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Introduction

[Scott] Wouldn't it be great if you could access all of your calendars in one place, I mean, all of your Google calendars and Microsoft Outlook calendars, all of your work and business calendars from the very same screen?

Well, you can and you can also use all of these additional features for free with Woven.

So in today's video, I'm going to give you a guided tour and give you three great reasons why you should check out this free calendar.

Hello, everyone.

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

Manage all your Google & Outlook calendars in Woven

And the number one reason why you'll want to check out Woven is that you can bring in all of your calendars into a single place.

I know for many of us, you don't have a choice as to what your work calendar is.

You may use Google Calendar in your personal life, but perhaps you have to use Microsoft Outlook in your work or in your business life.

Well, now you can bring all of those calendars in the same place and never have to go back to those other calendars either.

Here, for example, I've got a combination of Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook events here.

And with Woven, it is a true two-way sync.

I don't have to worry that something is appearing on one of those other calendars and not showing up here.

So let me give you just a quick example.

Microsoft Calendar to Woven sync example

I'm actually going to open up Microsoft Outlook here.

You can see I've got these two events which do appear on my Woven calendar right here at my two lunch events.

But what I'm going to do is I'm gonna create a test event, and let's just call it something simple like that.

I'm going to say, Test Event, okay, Test Event from Outlook, just so we know which one we're looking at here.

And why don't we make it an hour in length, and I'm going to say save and close.

So here we have our test event in Outlook.

Maybe this is my personal calendar and Google is my work calendar.

Well, if I open up Woven again, you will now see that it appears here within my Woven calendar.

I can see it, I can access it, I can change it, but what if I have to change the dates?

You know what, I have to move that till tomorrow at 1:00 p.m., so, I'm gonna move it over here.

Let's jump back to our Outlook calendar.

It may take just a few seconds, but there it is.

Now it's updated here, everything is in sync.

So I never actually have to come back here to Microsoft.

I can manage everything right here from within Woven.

Now, the second reason why I think you're going to want to try Woven out for yourself is the ability to create templates.

How to create smart templates in Woven

And templates can be so great because there's oftentimes where you're creating recurring meetings that have the same information time and time again.

Think about something like a team meeting where you're always including the same four or five people, maybe you need to include a link to a particular document, maybe there's a particular video conferencing link that you always need to add as well.

So, to create your own template, all you need to do is come up here and hit the plus button, and we're going to say Template.

We're going to create a new template.

And in this case, I'm going to call this a client meeting, a client review meeting.

Let's do that, okay?

So this may be a particular meeting, I've given it a title, and now I've got this area here where I can create very specific details as to what I want to happen with that client review meeting.

Now, my very first option here is to publish this as a scheduling link.

We're going to come back to this so that you can use Woven to replace things like Calendly so you can just send out a link and people can book time with you, but I'm going to leave that off in this particular case because I want to send out this invitation on my own.

So I can come down here, and the first thing I can choose is duration.

So for example, let's choose something that is maybe not typical.

I'm gonna say an hour and 30 minutes.

I know for most of us, our default time within our calendars are probably a half hour or maybe one hour.

And whenever you book a particular meeting that's different than that, you gotta remember, Oh yeah, I gotta drag this down or I gotta change the time.

Well, the great thing about templates is you never have to do that.

You can choose it here, and it's always going to remember that as we apply the template.

Next up we can choose our available time.

So this is really key if you only want to schedule these meetings on certain days or times.

Create available time for Woven event templates

So if I open this up here, I can say, you know what, I never want these client review meetings to happen on Fridays or Mondays.

And in terms of timeframe, I always want to make sure that they happen in the afternoon, so, I'm going to say 12:00 p.m to 5:00 p.m.

Now you can adjust a few other things down here in terms of no sooner than, no later than, and even include a buffer time.

I'm going to come back to this in a Moment when we start looking at that public link, but let's just keep this one relatively simple.

We've added some specific timeframes as to when we want to have this client review meeting.

I come back to the template area here.

I can specify which calendar it's on, whether it's going to be on my Google Calendar or my Microsoft Outlook calendar.

I give it a specific color as well.

I can say that maybe these are going to be this sort of orangy color here.

And then I can also choose my default reminder time because maybe this is such an important meeting, I want 30 minutes in advance.

Remember you can only choose one default time within Google Calendar or within Microsoft Outlook.

You'd have to come down here and remember, right?

Every time you create that meeting, you have to remember to adjust that reminder time.

Well, you don't have to do that with templates.

And then at the very bottom, we've got several options here in terms of, do we want to add the same people each and every time?

Is there a specific conferencing link that we want to add each time?

So maybe if I click on this, I've actually already input a bit of information here earlier just a fake address and a password, but this is always going to be included in this template.

I don't have to retype it, I don't have to copy and paste it from anywhere else.

All right, now that I'm good with this, all of my changes are automatically saved.

Applying templates within Woven

Next up I want to be able to apply this template, okay?

So when I come up here, I'm going to schedule a new event.

I'm going to say new event, and here are some of my most popular templates.

Here's my client review meeting that we just created.

So I'm going to click on that, and what it's going to do is it's going to say, well, let's, you know, if you want to add any information or change any information, you can do so here, but I think the most key part is this one: find a time.

