM system.

When we first open up a Trello card, you can see that we have some Crmble fields, which allow us to enter in customer information.

Now you can customize which of these that you want to display, or even add some of your own.

Here you can see, I can add in all of those details that I'm used to seeing when working with a traditional CRM system.

So whether this represents a new client or a deal, I can move it through its different stages of the sales process or the pipeline, or however you'd like to set up your CRM and have that information accessible here.

You can also see on the front of the card, I can see the size of the deal, I can give it a rating.

I can see if this particular client or this lead is warm or not.

Maybe it's a little cold like this one here, but it gets even better.

If we click on the Crmble link here in the top right-hand corner, we've got our full CRM dashboard.

I can see exactly where things are within that process.

I can even click on the Leads option here, and I can see all of my customer information here all in one place.

So if you want to use Trello as a CRM system, be sure to check out Crmble.

Bulk Actions

Now the next free Power-Up on my list has almost become standard for all of my Trello boards, and it's called Bulk Actions.

How many times have you wanted to make changes to multiple cards right here within Trello, but Trello doesn't allow you to do that?

Well, with the Bulk Actions Power-Up, you can do just that.

Let's say that I need to change three cards in three different lists, and I need to change their labels.

I want to change this one and I want to change this second one, and I also want to change this third one here.

I'm going to waste an awful lot of time by clicking on each and every one of those cards.

But if I select Bulk Actions at the top of the screen, it's going to show me a slightly different view of that Trello board.

Now you can see I've got these little check boxes.

So if I click this one and this one, and then this one, now I've got all of these options available to me here.

In this case, I want to relabel.

I'm going to select relabel, and let's say I want to make sure that they're all changed to an HR project.

I'm going to say Relabel.

I can say Relabel and Keep Selection if I want to do further changes on these three.

Why don't we do that in this example?

I'm going to select that.

First, it's going to add that blue HR label, but they've remained selected because maybe I also want to change their due date.

So I'm going to select their due date, and I'm going to say that everything here is due by the end of next week.

I can even make that time nice and uniform, and I'm going to say Change the Due Dates.

Now you can see, not only do they all have the blue HR label, they are now all due on September 3rd.

Bulk Actions is such a massive time-saver no matter how you're using Trello.

List Limits

No matter what you use your Trello boards for, sometimes you may have a list or more in which you want to keep in check.

What I mean by that is perhaps there's a part of your phase that you want to make sure that you don't have too many cards at any given time.

That's where the List Limits Power-Up comes into play.

Here you can see under my Pending list, I've got some numbers at the top.

It says three of four.

Because I have List Limits enabled, and I've told it I only want a maximum of four cards in this list, it's going to give me a warning if I exceed that number.

So let's say, for example, I'm going to drag over this card into this list.

You can see it says four of four, and maybe one of these In Progress cards I have to bring back.

So I'm going to bring it back to Pending.

Now, not only does it tell me it's five out of four, but this entire list is now shaded in a different color.

So this is telling me and other members of my board that, wait a minute, we've got too many in this Pending state.

What's going on? What's the bottleneck? What do we need to do differently?

You can apply these list limits and change the number for any of your lists.

Or, as you can see in my example here, you can just apply it to one particular list.

So don't feel that you have to apply this to everything in your workflow.

Now I can say that, you know what, maybe we can still work on this particular task, and now that color changes back to its normal shade.

I can still see the total, the four out of four.

If you need to add your list limit, all you need to do is come up here and come down and select Set List Limit.

Once the Power-Up is installed, and now we can set our number here and say Save.

Now I can see it's three out of five for this in progress list, and I can continue to work with my Trello workflow.

Card Priority

When it comes to managing all of your tasks and cards, setting a proper priority can be one of the most effective ways to get the most out of Trello.

You're probably familiar with using labels where you can use labels, not only for different categories or perhaps departments, but you can also use them for priorities.

For example, here I've got a red Urgent label and I've got a yellow Medium Priority label.

But sometimes this can get confusing because I also have things like departments and other categories mixed in here.

Well, now you can use Card Priority by Screenful to set a true priority.

Here, you can see on a few of my cards, I've got things like Highest, and I've got one here that is labeled Critical.

These are separate from the labels themselves.

If I open up this card, for example, you can see that it has its own client request label, but it also has its separate priority level.

Under Power-Ups, I can select Card Priority, and here, I can choose or edit the priority levels given here.

Now these are the defaults that Card Priority gives us.

I think they're most helpful.

If I want to bump this up to Highest, I can do so.

It's going to change it here.

It's also going to change that on the front of the card as well.

If you select the Card Priority option here in the top right-hand corner, it can also give you a summary of where those levels are and where they exist amongst your different lists.

In fact, you can even look at it a few different ways, based by label or by assignee as well.

Now, the nice thing is, under Settings, you can really customize this Power-Up.

For example, maybe you don't want to see it on the card front, but you do want to see it on the card back, or vice versa, or maybe both as we see in this case here.