Now you'll notice over on the right, it's actually highlighted my available times.

Like for this week, this is really my only window of available time.

Remember I said no Fridays and only after 12:00, between 12:00 and 5:00.

If I go to next week, you can see I've got a little more time because I've got nothing scheduled and I'm available on that Tuesday as well.

But let's go back here.

So already it's telling me where I should be looking.

I can click on this calendar.

I can click outside of these times if I want to, but I want to come back over here to the left.

If I say find a time, now you can see it's actually highlighted my only available time for this week.

I can either click on these ones within the calendar or I can scroll down and pick something in the future as well.

Maybe I'm going to say, you know what, yeah, 3:00 to 4:30, that sounds great.

Let's set that time.

There's that client review meeting.

Again I can still add and edit information here if I want on the left, but I'm going to say schedule, and now I'm ready to go.

It's an hour and a half.

I'm going to get that 30-minute reminder time in advance.

Everything that I set up in the template is ready to go.

Create a public or private scheduling link in Woven

Now, the third thing I want to cover today has to do with public links.

And what do I mean by public links?

Well, how often are you trying to schedule time with someone and there's all this back and forth, right?

All this email back and forth or texting, you available here? "No." "How about this?" "No." "How about this? How about this?" "No, no, no" back and forth, back and forth until you find the available time?

Well, that's where schedulers like Calendly can be very important, where you can just send them one link.

And then they have access to when you are available, and they can book time with you.

Well, Woven has that built right in here.

So you don't have to use a third-party application.

So in this case, what we're going to do is we're going to come up here, and we're going to hit plus again.

We've got actually two options here when it comes to scheduling link.

We can choose a one-time scheduling link, meaning that a person can only use this one time, and you're only using this with an individual, or you can use a public scheduling link.

And this is probably the more common one here or the one that I think you're going to use more often.

So let's create a public scheduling link.

And I'm going to say that this is an interview with Scott.

Maybe it's like a podcast interview or something like that.

Now we're going to get an option here on the left-hand side which is very similar to what we saw with the template before.

In fact, many of the same options here.

So here we have the publish as a scheduling link turned on, but before we copy this link and see what it looks like to the end user, let's just go down here and make sure that everything else is in order.

So one hour is that, you know what, I'm going to say 45 minutes.

That's the length of time.

Again, we've got our availability here.

Maybe this time around, I'm just going to say no Fridays, and I want it to start after 11:00 a.m., right?

That's what I'd like it to be, no earlier than 11:00 a.m.

Adding buffer times to scheduling links in Woven

I'm also going to come down here and take a careful look at the no sooner than and no later than.

Now, this is important because chances are when you're sending out a public link, you don't want people to be able to book you within minutes of them receiving that link, right?

You want to be able to have some buffer time.

So I'm going to say, you can't book me until two hours from right now, right?

You got to give me some warning as to when I can schedule and fit this into my calendar.

And I also like to give them so much leeway time.

I don't wanna give them my calendar availability for the next 12 weeks.

I'm going to say, you can book me out to two weeks.

So anything between two hours from now and two weeks from now, that's when I want people to be able to book me using this calendar link.

So let's go back here.

As we saw before, we can choose the calendar, we can add conferencing information, we can add the description, everything that we like, but let's keep it simple and save it as is here.

So already it's showing me this is what people could book me for this week.

What scheduling links look like to end-users

When I send out this link, but let's see what it's actually going to look like for the end user.

So here's the link here.

We could edit the URL if we want to customize this a little bit, but I'm just going to copy this link and let's open up an incognito window here and paste it.

So this is what your end user would see.

When they click this link, they're going to see something that looks a little bit like Woven, like we see here, and they're going to be able to see the availability here.

So they can either click on one of these time slots here right on the calendar, or they can look at sort of this column view here, right?

They can scroll through and select a time that's available to them.

So maybe they say to themselves, "Yeah, tomorrow 2:00 to 2:45, that sounds great, that works with my calendar, I'm going to click that."

All they have to do is input their name and their email address and schedule it and it will appear on your calendar.

So something that's going to replace maybe a cost or a third-party app in your life, you can do that right here within Woven.

Now, if you'd like to use Woven for yourself, it is currently still 100% free and you can do so at woven.com.

Thank you so much for watching today's video.

And if you have any further questions, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

Remember being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Why using Pivot Tables is important

[Instructor] This video is brought to you by Pipedrive.

Pipedrive is the easy to use CRM designed to increase your sales.

Stay tuned to the end of the video to learn more.

(upbeat instrumental)

When dealing with your spreadsheets it can be difficult to determine what all of this data means.

So in today's video I'm gonna show you everything you need to know about how to set up your own pivot table, right here in Google Sheets.

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

And I know a lot of people tend to be intimidated by a pivot table, but I'm gonna show you how it is much easier than you think and how you can interpret this data in any way that you like.

How to start a Pivot Table in Google Sheets

What we need to do is come up here to Data and about halfway down we've got the option to create a Pivot table.

We're gonna select that.

And the first thing that we need to do is select our data range.

So we're gonna select this little icon here to select that data range.

And what's most important is that you also include the headers.

Because that is key as we create our pivot table.

So I'm gonna come down here.