The other nice thing is this option, to only show the high priorities on a card front.

You very well know that by adding more information, maybe other custom fields, maybe other Power-Ups as well, the front of a card can get very, very busy.

I think this makes an awful lot of sense, that maybe we only want to show the top two priorities, we can still give these other high priority levels or these priority levels to other cards, but we don't necessarily need to show them everywhere.

If I uncheck this option and hit Save, you'll see that I have a few more that appear because these are below my top two priority levels.

But if I ever need to come and change that, I can do that here under Settings.

I can also come in here and actually change the text of any of my priorities as well.

A very flexible tool, a great way to add true priorities and not waste all of your Trello labels.

Card Dependencies

Now let's stick with another power-up designed by Screenful.

This one is called Card Dependencies.

How often have you been working within a Trello board, and you know that something is a parent of something else, or maybe this task is a child of another card?

Maybe something needs to be accomplished before something else can get started.

Well, with Card Dependencies, we can do that.

Let's open up this card as an example here.

If we want to add a dependency to this particular card, all we need to do is go over to the Power-Ups section and click on Dependencies.

Here we have a number of different ways in which we can add a dependency.

For example, maybe you work in blocks, meaning that it is blocked by another task or it's related to something else.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to something.

I'm going to select that option here, and now all I need to do is search for the name of that other card.

In this case, I'm going to say it's a child to New Idea 2.

What's going to happen is I'm going to have its own Card Dependencies section right here so I can see the relationship between these two.

The other nice thing is that it's quick and easy for me to remove if need be or to check it off, so that once this connection or this dependency no longer remains, I can check it off at this level.

Let's add something else here, just as an example.

I'm going to click on Dependencies here.

In this case, that's a child too.

I'm going to say it's also a parent of a different card.

In this case, I'm going to say this is related to something called a new listing.

I'm going to select that one.

Now you can see the different relationships here as well.

The other bonus of using this Power-Up is that we have direct links to these other cards.

If I click on New Idea 2, I can go directly to this other card and see what's happening here.

If I need to go back, I can see that oh, this is a parent to Get Quotes From New Vendors, and I can go back to that original child dependency.

A great way to make and see those relationships between your cards.

Card Duration

The next Power-Up in our list has all to do with getting more out of due dates right here within Trello.

Of course, applying due dates is so crucial to staying on track and making sure that your projects can complete on time.

Sometimes it can be difficult to estimate how far out is this particular date?

If you've included both a start and an end date, how long is this actually going to take?

Well, with the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker, it can give us both sets of information in a different and more digestible way.

For example here, this card is due on September 3rd.

How close is that?

Down below, it's telling me exactly, that's in one week, seven hours, and exactly 21 minutes from now.

This is maybe a little more relevant to me.

As I glance at other cards as well, such as October 31st, okay, that's one week and a day, this is one week and three hours, now I've got a bit of a better grasp of how close I am to those due dates.

If you've also included a start date, here you can see the Card Duration Power-Up will tell us the total amount of time.

So this card should take us about four days, in this particular case.

This one has a very long duration.

It's 27 weeks and one day.

I wouldn't be able to do that math quickly in my head, but now I've got the exact number here, thanks to this particular power up.

So if you're wanting to see this, of the card, but you can also see this inside the card as well, be sure to install the Card Duration Power-Up by Placker.

Costello

The seventh free Trello power up on our list has all to do with tracking costs.

Whether you're tracking a budget or financials here within Trello, Costello makes things so much easier.

Even before I open up any of these cards, you can see here in the top right-hand corner, I've got a total cost of roughly $2500.

What it's doing is summing up the different cards where I've added cost data.

In this example, I'm going to come over here to the Power-Ups section, and I'm going to add a total cost.

Let's enter in a number, something like $1500.

Now you can see I've got this number attached to this card here.

If I close this and I come to the front of the card, you can see that that cost is visible here as well.

But the great thing is, is that my total cost has increased, because, of course, it's going to be dynamic, so I can add cost to any of the cards on this board, and when I click on this option here, I can summarize it by a few different ways.

Not only will it show me the individual cards where I've added cost data and include the number, but I can summarize it by column.

Here I can see my biggest expenses are under the Pending task here, but I can also summarize it by label as well.

Here I can see that both HR and the client request are very close at around $2,000.

So if you're working with money, budgeting, or financials, be sure to install the Costello Power-Up.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's Trello tutorial and tip video, and I'd love to hear from you next.

With unlimited Power-Ups for everyone, what's at the top of your Trello Power-Up list?

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

I hope you give this video a thumbs up, and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel for more Trello tips and tricks.

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

In fact, it's very simple.

Switching between programs

One of the easiest ways to save time while working at your computer is to use keyboard shortcuts. So in this video I'm sharing with you seven of my favorite Windows keyboard shortcuts so you can save time.

And let's don't waste any time and jump right into my first shortcut which has all to do with switching programs in applications. Let's say that I'm working on this Excel document but I need to jump into my word document.

I could keep coming down here to the task bar and go back and forth between these applications. But if I'm in the middle of writing something here, it might be faster since my fingers are already on the keyboard to use Alt-Tab.

To use this all you need to do is hold down Alt and then select Tab. Now you wanna keep all held down while you cycle through all of your applications.

So for example if I wanna jump back into that word document, I just need to hit Tab until I hover over that application and then release the Alt key. If I wanna go back to that spreadsheet, again Alt select Tab and then I can immediately be brought back to the second one in my list here.

If I don't need to cycle through everything or go to another application, it's gonna bring me to the second one in this list. So for example if I'm just going back and forth between these two, I can just select Alt-Tab on my keyboard.

Now you can get your mouse involved if you want. If I select Alt-Tab to bring up this menu, you can see that my cursor still has an effect.

So if I wanna jump into this paint application, I can click it and it will bring me there as well. So a quick and easy way, this is especially useful if you're giving a presentation and you want to quickly jump back and forth between applications.

Snap windows to sides (split-screen)

Next let's take a look at how we can take advantage of using a split screen view right here within windows. Maybe you don't benefit from using multiple monitors, but you'd still like to have two applications side by side.

All you need to do is within the application that you want to see is hit the Windows key and then either the left arrow key or the right arrow key, depending on where you want it to end up. So in this case I wanted on the left-hand side I'm gonna hit Windows and then that left arrow key, and when I release it, it's actually going to show me all of my open applications.

So now I can choose which application I want on the right-hand side. I'm gonna select this Excel spreadsheet, and now they are perfectly split left and right.

So I can be working over here on the left, but referencing data and referencing information here on the right-hand side.

Open pinned taskbar apps

The next shortcut on our list is gonna help us quickly and easily open up some of our most used applications. You're probably already familiar with pinning certain applications to your task bar down below.

This can be really useful if there are certain apps that you use on a daily or at least a regular basis. So you don't always have to come here to the search window or hit the start key as well.

But there's a quicker way to open up these applications than always bringing your cursor down to the bottom of the screen. So for example, if I'm working here within Excel and I wanna quickly work out a calculation without actually entering it into my document, I wanna open up my calculator app.

But instead of dragging my cursor all the way down, I can use the combination of a Windows key and the position that that application is in. So here you can see it is the second one that is pinned.

So if I select Windows and then the number two key, it's going to immediately open up this application for me because it's in the second position. So once again, let's in this case let's open up Outlook.

Let's see Outlook is one, two, three, four, five, six, so if I hit Windows and then the six key, it's going to immediately open up my Outlook account.

So this can be a great way to quickly and easily open up the applications that you want to use without having to make use of your mouse.

Search for programs and files

But of course, not all of your applications are going to be pinned down below. In some cases you're gonna have to go and search for the application or maybe search for the file over here.

Well instead of having to come down to the search bar, we can get there that much faster by selecting the Windows key plus the S key. Windows S is going to immediately not only open up this dialogue, so we might be able to click on something that is a most frequently used app or something that was recently used, but you can see that my cursor is already waiting for me down below.

Lemme close this down for just a second to do that one more time for you. Windows S and now I can immediately start typing in the file or the application that I'm looking for.

So these quick and easy wins to get you to where you wanna be that much faster.

Take a screenshot or snippet

The next shortcut key on our list is something that I use all of the time. When I want to share something with someone else often I need to take a screenshot, whether that's of a dialog box, whether that's of an image, or just something else on my screen.

So in this case perhaps I want to include this logo or this image for example into this document here on the left-hand side. So Windows has a fantastic screen grab and screenshot tool built right in.

In order to access it, you want to select Windows then Shift and then S. And what that's going to do it's going to gray out your screen for just a moment, but here you can see at the top of the screen, we have a few different options as to how we can get this snippet.

Now typically by default it's going to have this rectangular snip view. Meaning that now I've got these cross hairs and I can just click and drag over the part of the screen that I want to grab.

As soon as I release it, it is going to grab that, it's going to place it in my clipboard, and now we can go over here to this word document and I can paste it right in. If I go Control-V perfect, now I've got that image right here within my document.

But you'll see there's a few other ways in which we can snip images. So once again Windows, Windows Shift S and we're gonna have this option here at the top.

The second one is a free form snips. So in this case I'm gonna select it, and maybe I only want the PowerPoint logo in this case. So with my cursor, I'm going to click and hold, but this time it's going to highlight where I'm dragging.

I really like the way that they've set this up in the way that it continues to show me what is going to be grabbed before I release. I get to release it at this point.

Again as soon as I release, it's going to paste that image into the clipboard. I can come down here again, lemme just delete that previous one here. And I'm going to paste the new one.

Here you can see I don't have the addition of this graphic, I just have the logo cause I was able to grab it with that free form snip. You have a few other options available to you here as well.

This one is going to snip the entire window of the application that you're on, or if you just want to take an entire full screen snip, you can choose this last option. If you change your mind, just hit X, and you're brought back to whatever you last laid off.