I'm gonna select the data range that I want including my headers.

And I'm gonna say OK.

And the next thing we need to decide is if we want to put this pivot table on a new sheet or an existing sheet.

Now I typically choose a new sheet.

That's what we're gonna use today because it just gives us a lot more space.

But if you want you can have a pivot table right over here, to the right.

So I'm gonna say, Create, it's gonna open up a new sheet and now we've got a blank slate,

Understanding the layout of a Pivot Table

Something for us to start working with.

Now here we've got our rows where we're gonna decide what types of data, what types of information we want to display here.

And then on the top, we have our columns where we get to choose what we want to display here.

And the power of a pivot table is it's gonna bring these two values together.

And it's gonna show us all of this great data here in between.

Now on the right hand side, we have our Pivot table editor and right off the bar you can see that it's giving us a few different suggestions.

Now there's a chance that Google may have guessed correctly as to what you are after, but we wanna look and get comfortable with using and creating our own pivot table.

'Cause there's a good chance there's something specific that you're after.

If you ever need to change the selected area you can always do that here as well.

For example if your data set expands or includes more information

Adding Rows to your Pivot Table in Sheets

But we're gonna leave that for right now.

So first off, let's start with Rows.

We're gonna hit this Add button and you can see we have all of our headers from our dataset.

From everything here that we see on sheet one.

So for myself, for our example, I'm gonna choose my sales Rep.

So I'm gonna select Rep and here you can see they are now all displayed here on the left hand side.

Now I can choose if I want to order them in a particular way, because we're dealing with names it seems to only make sense that I'm gonna use it in ascending order.

And by default, we're gonna have this show totals checked.

Now you can always uncheck that but in most cases, when you're dealing with a pivot table you're gonna want to see this grand total data at the bottom as well.

Now, the other thing that you should note is that it's not as if this Add button becomes disabled because you can actually layer on additional rows and additional columns as a part of creating your pivot table.

So for example, if I hit add rows again, this time I could choose something like Items.

And here you can see, now I've got a second row, which is breaking out the products which these sales reps have sold.

So I can see, for example Andrews has sold binders and pencils, but someone like a Jones has sold binders, pens, pen sets, and pencils.

So we can start to layer that information as well.

But let's keep things relatively simple.

If you hit the X here, that's going to remove it from the pivot table.

And I will do the same thing here as well.

Adding Columns to your Pivot Table in Sheets

It's not minimized. It's actually going to remove it.

Next up, let's choose what we want to be displayed here amongst our columns.

So I'm gonna hit that Add button again and we get the same choices here except for our representatives because they're already listed here.

And what I'm gonna choose in this case is I'm gonna choose the actual items, the actual products that my Reps are selling.

I'm gonna select that.

And here you can see, we've got our five different products.

You know, again, going back to our original sheet, it can be hard to tell even how many different items we're selling or how many different Reps I have.

But of course the pivot table summarizes all of that data right here for us.

So I've got my products here across the right.

I've got my representatives here across the left hand side.

Selecting Values for your Pivot Table in Sheets

Now, next up, we want to go to our Values.

What do we want to display in the intersection of our items and our representatives?

So I'm gonna hit that Add button once again.

And we've got a variety of different choices here.

Now, in my case, I am gonna choose units.

I wanna see who is selling how many units.

So I'm gonna select this units option.

And immediately we've got all of this great data available to us.

So for example, in a snapshot, I can see that all of my Reps have sold at least some binders, right?

Everyone is selling binders.

But then in the very next column I can see that only three of them have ever sold a desk within this particular timeframe.

So, immediately I can start to break down complicated pieces of information, or complicated data set, and find out trends and find out information that I'm after here.

Changing Values in the Pivot Table

Once again, we've got a few different choices here in terms of how we want to summarize this data.

If I choose this option here I could summarize it by a few different ways including averages and counts and maximums and minimums.

I'm gonna leave that one as some right here, but if I go over here I can also show it as a percentage, if I want to.

So for example, maybe I want to show a percentage of the row.

So in this case, you can see that Andrews, for example, most of his sales have been coming from pencils, right?

84% of his sales have been coming from pencils.

And I can quickly see that although Smith was one of the few people to sell a desk, that only makes up 1.28% of all of the units that she has sold in this timeframe as well.

So again, a lot of flexibility in terms of how you can display that data.

And because we've left those grand totals marks checked we have the grand total here both by the Reps on the right hand side but we also see it by the products as well.

So I can quickly see that Jones seems to be my top sales person here, selling nearly 400 items in total.

He's also pretty even across the things that he's selling here.

Thompson, maybe Thompson is relatively new to the team, selling quite a bit less than everyone else but also only selling two different products.

Adding & Editing Filters in the Pivot Table

Now, the last thing that we wanna look at here, when we're designing our pivot table is filters.

So if we select Add again, we can filter things by another unit or another way of looking at things.

So in this case, I'm gonna select Unit Cost.

I wanna be able to filter out maybe some of my cheaper or my more expensive items.

So I'm gonna select Unit Cost.

Nothing's gonna happen immediately here because I need to decide how I want to filter out that information.

So it's saying right now it's showing all items.

I'm gonna select that.