Viewing the clipboard history

Since we're talking about snipping and screen grabbing, and then pasting things elsewhere, let's talk about our clipboard and accessing more than just your most recent copy. You're probably already familiar with grabbing something such as this text here and selecting Control-C, and then we can go and use Control-V to paste it somewhere else.

But what if I wanna go back and paste one of those images that I've already copied? Well because it's not the last thing I copied, I can only use Control-V and get that last piece of text.

If you want to access everything within your clipboard, you want to select Windows then V. And what that's gonna do is bring up this menu here, here you can see the text which is the most recent thing, but now we've got those snippets that we just use, we've got some other text, we've got other things even some things that I was copying and pasting from yesterday are contained within this clipboard.

So once again, just place your cursor as to where you would like to paste something from your clipboard, then select Windows V, and that's gonna bring up your entire recent clipboard. Now keep in mind there is going to be a limit. The limit is not the number of things which you've copied to the clipboard, it's actually the size of things.

Currently that maximum is four megabytes. So keep in mind the number of images that you've included on your clipboard that may reduce the total number of things found here. But let's say I wanna go down here, and this is something that I actually copied yesterday but it's still relevant and I'd like to add it to this document, I can select it and now I can paste it directly here in front of me.

So Windows V to bring up your entire clipboard.

Open the emoji library

Lastly, let's take a look at how we can liven up some of our documents or just make things a little bit easier to find with the emoji library right here within Windows. So regardless if you're within an application or if you're online, you can bring up the Windows emoji library by selecting Windows plus the period key.

What you can see here is that I'm first gonna see my most recent emojis right, the things that I've used most recently. But I can quickly and easily go through the different categories down below.

If I'm still having trouble finding what I want, and if you never want to get your cursor involved, you can start to type in what you're looking for right away. So for example, maybe I wanna find something that is food related, so I'm gonna start typing in the word food.

Now you may think that I'm typing in this word directly into this word document, but once I found the food that I want, let's say I'm gonna select the strawberry, it's going to now replace what I typed in.

It was only using that for it's search capabilities, and now I've got that emoji right here. Let's search for something else. Let's say I want to find a basketball, perfect I've searched for it, I've typed it in, I can just click it right here or I can hit enter.

Let's try that one more time. If I hit bat and then use my cursor to hit over or highlight over that particular emoji I can hit enter. And now in this case it's brought in a cricket bat for me as a part of this emoji search.

So if you're looking to add a little more color or just to make things a little more exciting within your applications, you can use the emoji library by selecting the Windows plus period key.

Now I realize that today's list was relatively short, but I would love to hear from you. There are so many Windows shortcuts that can help us save time. What are some of your favorites, please be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Because I'm sure that there are others that are gonna benefit from your tips. As always thank you so much for watching today's video, I hope you give it a thumbs up and consider subscribing right here to the simple activity channel.

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

What's wrong with most scheduling apps

0:00

- [Scott] Sending your scheduling link

0:02

shouldn't feel weird and I agree completely.

0:05

That's why in today's video,

0:06

we're taking a look at SavvyCal,

0:09

a scheduling tool that does things differently.

0:12

Not only does it have some features that other popular tools

0:15

such as Calendly do not have,

0:17

but SavvyCal really and truly puts the participant first.

0:22

So it's easier and quicker for your clients

0:25

to book time with you.

0:26

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity,

0:30

helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.

0:34

And just before we dive into SavvyCal

0:36

and all of the cool features that are included,

0:39

I wanna take a step back and look at what's wrong

0:42

with our traditional scheduling apps.

0:44

So let me jump into Calendly for just a second.

0:47

And you're probably already familiar

0:49

with this interface, right?

0:50

Someone sends me a link or I click it on link

0:53

on their website and I'm brought to this screen

0:55

and I can see, okay,

0:57

I can see their availability, right.

0:59

I can click on different days

1:01

and then it can show me different times here.

1:03

What's the problem?

1:04

Well, now I've got to jump back to my calendar and say,

1:08

okay, well I'm available.

1:10

Okay, is that work for them?

1:11

No, no, okay, so the 26th, they could meet at this.

1:15

Now I've got to go back to my calendar.

1:16

I'm going back and forth and I'm wasting time.

1:19

It's actually a little confusing at some times

1:22

to see what is the best time for me.

1:25

This is the best time for them.

1:26

And that's good, that's half of the equation,

1:29

but really it puts the onus on me.

1:32

It's as almost as if this was designed

1:34

with the organizer in mind

1:36

and not so much for the participant.

Overlaying your calendar with SavvyCal

1:40

Well, that's exactly where SavvyCal does things differently.

1:44

So, for example, here I am within a preview.

1:47

This is the same type of screen.

1:49

So someone has sent me a link

1:50

and I wanna book some time with them.

1:52

First off, what I love about this in SavvyCal

1:56

is that it's really nice and clear.

1:57

I'm getting a full week view here of their calendar, right?

2:02

So I'm not just seeing the little dates and stuff.

2:04

I still have a full monthly calendar

2:07

here on the left-hand side,

2:08

but it's just a little more flexible

2:10

as I see what's available.

2:12

But here is the cherry on top,

2:14

in the top right-hand corner,

2:16

I have the option to overlay my calendar.

2:19

So if I hit this switch,

2:21

now my calendar appears right on

2:24

their availability calendar.

2:25

So I can say, you know what?

2:27

Wednesday afternoon sounds great to me.

2:30

Yeah, let's book 30 minutes there.

2:32

My information's already put in,

2:33

I'm gonna hit schedule and we're done.

2:36

It's a single click.

2:37

It's a single click and I already saw my calendar

2:40

on their calendar nice and easy for me.

2:44

So let's go back and take a look

2:45

at some of these features here within SavvyCal.

Creating and editing SavvyCal scheduling links

2:48

Here we are within the SavvyCal scheduling interface,

2:52

and you can already see I've created

2:54

three different links up to this point.

2:56

Let's go into the one that we just saw,

2:58

this coaching session with Scott.

3:01

Now, one of the benefits just from the creation side

3:04

is that I can also overlay my calendar here.

3:07

So as I'm creating my schedule, I can see what's coming up.

3:12

I can make changes on the fly

3:14

by overlaying my actual calendar.

3:17

If I don't want to see it,

3:18

I can just toggle it here in the bottom right-hand corner,

3:21

but this is a beautiful feature to make it that much easier

3:24

for me to plan out my schedule.

3:26

Now, on the left-hand side,

3:28

you can see some of the options here

3:29

that we can choose from.

3:30

In most cases, you're probably going to want to use

3:33

a multi-use scheduling tool,

3:35

but you can also do we'll use as well.

3:37

If you want people to select it one time time,

3:39

and that's gonna be their only time

3:41

to book that particular meeting.

3:44

But here are some of the other features

3:45

that you won't find elsewhere.

3:47

In this case, we can actually choose

3:49

to have multiple durations for this same meeting.

3:54

So, instead of having to create multiple events in Calendly

3:59

or some other popular tools where I'd have to create

4:02

a 30 minute coaching session,

4:04

and then I'd have to create

4:05

a separate 60 minute coaching session.

4:08

And maybe if I wanted to offer a two hour coaching session,

4:11

I'd have to create a separate event for that,

4:14

I don't have to do that.

4:15

I can do that all right here.

4:17

So why don't we do that?

4:18

I've already got 30 minutes and 60 minutes here.

4:20

Why don't I select two hours?

4:22

So now they're going to have the option

4:24

on that same booking screen, 30, 60, or two hours.

4:30

So, I love this ability to be able to offer multiple hours.

4:34

The next one here has to do with,

Setting available hours and ranked hours

4:36

what types of availability are we going to set?

4:39

Now, I'll show you in a minute

4:40

where we can set the defaults here, right?

4:42

We see things like work hours and bonus hours,

4:45

and you can have as many of these presets as you want.

4:49

So in this case, my work hours are going to be nine to five

4:53

with a bit of a break in here for lunch,

4:55

but I've also added some bonus hours as well,

4:58

some bonus hours in the evening on Tuesday and Thursday,

5:02

but it gets even better.

5:04

You can see here in the top right-hand corner,

5:06

we have something called ranked hours,

5:08

meaning that you don't have to offer

5:11

all of these hours at once.

5:13

You can offer one of these hours first.

5:16

And then if that still doesn't work

5:18

for your clients or your participants,

5:20

then they can be presented with additional hours.

5:23

So for example, if I uncheck, if I disable this here,

5:26

this rank in hours,

5:27

what you will see is it's gonna refresh my calendar here

5:29

on the right-hand side, and I can select the bonus hours,

5:33

it's gonna be one or the other.

5:35

In this case, here you can see my bonus hours, right?

5:36

I can see them here down below.

5:38

I can choose either my bonus or my work hours

5:41

from those presets.

5:42

But as soon as I select ranks,

5:45

now what I can do is I can choose number one,

5:48

how of these that I want,

5:49

and I can have as many as I would like to add here.

5:52

I'm gonna select bonus hours here,

5:53

but then I can click and drag and say, you know what?

5:56

At first glance, I want them to actually

5:58

look at my bonus hours first,

6:00

because maybe I wanna fill my days

6:02

with other important tasks

6:04

and this is going to be secondary.

6:05

But in this particular example,

6:07

let's go back to where I had it set originally.

6:09

I want work hours first, and then I want those bonus hours.

6:14

So what I'm gonna do here, let's just go back here,

6:16

I'm going to paste this link

6:18

just so that we can see this in action.

6:20

So when I send out this link to a client,

6:23

or if they perhaps click on a particular button

6:25

on my website,

6:26

here is what they're going to see by default, right?

6:29

This is what my current availability is,

6:31

but you will notice down below it says,

6:34

having trouble finding a time, click show more.