And here you can see it's got a list of all of the prices, all of my Unit Costs here.

I'm just gonna say Clear 'cause I don't wanna display all of them right now.

And maybe I just want to display everything that is $5 or less.

So I'm just gonna select these first four here and I'm gonna select OK.

And now you can see that my pivot table has shrunk a little bit.

Because desks are my high-end items, so it's not even displayed here.

It's much more expensive than $5, but I can see in that $5 and less range.

Okay now things are a little bit different in terms of grand totals and who's selling more and who's not selling anything at all in certain areas here.

If I come back to the pivot table I'm just gonna hit Clear one more time.

And maybe I just wanna take a look at my high-priced items.

So I'm gonna select those top two.

I'm gonna select OK.

Once again, my pivot table changes because my desk is the high-priced item.

I've only got three Reps who have sold a desk and here are their numbers as well.

If I wanna kill that filter, I could either come here and just say Select all.

So that's gonna include everything or I can hit this X and come back.

Remember a pivot table is dynamic.

You can keep coming in here and changing the values that you want displayed and the filters that you want to add as a part of your data.

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Overview of DeskTime time tracker

[Scott Friesen] Do you ever get to the end of your workday and wonder where did all of that time go or perhaps you manage a team and you'd like to know just how productive your employees actually are?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at a very cool time tracker which is gotta show you all of that good data.

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

And today we are taking a look at DeskTime.

DeskTime shows you real-time analytics of what you are doing so you can improve on your own productivity.

It's also great for freelancers, if you want to track your time or your projects but it's also fantastic for businesses and teams who want to keep an eye on their employees and see what they are doing, making sure that they either check in or check out at particular times and make sure that they're not wasting all of their time on unproductive apps like we see here.

How to get started with DeskTime

Now to get started with DeskTime all you need to do is download the app to your computer.

DeskTime is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux computers.

And after that, there's really not much to it.

DeskTime is a simple application that just sits on your computer and monitors all of the websites and applications that you are working on or using throughout the course of the day.

DeskTime dashboard and data

And here within my DeskTime, I get a bit of a snapshot of what my yesterday was like.

It's gonna show me when I started my workday.

It's gotta show when I left.

And it's also gonna give me some really valuable numbers here such as my productive time, which is gonna be based on the apps and the websites which I choose to be productive.

How long DeskTime was actually recording my time and even gives me an effectiveness score and a productivity score which I find really, really interesting because of course these two things are different.

And just because you spent a lot of time at work or at your computer doesn't necessarily mean that you had a productive day.

But I think what's most valuable here is something that is called the productivity bar.

And here we can see a snapshot of my entire day.

Each of these vertical bars represents a five-minute increment so I can actually go over and I can hover through here and see exactly what I was doing in those five minutes.

And look at how many apps I actually clicked on, how many websites I should say in this case that I clicked on in just a five-minute span.

Now the good news is for the most part, I was productive in that timeframe.

However you can see that there's something here which is orange.

I did spend a little bit of time on Facebook and Twitter here as well as you can see as the day grew on, I spent a little more time on some of my unproductive and maybe social media websites as the day wore on.

But I get to see a nice snapshot of everything that is happening throughout that day.

DeskTime also allows you to fill in the blanks here.

Make manual adjustments to your time tracking

You can see that there's a few gaps where I am not at my computer.

Now it doesn't mean that these gaps were unproductive. Maybe I was at a physical meeting, for example, here in this 15-minute slot.

All I needed to do is click on this slot and I can give it a description.

I can say, well, this was a meeting with Jane.

Maybe we were in a meeting room, for example.

And I gotta say that was productive time because we were talking about a particular topic or maybe a client project.

So I'm gonna hit save in that case.

And I was gonna update that time.

You can see that now it's all green because I've manually added that in here.

Here, for example, earlier I added this as another offline time.

This is actually my lunch break.

I already gave this a label and it's just neutral, right?

It's just a neutral time.

It's not productive or unproductive.

We all deserve a break.

And so that's why this area is grayed out here.

So you can go and fill in these gaps if you need to, if you wanna get a fuller picture.

Down below you can also see some areas here where you were working on a particular project.

And again, these are all editable.

So if you need to adjust them

Identifying productive and non-productive apps

Or change the duration you can do so as well.

But I think what you really want to do, if you start off with DeskTime, is take a look at what is grouped under productive apps, unproductive apps, and neutral apps because in some cases you may need to make some changes.

For example, at first YouTube was listed as an unproductive app. And I think for many of us that might be the case, but for someone like myself who creates YouTube videos, that's actually a productive app in most cases.

So all I needed to do is come over here and I can choose if I want to make it productive, unproductive, or neutral.

And I can also do this across all employees as well. Maybe there's a difference, right, between myself and between my employees.

I've left a couple of these social media sites as unproductive because usually I'm just sort of burning off some steam and just looking up some other things.

And then there's some things that are just simply neutral here as a part of it too.

But again, it's very easy for us to go over them and adjust them if we need to if we want to change that particular category.

Speaking of categories, when we come down to the bottom here, we get sort of a nice snapshot of the entire day.

So each and every one of these apps or websites can be categorized into a variety of different places here.

So here you can see, I was very fortunate. I had a very extremely light email day yesterday, spent a little bit of time on social media but the bulk of my time was within my office apps.

I spent almost three and a half hours dealing with particular office apps there.

And so that's probably one of the main reasons why I have such a high relatively high productivity score here because I did spend the majority of my day within my office apps.

Viewing team time tracking data

But we can go one step further and go here to the dashboard and see how my team was doing yesterday.

So let's go back to Monday 'cause there's a little more data there.

Now unfortunately, myself and my coworker, we were both late. So that's letting us know here that we both arrived a little later or started our day a little bit later than we intended to.

But here again we have now a snapshot over the course of the entire day for the entire team.

And if I come down here below, it'll also give me a preview of some of their data as well.

So Jane, my coworker, I can see their productive scores and their productive times as well.

This can be a great way to see, you know, who is the most effective or most productive across your teams.

And some of DeskTime's clients include businesses well over a hundred, even several hundred employees.

So this can be very helpful.

You can break it down by individual teams as well.

And last but not least, you can check out all these productive apps and unproductive apps.

Again, this time we were looking at it across teams as a whole.

So a lot of great things here that you can work on.

Using a timer for projects in DeskTime

You may also notice in the bottom corner of my screen I've actually got a timer that is working at the moment.

What you can do is actually keep track of certain projects within DeskTime as well.

So let me minimize this just for a second.

And I'm gonna come over here to my projects. Here I've got a few sample projects that I've created.

Now, in order for us to keep track of them, you can just start this simple timer which is built right into it.

And I've spent about 33 minutes on this. If I say stop, now that's gonna be calculated.

How much time I spent on that project.

Maybe I'm done with that one. I'm gonna go onto this Trello board creation.

And I'm gonna say this is actually my setup template board. I'm gonna start that timer.

I can minimize this and just drag it to the corner of my screen.

And now I can go about my day. I can work on that particular task and then DeskTime is gonna record that for me.

It's gonna record that project time.

Here, for example, is that YouTube project that I just finished with the timer.

So it's recorded it right here. I can keep track of how long I've spent on each project.

Again, a great tool for freelancers. If you need to know how much time you've spent amongst your clients or amongst particular projects, great stuff there.

Adding work schedules and absence calendar

The last thing I wanna show you here is that you can add both work schedules here

and also an absence calendar. So for example, if I'm gonna take some vacation time

off on Thursday, I don't want DeskTime to think that I had an extremely unproductive

or I arrived incredibly late to work on Thursday. You can add that as well. So if you want to add schedules absence tracking, sick days, rest days, unpaid leave. You can do that all here within DeskTime as well. So if you love the numbers, if you want to dive deeper into either your own numbers, if you work for yourself or you're a freelancer or if you manage a team and wanna see how your entire team is doing,

I recommend that you check out DeskTime be sure to check them out by clicking

the link in the description below. 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.

Why using Remote Desktop is helpful

This video is brought to you by Woven.

Woven lets you access all of your calendars in one place and gives you powerful scheduling tools to help you save time.

Stay tuned to the end of the video to learn more.

Wouldn't it be great if you could access your office computer or perhaps your home computer from anywhere in the world?

Well, you can, and it's actually a lot easier than you think.

In today's video, we're taking a look at Chrome Remote Desktop by Google, and I'm gonna show you everything that you need to know.

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

And first, I'm gonna show you why you may want to do this, and then I'm gonna show you the how, so you can set this up yourself.

Accessing another computer with Chrome Remote Desktop

So here we are at remotedesktop.google.com, and I've already set this up with my home computer. That's why you see this DESKTOP-Home.

I'm actually on my laptop at the moment, but let's say that there's a particular file that I want to get to, or maybe there's an actual application that I don't have installed on my laptop, and I need to use it for just a few minutes.

All I need to do, once you are set up, is to click on this.

And what's gonna happen is it's going to reach out to that computer.

Now, you get to create your own custom security PIN, so only you can have access to this.

And now, in just a few seconds here, I am within my home computer.

Now, on the right-hand side, you can see that there's this little blue arrow. This is gonna be very helpful because if we put this into full screen, it's just a little more comfortable to see here.

But this is actually the desktop of my home computer.

And let's say that there's a particular photo, maybe an image that I didn't upload to Google Photos or Dropbox or the Cloud in some way, I can only access it here.

Maybe it's this one here, this picture of a very, very, very old Scott.

How to download & upload files with Chrome Remote Desktop

So, all I need to do is if I come over here back and expand this little menu, I'm gonna scroll down and file transfer, I think it's probably one of the most helpful features when you are remoting into another computer.

So, in this case, I wanna download that file. I'm gonna select download the file.

We're gonna get a pretty standard dialogue menu here. I'm gonna select that particular photo, I'm going to hit open.

And now, what's happening is that it has downloaded that file to my laptop.

Let me go out of full screen, just so you know this for certain.

So, here's the view of my home computer, but you can see down below this is actually on the laptop.

I've downloaded that file from my home computer here to the laptop.

And, if we go back to this blue menu on the right-hand side, you can see that we can do it the opposite way as well.

Maybe there's something on my laptop computer that I would like to have on my home computer.

Well, I can do that here as well.

But, remember, you're not just limited to files.

Using an application on a remote computer

Because sometimes, maybe, there's a particular application that you need access to. Maybe it's a very large application, something that you just need to quickly download something from or edit something from.

I'll just use a very, very simple example here. I'm gonna open up Open Office.

So, here, you can see the application is actually opening up here and I can start writing this document because maybe I don't have Open Office on my laptop for some reason, and I need a particular feature or need to edit a document right here.

I can do that. I can save the file and then transfer it to my laptop computer if needed.

And when I'm all done, all I need to do is go over here and hit disconnect.

And I will be returned, right here, to the Chrome Remote Desktop screen.

How to setup Chrome Remote Desktop

So, let's take a look at the second step here so that you can set this up for yourself.

I'm just gonna go out of the full screen view here for a second.

Where you're gonna want to go is remotedesktop.google.com.

And that's gonna bring you to a screen like this. Or you can just type in Chrome Remote Desktop, and this will be your first search result.

Now, what we need to do is set this up.

So, if I want to be able to access this laptop, the computer that I'm on right now, I need to come down here to say this device.

This is what we've set up already, right? These are the remote devices that I can access in the future, but I need to set up this remote device.

So, I'm gonna come down here and say, "turn on."

And it's going to ask me to choose a particular name.

Now, I want to add something here that's a little more descriptive, right? So, I’m gonna say something like, I don't know, maybe "personal" or something along those lines, so I know which laptop it is.

Maybe I want to put my name beside it or something along those lines so I can identify it.

I'm gonna hit next here, and the second step we're gonna have here is to choose a PIN.

Now, it suggests that we choose a PIN that's at least six numbers in length. It does have to be numerical. Of course, the longer you create it, the more secure it's going to be.

So, let me just type in one here. It's gonna ask us to reenter it one more time.

And by default, this is usually checked. I'm gonna uncheck it and you can choose what is best for you. If you don't want to send information back to Google, you can uncheck this box.

And I'm going to hit start.

So, we can choose to save this password if we need to.

And here you can see now, we have this device.

So, now, if I go back and I do it in reverse, if I go back to my home computer, for example, or really, if I go into almost any other computer, I can come back and log into my laptop.

Important notice about using Remote Desktop

Now, the one thing to keep in mind is that the computer you are trying to access must be on and online. It cannot be shut down or off. We are not able to turn a computer on remotely. It already has to be on, and it probably goes without saying that it’s already connected to the internet.

So, here, you can see that both my home computer and the one I'm currently on are online. So, I can go ahead and access it.

Now, one other feature that you may find helpful is remote support. If you click on this option here, you can actually let someone else access this computer and generate a one-time access code.

This can be great in a support situation or if you happen to provide some type of tech consulting. You can use this to remotely access another computer.

Now, if you'd like to access all of your calendars in one place, I recommend that you check out Woven. Woven allows you to bring in all of your Google and Microsoft calendars into a single view. They also allow you to create custom tags, so you can keep track of everything you’re doing in a given week.

I especially like their template feature, so I don’t have to type out the same thing again and again. It also comes with some very powerful scheduling tools, so you don’t have to use third-party apps.

If you’d like to check out Woven for yourself, go to woven.com or see the link in the description below.

Do you wish that you could customize the way your Google Calendar looks and feels? Well, in today's video, I'm showing you seven tips and tricks so that you can view your schedule the way that you want.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, SaneBox. SaneBox is the email tool to help you keep your inbox under control. Why so few emails here? That's because SaneBox is using artificial intelligence to help filter out my email. I particularly like the SaneLater folder, where I can go back and review unimportant emails as it learns the way that I deal with my messages.

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

Different Calendar View Shortcut Keys

Let's get started with tip number one: customizing your Google Calendar views. You may already be familiar with the dropdown menu here, which allows you to switch between different views like day, week, or month.

Here’s a quick tip: instead of using the dropdown, you can use keyboard shortcuts to toggle between these views more efficiently. For example:

• Press D for Day view.
• Press W for Week view.
• Press M for Month view.

These shortcuts let you switch views quickly without navigating through the menu.

Another useful feature is the option to hide weekends. If your calendar primarily focuses on weekdays and you find weekends distracting, you can simply uncheck the “Show weekends” option. This will give you a more streamlined view of your workweek and help you see more of your calendar in the available space.

So, next time you want to customize your calendar view, try using these shortcuts and options to better fit your needs!

Go To Date on Calendar Shortcut Key

Let's move on to another useful shortcut key: G, which stands for Go To. This feature allows you to quickly jump to any specific date in your calendar.

Here’s how it works:

1. Press G on your keyboard.
2. A small window will appear where you can enter any date you want to navigate to.
3. For example, if you want to see your calendar for December 25th, 2021, just type in “12/25/2021” and hit Enter. Your calendar will instantly jump to that date.

This shortcut is particularly handy if you need to check events far in the future or the past without scrolling through months or years. It’s a fast way to get to any date you’re interested in without having to click around.

So next time you need to jump to a specific date, just remember to use G and save yourself some time!

Go To Today on Calendar Shortcut Key

That also brings me to my next shortcut key, which is T as in today, if I hit T on my keyboard, I will automatically go back to today. So whether I'm reviewing something in the past, or whether I'm going fast forward into the future, I can just hit T on my keyboard, and go immediately back to today.

New Calendar Event Dock View

Here's a handy tip for adjusting event times in Google Calendar: Use the dock to sidebar feature to make it easier to set the start and end times for your events.

Here's how it works:

1. Create a New Event: Click on the calendar space where you want to create a new event and start entering your details.
2. Dock the Event Window: In the top right corner of the event creation window, you'll see an option to dock it to the sidebar. Click this icon.
3. Adjust Your Event Time: Once docked, you’ll see a day view on the right side of your screen. You can now:
   • Drag the Event: Adjust the start and end times by dragging the event in the day view. Simply click and drag the edges of the event to extend or shorten the duration.
   • Move the Event: Drag the entire event up or down the timeline to adjust its position within the day.

This feature helps you visually manage your schedule, making it easier to set accurate times for your events without having to scroll through dropdown menus. It’s especially useful if you want a better view of your day while editing the event details.

Side Panel Map View for Event Locations

Now, the next one on our list is something that is quite new and something that I've started to use a lot more frequently.

And that has to do with incorporating a map view here within Google Calendar.

Now, quite often, I will try to include the address or the actual location of the place that I need to be.

I find this most helpful because I'm traveling with my smartphone, and if you click this on your smartphone, it's automatically gonna open up the Maps App.

But here within the desktop version of Google Calendar, you'll notice on the right-hand side, we actually have a Maps view.

If you open it up, you'll get a miniature Maps view of what's going on here.

So let's say that I'm not sure where this lunch is taking place. If I click on this event and then click on the map, what's going to happen is on the right-hand side, it's gonna bring up that address, and I can say, "Oh, Anton's yeah, I know where that is. I know how much time I need to get myself to get to that location."

Here's another lunch I have set up later in the week. If I click on this, and again, I'm gonna click on the address here, it's immediately gonna bring up this miniature map on the right-hand side.

And if I want to, I can even see the reviews and other pieces of information that's down below as well.

So if you happen to have address or location information within your events, not only is this gonna be helpful to you on your mobile device, but it's gonna be helpful to you here within the desktop view as well.

Adding Time Zone View to the Calendar

Next up, we wanna talk about time zones.

And I know for most of us, we are often working with either clients or colleagues that are in a different time zone than us.

But on the left-hand side, by default, you're only gonna see the one time zone. You're gonna see your local time zone.

Well, let's see if we can change that, or shall I say, enhance that?

Up in Settings, we wanna click the gear icon, then we want to click settings, and on the left-hand side, we wanna click on time zone.

Now, here we have the option to display a secondary time zone. You're gonna have to check this box first, and then down below, you can check or select any other time zone that you like.

So here I am gonna select Eastern Time, but you can also customize the label. So I just gonna say Eastern ET, as an Eastern Time here. Okay, that's gonna be the label that I wanna see on my screen.

So if I go back to my calendar here, now you can see I've got home, which of course is where I am currently, but now I've got Eastern Time here as well.

So no longer do I need to do the math, or if I'm on a phone call and say something like, "Hey Scott, can you meet at 4:00 PM Eastern Time?" I can just look at my calendar and say, "Ah, yeah, 4:00 p.m. Eastern, yeah, looks open, sure, we can definitely set up a meeting at that time."

So this can be really helpful, especially if there's a particular time zone that you're needing to calculate or figure out what their time is as well.

Viewing World Clocks on the Calendar

But let's look at another way in which we can utilize time zones or take advantage of time zones here on Google Calendar.

If we go back to Settings, we're gonna stay here in this time zone area. Actually, we're gonna come down to the world clock, which is just below.

And here we can check this box that says, Show World Clock. Now, of course, you can choose how many of these different times that you would like to display, and you can customize which ones you want to display.

I'm just gonna leave them at the default here for this example, we're gonna show the UK, we're gonna show Alaska and we're gonna show New York.

Now, if we go back, nothing has changed in this area here, we still have Eastern Time displayed, but on the left-hand side, we have a live world clock.

So now if I need to debate, like, "Is it too late to call someone in the UK? 5:56, someone might still be in the office." Yeah, it's alright, "I can give them a phone call there right now."

So you can have a live world clock here on the left-hand side of your screen.

Now I'd love to hear from you next. What are some of your favorite Google Calendar view settings, or what's a question that you have about Google Calendar?

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

Thank you so much for watching today's video, don't forget to subscribe right here to the Simpletivity channel, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

You spend an awful lot of time with your email. So wouldn't it be nice if you had a collection of tools to make your email experience that much easier?

Well, in today's video, we're taking a look at an extension that doesn't just do one thing or two things. It has a whole mix of cool tools to help make your life so much easier.

Hello, everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress. And today I want to introduce you to Mailbutler.

Now Mailbutler does a variety of different things, but in today's video, we're gonna zero in on four of its core tools. Now in today's video, I'm gonna be showing you Mailbutler within Gmail, but Mailbutler is available for both Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook users as well.

Email Tracking

So let's take a look at one of the first cool features of Mailbutler, and that is Email Tracking. So I'm gonna compose a new message here, and I'm just gonna send it to a dummy email address here that I use from time to time, I'm just gonna say hello.

And how often have you sent a question or a message and wondering when someone actually receives it? Now you don't wanna seem like a pest following up on that email too early, wouldn't it be nice to know when that person has actually opened up that email?

Well, you can do that with Mailbutler. Here at the bottom of my message you can see that I have a variety of different tools, and this is exactly what the Mailbutler extension gives me.

Here is called Open Tracking and I've had it checked by default. Now you can also enable Link Tracking to know when someone has actually clicked on a link within your email, but we're only gonna to focus on Open Tracking at this time, when someone opens the email and how often it is open.

So with that enabled, all I have to do is just send this email like I would in any other email, I don't have to do anything special along with it. But I'm gonna be notified, and in fact, I'm gonna see that here on my screen when someone has actually opened up that email.

If I go to my sent folder here and you can see that there is this little icon similar to what we just saw in the previous email. So I know that these three emails have been opened, they've got this little blue double check mark, but here's the one that I just sent it has tracking enabled, but it's not yet opened.

So I'm just gonna go over and actually open up that particular email that I just sent here, and yeah, I've read it, blah, blah, blah, that type of thing on my end what I'm gonna see is that that now changes to the double check mark. So I can see exactly, hey, and if I hover over it first opened today at 1:34 p.m.

Now I can act on that if I need to, maybe I need to follow up with a phone call or maybe I want to check in and see if they have any further questions. So the ability to have email tracking and to see the history of that email is really, really powerful.

On top of that, Mailbutler has its own dashboard as well. And so here you can see, you can track all of your email that you have enabled email tracking on to see when it was first opened, if it was open multiple times, for example, if they've replied to it.

Schedule Send

A great way, again, to keep track, maybe not have all of your emails, but especially those that mean the most to you. Now, another great feature of Mailbutler is the ability to schedule an email to be delivered sometime in the future.

Now, of course, some of you may be familiar with this feature within Gmail. If you come down to the very bottom of your screen here and hit this dropdown arrow, we have this Schedule Send ability, but of course not every email application has this capability.

Here we see that there's a Schedule Send, this is the Mailbutler version. And this is what's special about this, yes, I can choose on my own when I would like to send this message, maybe I wanna send it tomorrow and I can choose, you know, anytime I want, maybe I want to send it tomorrow afternoon at 2:00 p.m.

However, when I've got an email address in the message already, it's gonna ask me if I'd like to optimize the delivery time for this individual. I'm gonna check this box and we're gonna see that that 2:00 p.m. now changes to 10:05 a.m.

Why is that? Well, Mailbutler has kept track of my previous messages and when this email address has opened them up or replied to my other messages in the past.

So it's using real data to say this is probably one of the best times that you could deliver a message to this particular individual in order for them to see it, in order for them to grab their attention and actually respond to your email. All I have to do now is hit schedule, and now that message will be delivered at that particular time.

Signatures

So it takes Send Later one step further using real data to help to optimize the delivery of that message. Let's move on to Signatures, which is something that is really special here within Mailbutler, 'cause I know many of you have asked questions about where can I go to create a great email signature.

Back inside the Mailbutler dashboard, all I need to do is come down here to Signatures, and here you can see here is a sample signature that I created in just under a minute. By selecting Add Signature, Mailbutler gives us a variety of different options, a variety of different templates that we can start out with and start to move things around.

And of course you can adjust your colors, add a logo, add your branding. In this particular example, you can add your own images and it's so easy to quickly and easily add your social media links for example, so that you can create a professional looking signature.

But the other great thing is that you can swap between a of signatures because some of you may be familiar that depending on who you're speaking to and the messaging behind it, you may have a particular signature that you would like to include. And when it comes to data, Mailbutler continues to track the progress and how successful these signatures are.

So for example, both the Click-through Rate and the Reply Rate will be recorded based on these signatures. So you may want to AB test a variety of signatures to see which one is more clickable, which ones are people actually paying attention to.

Now, when I jumped back over into my Gmail and I start to compose a message, all I need to do, if I don't like this default signature that I have set up here in Gmail, I can come down here to the Signature bar and I can select Scott's signature. I can put it right in here and continue with my message.

And again, if I need to swap that out, if I need to go to something different, I'm just gonna click New Signature as the example even though I haven't really set this one up, I can do so as well. Now, the last thing that I wanna show you here is the Advanced Contact Information.

Contact Information

As mentioned, Mailbutler gives you the ability to track emails and record history of your email messages. But wouldn't it be great if you could pull in some further information as well?

I'm gonna click on this message here and I may have to block out some of the content here just for privacy reasons. But now all I need to do is come over here to this Google sidebar and open up Mailbutler, and now I have additional information that I can use to take advantage of when I am corresponding with this individual.

Maybe I forgot the last time that we actually had a conversation together, or if they have opened up messages from me in the past. Mailbutler also provides you with some very simplified CRM information.

I can take a note about this sender, I can add a task or a to do list associated with this message, or with this contact as well. So whether you're wanting to track your emails, whether you want to schedule an optimal time to deliver those emails, manage your contacts, or create a professional signature, Mailbutler has something for you.

Be sure to check them out at mailbutler.io. Thank you so much for watching today's video, and if you have any questions, be sure to leave them for me in the comments down below.

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