6:38

So let's say that this is really busy with their schedule.

6:41

Let's say that they're jam packed and oh,

6:43

I'd really like to meet.

6:44

I'd really like to set up this coaching session.

6:46

What do I do next?

6:47

Well, I can select show more

6:50

and now I've got my bonus hours displayed.

6:53

Well, maybe this fits with their schedule.

6:56

So again, thinking of your clients,

6:59

thinking of your participants first, and like I said before,

7:03

we have that dropdown.

7:04

So if they want a 60 minute session

7:06

instead of a 30 minute session,

7:07

if they want a two hour session,

7:09

all they have to do is select that option here.

7:12

They don't have to go back to some other link

7:15

or select some other option.

7:18

Fantastic, so here you have the ins and outs,

7:21

of actually setting up a particular session.

7:23

Let's move on and take a look

7:24

at some of the other features here within SavvyCal.

Setting up individual recurring scheduling links

7:27

Returning to our scheduling links page,

7:29

another feature I love about SavvyCal

7:32

is the ability to create individual recurring links.

7:35

What do I mean by that?

7:36

Well, let's take a look at this one

7:37

that I've created in advance.

7:39

It's called Scott and Julie check-in.

7:41

Let's say that Julie is a member of my team.

7:44

And you know, once in a while when I want her to,

7:47

I want Julie to set up a meeting with me,

7:50

just so we check in maybe once a week

7:52

or once every other week.

7:54

Now, it's gonna be the same format, right?

7:55

I want the same duration of time.

7:58

It's going to be meeting in my office and yeah,

8:01

Julie is the recipient.

8:02

So the great thing here is then I can create

8:05

a custom link just for Julie,

8:08

including her information already

8:10

so that she can just click it whenever she wants.

8:13

And we'll have all that information

8:15

waiting for us right here.

8:16

And I can even go ahead and edit the URL.

8:19

So in this case, maybe I want to call this,

8:21

Julie check again, for example, something like that.

8:24

I'm gonna hit save here.

8:25

So now she can bookmark this URL

8:28

and just use it whenever she needs to.

8:30

Or maybe I can send her that URL saying,

8:32

hey, let's check in later this week,

8:34

please use this link to book a time with me.

8:38

So this can be great,

8:39

whether it's for staff or with other people

8:41

that you meet on recurrent basis,

8:43

and you don't want to send them

8:45

to your publicly available link

8:47

or the thing that is listed or linked to your website.

8:50

You can customize it for certain individuals.

Managing availability settings in SavvyCal

8:53

Taking a look at our availability settings,

8:56

here you can see the work hours and the bonus hours,

8:59

which I've referred to before.

9:00

So the nice thing is that I can manage

9:03

all of my different sets

9:05

or all of my different recurring ranges in one place,

9:08

and then choose to attach them

9:10

or possibly rank them depending

9:13

on the type of scheduling link that I'm creating.

9:16

So in this case, let's start and add another one here.

9:19

I'm gonna add one, something called weekend hours.

9:21

So maybe for a particular type of session,

9:24

I wanna add some weekend hours.

9:26

All I need to do is add a recurring range.

9:29

I'm gonna uncheck the days of the week,

9:31

'cause this is for the weekend.

9:32

And maybe I'm gonna say that my weekend hours

9:34

are gonna be from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm.

9:38

And I'm only gonna offer this on occasion, right?

9:40

I'm certainly not going to add this

9:42

to all of my scheduling links, but when I need to,

9:45

I've managed it right here in a single place

9:48

and I can do so as often as I like,

9:51

so quick and easy to manage all of your availability.

Advanced settings and delegation in SavvyCal

9:55

Lastly, I wanna take a quick look at our settings here,

9:58

'cause not only can you bring in your teams

10:00

and integrate with other applications,

10:02

but what I love is that you can give delegated access,

10:06

meaning that you can allow an assistant

10:08

to manage your account on your own behalf

10:10

without giving them full access to everything.

10:14

So for example, if you have a virtual assistant,

10:18

if you have a secretary and you would like them

10:20

to help you manage your calendar,

10:22

you can delegate this access to them

10:24

without having to share your username and password.

10:28

So if you'd like a simpler way to manage

10:31

all of your scheduling links and make it

10:33

that much easier for your participant or clients

10:37

to book time with you,

10:38

I'd recommend that you check out SavvyCal.

10:41

Be sure to check out the link in the description below

10:44

for a special offer just for Simpletivity viewers.

10:48

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

10:50

And remember, being productive

10:52

does not need to be difficult, in fact, it's very simple.

How I define hidden features in Gmail

Sometimes it's the little changes that can have a major impact on the tools that we use. So in today's video, I wanna share with you seven hidden features right here within Gmail so that you can get more out of your inbox.

Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And when I say hidden features, no, these aren't things that you need to use a cheat code to get to.

In fact, most of these features are found in the settings, but it's my experience that the majority of Gmail users do not know that these settings even exist. So I wanna make sure you know where to find them, what they do so that you can get the most out of your Gmail experience.

Reading Pane View

And we're gonna start with the reading pane. You're probably used to this view right here within Gmail where I need to click on an email.

Okay, now I've read the email. I can delete it, archive it, add a label and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox.

Then I'm gonna open up another email and I'm gonna read it and do something with it and then I'm gonna go back to my inbox. Well, there's a more efficient way if you like.

If we click on the gear settings here and scroll all the way down, you can see that there's a section here called reading pane. The great thing about the reading pane is that we can choose if we want to preview or see those emails on the right-hand side of the screen.

I can still see all of my inbox here or whatever folder I'm looking at here on the left-hand side, but I don't have to go in and out. I can view my emails here on the left-hand side and I can read and deal and reply to those emails here on the right-hand side.

Now if you don't like the preview or the reading pane on the right-hand side, you can also choose below the inbox here. You can see your emails up top and you can read and deal with your emails down below.

If you wanna view more or change that split, you can just drag this little area here in the middle to change where that split occurs. Now you can both see your incoming inbox or your incoming email and you can reply and respond to it down below.

So if you want something more than just the standard no split view, make sure you take a look at the reading pane.

Auto-Advance Emails

Now the second one on our list has to do with saving even more time. In this case, we want to auto advance through our messages so we don't have to keep coming back to our inbox.

Once again, we're gonna click on the gear icon, but this time we're gonna say see all settings. At the very right-hand side or near the end of the right-hand side, we wanna click on this advanced tab.

At the top of the list, we have something called auto advance. What this is going to do is that after we delete, archive or mute a conversation, instead of going back to the inbox, we can enable this feature and it's going to take us to the very next message.

So let's take a look at what happens in a normal Gmail setting. Let's say I open up this email and I don't need this anymore so I'm going to delete it.

I'm brought back to the inbox. That's pretty standard behavior.

But if we go back to our settings here, I'm gonna click on that advanced tap and I'm gonna enable the auto advance feature and don't forget to hit save changes. Now it's going to refresh my Gmail screen here for just a moment.

Let me open up another email here and let's say, okay, I've read what I need to do here. I'm gonna delete this one as well.

I'm now immediately taken to the next message in my list and in this case, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna archive this. Maybe there's something in this message that I want to read later.

I'm brought to the very next message in my inbox so no longer am I wasting time going back and forth and back and forth. I can more efficiently get through my email by turning that auto advance feature on.

Undo Send Time Period

Now the third hidden feature I wanna talk to you about has to do when we make a mistake such as replying to an email when we're a little mm, hot and bothered or perhaps just a little angry and then we say, ah, you know what? I should take that back.

So we're talking about undo send. Now let's go ahead and create a new message just by default here.

I'm gonna send it to a test account here. I'm not even gonna fill anything in at this case.

I'm gonna hit send just to show you here on the bottom left-hand corner, we always have this little dialog that says okay message sent, undo or view message. Now the undo was there for a few seconds, but now it's gone.

I actually can't undo this message. In fact, even if I go and hit view message here, I don't have the option to undo this message anymore.

That's because by default, the undo send feature is set for a mere five seconds so if you don't make that decision very, very quickly, you will not be able to take that message back. If we go back into see all settings and about the fourth one down here on the general tab, we have this undo send setting.

Now here's the cancellation period. By default, it is five seconds, but we can extend it all the way out to 30 seconds, meaning that after we hit the send button, Gmail will not actually send that message until 30 seconds later.

I'm just gonna go down to the bottom of the screen here, the bottom of the page, and hit save changes so I can apply that to my email account. So now let's go ahead and send another message here.

I'm just gonna open this up. Let's choose the same test account in this case.

I'm gonna hit send and you will see at the bottom of the screen that undo link, this undo option's gonna hang around an awful lot longer. So I can wait here and say you know what? Didn't really mean to use that type of verbiage.

I didn't really mean to say the things that I did. You know what? Let's undo that. Let's take that one back.

So now we're brought back to the exact same email here and if I had put in a subject or some messaging here, I could now edit it. Maybe take out some of the words or some of the tone that I was speaking of in this particular case.

So if you want just a, a little more of a backup, if you want to make sure that you've got just a little more time to think about that email that you sent, you may want to extend this undo send for an extended period of time.

Nudges for Forgotten Emails

Now let's stay on the general tab here for hidden feature number four and that has to do with nudges. Now nudges can be really, really helpful to making sure that you don't forget about emails that have either been sent to you with a question or if you've sent someone else a question, for example, and you haven't heard from them yet.

Now in this case, I have both of them turned on, but let's be clear as to what each of them actually does. So the first one is suggest emails to reply to and it says emails you might have forgotten to respond to will appear at the top of your inbox.

So for example, if someone has sent you an email and it contains a question, but you've never replied to that email, Gmail can bring that particular message back, maybe after two or three days and say hey, should you reply to this message? Do you want to reply to this message? It will appear at the top of your inbox.

This can be a great way to make sure that you don't forget anything in your inbox. The second one has more to do when you are waiting for a reply, suggest emails to follow up on.

So these are sent emails you might need to follow up on and they will also appear in your inbox. So for example, if I send you an email and I ask you a question, but I haven't heard back from you in maybe 48 or 72 hours, Gmail may bring that message back to say, hey, you know what, you haven't heard back from this person.

They haven't answered you or replied to you. Should you send a follow-up email?

Now if you have not used nudges before, I might suggest that you check both of these boxes and leave them on for a two or three week period and decide if you're benefiting from these features. If you do find that they're annoying, maybe you're very good on the follow-up and maybe you have purposely ignored many of your emails that you haven't responded to, you can always come back in here and uncheck these boxes, but it's worth taking a look at, especially if you haven't tried nudges in the past.

Gmail Offline Mode

Now the next hidden feature on our list has to do when you don't have access to the internet or maybe you know that you're not gonna have internet access for a period of time. And that has to do with Gmail offline mode.

Once again, if we go into our settings, on the right-hand side of our tab near the very end, we have an offline tab and here we only have one option and that is to enable offline email mode. What this is gonna do is actually store and save a certain amount of your inbox to your computer so that you have access to those messages.

You can even set up and write the replies. They just won't be sent until you're back online.

A couple of things that you wanna take a look at here. First off, it's going to tell you how much storage it is going to take.

So in this case, if I do turn it on, I know it's gonna use just 17 megabytes. I mean, come on. That's almost nothing to store the amount of email that I want on my computer here.

The next option we have to consider is how many emails we want to store on our local computer. We have three different options here in terms of time, the last seven days, the last 30 days or the last 90 days.

How far back do you want to go if you are in offline mode? You may need to experiment with this. And you know, sometimes maybe just the past week is good enough, but you can choose from those three different durations.

Next we can choose if we want to download those attachments or not. Last but not least, you need to choose after logging out of your Google account, do you want to keep the offline data on your computer or do you want to remove it from your computer.

Where do you actually go to view your offline mail? Well once you have set this up and hit save changes, all you need to do is go to your browser and type in mail.google.com and then you will be brought directly to your inbox.

It'll be an offline inbox, but you'll still be able to access all of those emails and start to reply even though you're offline.

Multiple Email Signatures

Now adding or editing an email signature may not sound like a hidden feature, but I find that there are many Gmail users who don't realize that they can add multiple email signatures and see the benefit of doing so. So once again, if we go into all of our settings and on the general tab, we wanna scroll down to near the very bottom of this screen and we'll come to the signature area.

Now here you can see I've got my default signature here and you can edit it any way that you like, but you can have as many different signatures as you want. So for example here, I've got a second signature which I like to respond to for a different purpose, right?

Maybe I have a different tagline, maybe I want to include different links or different promotional links within this, depending on whom I'm sending it to. The other benefit of having multiple signatures is that you can use them for different purposes such as for new emails versus reply or forward emails only.

So for example, I'm gonna create a new one here and I'm just gonna call this one a reply email and I'm gonna say create. Then here I'm just gonna say something like, you know, Scott F, maybe something really, really basic like that.

That's all I want it to say when I'm replying or forwarding to an email, just like that. So now down below when I come to my signature defaults, I can say okay, for new emails, yeah, I want you to use my signature, but when it comes to reply or forwarding, I want you to use my reply email, just like that.

So now I can come down here and hit save changes and that behavior will be there. However, it gets better.

So for example, I'm gonna open up and start a brand new email and at the bottom of the screen, you can see that we have this little pen icon which is actually an insert signature function. So by default, here is the correct signature that I want for most of my emails.

But if I come down here and select insert signature, I have access to all of my signatures. So maybe I want that second one, Scott Friesen number two, and maybe I wanna add some further details here as well.

You can have as many signatures as you want. You can even choose to turn off the signature altogether, depending on that message, but the flexibility of having and managing those multiple signatures can be great even if you're only using a single email address.

More Menu Space

Last but not least, my final hidden feature has to do with getting more out of your menu here on the left-hand side. Often we have a large number of labels here and even if I click the more option here, I still need to scroll to see all of my options.

And let's be honest. This isn't even that many labels altogether.

In many cases, it's this chat and rooms and meeting options or these areas that take up an awful lot of real estate. Well what if I don't make use of chat or meet? Even if I minimize this, it might still get in the way, depending on how many labels I have here.

Well if we go back into our settings and say see all settings, all we need to do is click on the chat and meet option and we can turn both chat and we can turn meet off. We can turn chat to off and we can say hide the meet section in the main menu.

I'm gonna select save changes. I'm gonna be brought back to my main screen.

And now they are gone. Now I've got full access to everything here on the left-hand side.

Now I would love to hear from you next. Which of these seven hidden features were your favorites or did I miss something from my list?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you for watching today's video.

I hope you like and subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple