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When it comes to the world of business, sales is your lifeblood.

No matter what you sell whether it's a product or a service, you need to make sales in order for your business, not only to survive but especially to thrive.

So in today's video, I wanna show you the importance of using a CRM tool and more importantly, to see if Pipedrive might be the best CRM tool for you.

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

And yes, a customer relationship management system.

Why a Sales CRM is important

Is very important for managing all of your clients and potential clients.

You want a central place to store their contact information, things like name and your email history and phone numbers and important things when you go to reach out to those contacts.

But really the core area of any CRM system is the pipeline or the sales funnel as we see here.

You need to manage those clients from the very first point of contact all the way to the end of your sales funnel where they sign a contract or they actually purchase your product or service.

So let's take a look at some of the crucial and essential features of Pipedrive.

Viewing leads & sales pipeline in Pipedrive

So here we are taking a look at a sample pipe line. And on the left hand side, we are starting with our leads, this may be when someone first reaches out and fills in our contact form on our website and all the way to the right we get to negotiations started, right. This is when they've actually signed a deal and they've won the deal

and we're actually going to start working with this client. But of course, no one goes

from the far left to the far right in just a few seconds or moments. Depending on your product and especially on the prices of those products,

there are probably several steps in between. Pipedrive makes it very easy and very clear where things are at and that's what I really love

Viewing deals & client records in Pipedrive

About Pipedrive is its simplicity.

So for example, if I click on this Wayne Enterprises deal, I can see exactly how long it's been in my various stages.

In the top left hand corner, I can see the value or the potential value of this deal.

I can see that there's actually two products involved in this particular deal, consulting services and webinar training here.

And if I'm about to jump into a meeting, if I know that this is something I'm working on today, all I need to do is scroll down and I've got my contact information.

I've got a phone number here and perhaps most importantly, I've got an activity feed here on the right hand side.

So I know when I've made changes to the deal, I know when I last made a phone call, when I made my first pitch to them et cetera and I can keep my notes right here within the deal.

But of course because it's a CRM system, I could click on Wayne Enterprises and see, is this the only active deal I've had with them or currently have with them?

And here I can see actually I've got two deals right now.

And so that's gonna be important.

Maybe they're two different contacts within the same organization or maybe it's the same contact and I need to manage the conversation.

I need to manage the sales process because there are two deals.

Sales forecasting in Pipedrive

So getting back to my workflow, my sales funnel here, let's take a look at some of the other things that are staring back at us.

So of course, we've got our numbers herein terms of the value of the products or the value of these deals.

And that's very important when it comes to forecasting.

However, as any sales person will know that not everyone who starts in the lead area is going to end up being a customer.

So we can't count on these numbers here.

We need to do some forecasting.

So here if I come up to the top right and hit Edit, I go into my edit mode and I can just drag things around if I need to rearrange the order of my sales funnel.

I can give things new names if I need to.

But here is that probability that I was talking about and this is really crucial when you're managing your sales funnel.

Typically on any sales funnel on the left hand side, you're gonna have your probability rather low because only a fraction or a small percentage of your leads are gonna turn into paying customers.

But hopefully as you work your way through to the final stages that probability grows.

And here you can see once I've made a proposal just from my own experience and from history, I believe that there's an 80% chance that they will actually close this deal.

There's another nice feature that you can add here, it's something that's called rotting in days and what that means is that I can give myself

Setting custom notifications in Pipedrive

A warning if something has been in one of these stages too long.

So let's say after I first made contact, I need to make sure that it keeps moving after three days.

I don't want anything sitting here in this stage for more than three days.

So that's why I've put three here.

Now, you don't have to give it probability and you don't have to give it in these rotting in periods as well but just some nice features here as a part of the setup.

So when I hit Save here, what you'll see if we go back to our pipeline is at the top, we have the probability of these deals.

So for example, I can see that there's perhaps a total of 72,000 listed here within this.

There might be a few other products that are added here as well but I can probably only count on roughly $36,000 for my income or for my sale, I should say.

And that's just based on history, right.

That may be roughly 50% of these deals are gonna be able to work its way through to the very end.

Taking action with activities in Pipedrive

Let's look at some of the other helpful things that Pipedrive does so that we can stay on top of our sales process.

You'll notice that we have a few different colors here, we've got a green icon, we've got some red and we've got a little yellow warning sign as well.

What do all of these mean?

Well, the green means that I've got an activity that is due today.

So if I click on this one, on this George Foreman deal, if I click on it, you can see that I am due to give my first pitch today.

Now, once I've done that, once I've checked it off here by marking this little radio button, what Pipedrive is going to do is automatically open up this schedule dialogue.

And this is one of those features that I really enjoy with the CRM system.

It's not going to force me to add another activity but again, as any good sales person will know, you need to be thinking ahead.

So after that first pitch, depending on how it went, what is my next step?

What should I be doing next?

Well, I think a phone call probably makes a lot of sense but if I gave that pitch today, maybe I'm going to call them in two days time.

And if I want, I can see a preview of my calendar here on the right hand side and I can get to do that early in the morning.

I'm gonna try and group some of my calls together.

So I'm gonna do that at 10 o'clock.

If I want, I can add some additional notes here but I'm just going to hit Save.

And so now that little green icon turns to grey.

That means that I have an activity coming up.

I have an activity in the queue, it's just not due in the moment.

So if I click on any of these other ones here, you can see, oh, my first pitch is tomorrow with this client.

That's good, what about red and yellow?

Well, red, you can probably already guess, it means that I'm overdue.

Okay, I was supposed to make this followup call three days ago but I haven't yet.

So that's maybe where I should be putting my attention.

And then when it comes to this little yellow warning icon, what that means is I don't have an activity.

I've got nothing planned for this client.

So I should be thinking about what is the next steps so I can make that contact and start to push them through, start to guide them through my sales process.

Adding products to Pipedrive

Now another nice feature here is that we can add a product so it's that much easier to add them to a deal.

Why don't we open up this Coke deal here for example and I've already got some dollar value here but let's just say it's a dummy value.

This was just an initial value that I set up with this client.

Let's say that I've started a discussion with them and now we've got a better feel of what they're interested in.

Well, what you can do is create products or services in advance so when I come in here, all I have to do is click on this field and say, oh, they're actually interested in having me come and speak, that's really good so I'm gonna hit that as save.

And now that is listed here as my deal.

I've already given it a preset price.

I can come in here and change that price, right.

If it differs from my standard pricing or if I wanna give a discount but you can pre set up, let me go here to the product section just to show you, I can add additional products, give them a product code and even a default value here so I can manage that on the fly.

So if you're needing a better way to manage all of your clients and a more efficient way to manage your sales process, check out Pipedrive, click the link in the description to try Pipedrive free for 30 days and receive 25% off your first three months.

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.

Do you wanna look better, sound better and just overall have a better Zoom experience?

Well, in today's video, I'm gonna show you seven settings that you should tweak or at the very least review so that you can get the very best out of Zoom.

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

And we're gonna be spending our time right here in these Zoom settings.

How to check for Zoom updates

Now, when you open up your desktop settings, just in case you see something that is different in your settings, what I want you to do is come up here to your profile picture, and I wanna show you how to check for updates.

Now, if it's a major update, Zoom will probably prompt you anyhow, but just in case you don't see one of these settings in your Zoom account, you wanna come up here hit your profile picture and select Check for Updates.

Make sure that you're on the latest release.

Okay, next up let's hit that gear icon

Upload a profile picture to Zoom

And jump into tip number one and this one has to do with looking good, especially when we are off camera.

You don't know how many times people have asked Scott, how do I get my profile picture within my Zoom account?

Well, all you need to do is come down here to profile.

It's pretty easy to upload or change an existing picture.

Now, the reason why I think this comes in handy is that whenever your video is off this profile picture will appear and it just looks that much more professional.

Especially when you are joining a meeting such as when you are waiting in the waiting room and it makes it a lot easier for the other host and other people to see who you are, in things like the chat window and the participant list as well.

So I would highly recommend that you upload your best profile picture, but let's stick with looking good.

Touch up your appearance in Zoom

And we're gonna come back here to our video.

And Zoom has recently added a few new things that we can do to adjust the quality of our video.

The first one here has to do with touch up my appearance.

Now this isn't exactly brand new, it's just that they've given us a few more options.

This used to be just a checkbox on and off, but you can see now we have a slider here to the right, so we can see how much do we actually want or need to touch up our appearance.

The more you drag it to the right, the more it will tend to soften up your skin and facial characteristics.

If you pull it all the way back to the left, it's almost the same as unchecking this.

So again, depending on your profile, you may wanna adjust what is the right setting for you for touching up your appearance.

Adjust for low light in Zoom

But the other one on this same screen has to do with adjusting our light and this is really, really useful, especially for those of us who may not have professional lighting or proper lighting in front of us.

Now, again, we can turn it on and off, but we can also choose a manual option.

If we want to get a sliding bar here.

Now that's a little bright, right?

I'm starting to look like a bit of a ghost there, but I've ever bring it too far back, maybe somewhere in the middle, just so that you can see me nice and clear.

If you don't like that, you can always go back to auto.

I think auto does a relatively good job, but again, just a little more control to make sure that we look our best within our Zoom calls.

Show video preview when joining Zoom meeting

All right, let's stick here with our video and the one I wanna show you down below, you might have to scroll down on these settings.

But something that is typically turned on by default, but I encourage you, strongly encourage you to make sure it's turned on is this checkbox.

It says always show video preview dialogue when joining a video meeting.

Now for myself, I'm typically the host and so I typically have my video set up.

I know where everything is and I'll take a quick glance ahead of time.

But when you are joining a meeting, it's a lot better to get that first preview, just to make sure that nothing is funny in the background, that the camera's at the right angle, that you're looking at the right camera, if you happen to have multiple cameras.

So leaving this check, it's gonna give you that little preview.

So you don't just arrive into a video with everything over the place and Oh my goodness, the video's zoomed in on my chin or something funny like that.

So just make sure that this one is checked on as well.

Now, the next one in our list.

Suppress Zoom background noise

Might be the most important one or what I feel is the biggest update here on Zoom.

And this one actually has to do with our audio settings.

Now, of course, you can always test your speaker and test your mic, which I do encourage from time to time, especially if you have multiple inputs or as I mentioned before, multiple webcams that you use.

But it's the one here in the middle of the screen, which I think is so crucial, suppress background noise.

So what does this setting do?

Well, chances are, you may be typing on your keyboard during a meeting, or perhaps you have a fan in the background that may be noisy, perhaps you are a dog owner, perhaps you have small children at home.

What this setting is going to do is it is going to try and suppress that background noise.

Now, we have a few different choices here.

It is going to be set to auto by default, but depending on your particular situation or just the particular day, you can choose low, medium or high.

So again, if you're worried about other participants hearing the background noise in your home or in your office, you can adjust this level here.

This is really helpful again, for typing on a keyboard or any other sound that may be distracting to other participants.

Hold space bar to unmute yourself in Zoom

Now sticking with our audio here, I wanna go down to the second last option here on this screen and this has to do with pressing and holding the space bar to temporarily unmute yourself.

Now, again, this is typically selected by default.

So I hope this has already on for you, but what this will do is that if you are joining, if you're participating in a Zoom meeting and maybe you're not talking most of the time, you're only contributing here and there.

What this allows you to do is that when you are muted, you can simply press and hold that space bar.

You can speak, you can give your answer or give your input and then release the space bar and you will go back to being muted.

So you can almost think of it like a red button, like in a recording studio or maybe something that you would see in a TV broadcast studio, where you're just holding the button down, you're talking, everyone can hear you, but as soon as you release it, you go back to being muted.

I use this one quite frequently when I'm participating in a meeting and I'm not doing the bulk of the talk and I'm not the one who's presenting, but I'm just interjecting here and there.

It keeps my background noise absolutely to zero unless when I am talking.

Zoom video filters

And then the last one that I wanna share with you today is a little bit of a fun one.

Now I've talked to you before about how you can set up a virtual background, like the one that you see here.

If you'd like to learn more about how to set up your own virtual custom background, complete with a logo, I'll leave a link to that in the description below.

But something that Zoom just added frequently was video filters.

And yes, maybe this is only applicable to those of you who are a teacher or those who want to have a little more fun with your Zoom meetings.

You can put on some fancy shades if you want and if you feel it's necessary to wear a mask, even though it's a Zoom meeting, you can do so as well.

Just remember to select none here in the top left hand corner before your next meeting, just so you don't look a little foolish or look a little silly for your next Zoom meeting.

Now, if you'd like even more Zoom tips, I'm gonna leave a link below to a playlist of my very best Zoom meeting tips, everything from learning how to use breakout rooms, to sharing your screen, including sharing video in an optimal way.

So be sure to click that playlist for more.

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.

Do you wanna learn how to set up a quiz in Google Forms, but you don't know where to start?

Well, then this video is for you.

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

And the great thing about Google Forms is that we can quickly and easily set up an auto-graded quiz, so not only can your students or your recipients take the quiz, but they can receive their grades automatically after submitting, if desired.

We're gonna look at all the options available to us as a part of today's video.

Now, I'm going to assume as we begin here that you know a little bit about Google Forms already.

If not, I encourage you to check out my video on everything you need to know about Google Forms, but here we have a fairly basic, a fairly simple form here, and we're going to convert it into an auto-grading quiz.

Question types for self-graded quizzes

Now, the first thing that should be noted are the types of questions that you can use and the types that you can't for giving an automatic grade.

You're already probably familiar that here within Google Forms, there's a large number of different question types that we can choose and we can use when we are setting up our forms and when we're setting up our quizzes.

However, there are only six that we can use to assign points and provide an answer key and they're listed here: short answer and multiple choice, probably the two most popular or the two that you're gonna use most frequently.

But we can also use checkboxes, dropdown, and also the multiple choice grid and checkbox grid as well.

In today's example, we're gonna use three of those and again, including the ones that are perhaps the most common.

So first, let's just quickly go through the questions.

Quiz question examples

That I have here. The first one is not gonna have a grade at all. I'm just asking for their name, right? So it's just a short answer here. And below, I've got a multiple choice question. I've got a checkbox question where I want them to select more than one.

I want them to select all the correct answers. And then the last one is a short answer question. However, although I've added these questions to the form, it is not a quiz just yet.

How to enable quiz & quiz settings

What we need to do is come up here to the gear icon, up to settings and we wanna click on the quizzes tab here.

Now, everything is gonna be grayed out until we make this a quiz.

So if we toggle this button here, now we've got a few additional options down below.

Here are the defaults. By default, we are going to release the grade immediately after each submission.

Now note, this is not after each question. This is after the entire form is completed.

After the entire quiz is given, that's when we can release the grade.

But if we don't want to do that, we can choose this option later after manual review.

So this allows you, if you are the teacher or if you are the one who is collecting this quiz, you can review those answers before sending them the final grade.

Now note, if you choose this later option, it's going to force the user to provide their email address because you need some way to send that information to them.

The first one you do not need to do that. That's precisely why I've chosen just to ask for their first and last name.

Maybe I've got a class list. I already know who I'm gonna be sending this quiz to.

And then down below, we have three additional checkboxes that we may want to review in terms of what the respondent, what the quiz taker can see.

So the first one is missed questions. Are we going to show them which ones that they answered incorrectly?

Do we want to let them know which ones that they answered wrong or not? Maybe you don't want to let them know, and you only want to allow them to see that final grade at the end.

The second one is somewhat similar, but this one has to do with the correct answers. Do we want to show them which one is in fact the correct answer?

If you want to allow that, then you wanna leave this checked as well. But remember, in some cases, maybe you are fearful that they're going to share the correct answer with someone else in the class, or provide that information to someone else publicly.

If you don't want to reveal the correct answer, you can uncheck this box.

And then the last one has to do with point values. Now, you can always add point values, whether this is checked or not.

This just has to do with what the respondent sees. Are they gonna be able to see the total points and points received after each question?

So depending on your needs, you can check or uncheck these options.

Don't forget to hit save before leaving this screen.

That is going to allow us to have this answer key and now allow us to convert this into a quiz.

How to select answers & point values

All you need to do in order to set your answer key and pick the correct answer is click on the area as if you were editing it, as if you were gonna come in here and edit.

And down below, we now have this answer key.

And before we said anything, it's always gonna show zero points.

So if I select the answer key at the very top, it's gonna say choose the correct answers.

And in fact, here within the multiple choice, I could select more than one.

I'm gonna save that for my second question, because I find most people expect a multiple choice or these radio buttons to be one only.

So in this one, the correct answer is Ringo.

I'm gonna say that's worth about five points.

I don't know how many people are aware of that.

And if I want to, I can add answer feedback.

I can answer some kind of fun knowledge about that answer, or maybe why they thought it was someone else, but in fact it was Ringo.

I'm gonna hit done and now you can see I have this little checkbox beside it.

I can see that the point value and just for my own review, I can see which one is the correct answer.

Let's come down to the second question, which is our checkbox question.

And again, just to initiate it, I just need to click somewhere within this question to get into that edit mode and now I can see the answer key.

So in this case, I want them to select multiple choices.

The question: select all the songs that appear on the Abbey Road album.

Well, the correct answer is the first, third, and fifth.

The other two are from the White album.

And so those are the correct answers here.

And I'm gonna say that this one is, yeah, I'll give this one five points as well.

There's something really important though that you should know when you're selecting multiple choices like this.

It is going to be an all or nothing answer.

So basically, they're gonna get five points if they select these three correct options.

But even if they select two of the correct options and maybe one of the wrong options, for example, they are going to get zero points.

So that's a caveat, but I'm gonna show you a workaround.

You can always manually change that if you need to.

So again, I'm gonna hit done.

There you see the correct answers and my answer key.

Answer key for short text question

Now, the last one may seem a little more difficult.

We do have a few additional options here because it's a short answer question.

We're not giving them any choices here.

They need to type in the question itself.

Again, I'm gonna click on it to get into this edit mode.

I'm gonna select the answer key.

This one's kind of tough, so I'm gonna give this one, I'm gonna give this one 10 points.

You don't always have to use these arrow keys.

You can type them in, of course, if you want to.

So here I am going to type in the correct answer and the correct answer happens to be Revolver is the album.

But pay close attention here because you want to consider the different types of spelling or abbreviation that the people who are taking this quiz may use.

If I just leave this as Revolver with the capital R, it's actually gonna mark it incorrect if someone just types in revolver without the capital.

So I can add multiple answers here, multiple answers that I am going to approve.

Now, the last option we have here when it comes to a short answer is this checkbox.

Now by default, it's gonna be unchecked.

And what that means is that if they do answer something that is different than this, they will still get marked as incorrect, but there will be no point score given, meaning that you have the option to manually come in and adjust or give a point score.

If I do check this box, they'll still receive an incorrect, just like the first option, but they will get zero points.

So the way to think about this is that if it's unchecked, it's sort of unscored.

The question or the answer will be unscored.

If I check this, it will be scored.

It's gonna look at this list and if it's not on there, then they are certainly getting zero points.

I'm gonna leave this one checked in this case because it's a fairly easy answer.

You may want to uncheck this if you're expecting a wide variety of answers and maybe too many for you to include here in your key.

So I'm gonna hit done and that basically finishes it here with the editing mode.

Our quiz is now ready for us to try out.

It's ready for us to test out.

So what we can do is we can hit this preview button here.

How the quiz looks to respondents

And let's see what it's going to look like for the person who is actually taking the quiz.

It's gonna open up in a new tab.

I can just put in my first and last name here.

Which Beatle tried to quit? I'm gonna guess, I know the answer, but I'll just say someone else here.

We'll select all the songs that appear in Abbey Road. I'm gonna say I know my Beatles stuff pretty well.

I'm also the author of the quiz, so I'm gonna select those three.

And this last one here, I'm just gonna say something like, oh, maybe was it rubber soul, something along those effects.

And I'm gonna hit submit.

So notice I can see the point value because I said that I wanted the respondents to see the different points for each question.

But as I answer the quiz, it's not showing me the answers immediately.

I have to hit submit first.

So now Google Forms will show me the results of the quiz I just took.

And no, I didn't do very well, but of course I did not do very well on purpose.

The first one was just my first and last name.

Here we go, I answered this incorrectly.

It's showing me that I answered it wrong and it's also showing me the correct answer, because remember I left those checkboxes checked within the quiz settings.

Here I got the full five out of five because I answered the three questions or I selected the three correct questions here.

And then the last one here I guessed incorrectly and it will show me all of the applicable correct answers.

So keep that in mind as you're developing your answer key.

And if you allow your respondents to see the correct answers, they will all be displayed here down below as well.

Now, how about yourself as the instructor, the teacher.

Viewing quiz results and scores

The person who is managing this quiz?

Well, here under responses, when we go back to our form, we can see our responses in a few different ways, and you may already be familiar with the responses tab if you've used Google Forms in some other way.

I think the one that is perhaps most useful is going through it by question, because if I was to add multiple respondents here, I could see, well, which is the most difficult question on this quiz? What am I gonna revise in the future?

Now, I can look at the individual results here as well, but what I think is perhaps most useful is that I can come up here and create a Google Spreadsheet so I can see all of that data in a way that I can sort it, I can view it and it is maybe just a little more easy for me to read.

So I only have one entry in the sample quiz that we just created, but here you can see there's a timestamp. Here's the score. Here's the name of the individual.

Just imagine if you have 30 or 100 or maybe even 1,000 people who are taking this quiz, you can quickly and easily see all of their scores, their names, when they took it, and their individual answers as well.

Edit quiz scores after submission

The last thing that I wanna show you here when it comes to the individual responses though back in Google Forms is that you can adjust the point values here.

So let's say that someone comes to you and says, they have a good debate as to why Rubber Soul was sort of one of the last albums or it was recorded very close to Revolver. You could come in here and say, okay, I'll give you a few points here.

I can hit save at the bottom and now that score will be saved as a part of their results. So again, it gives you the flexibility if you need to make a few additional changes, even after the quiz was submitted. You can still do so right here within Google Forms.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's video and I'd love to hear from you next. What other questions do you have about creating quizzes or auto-grading quizzes right here in Google Forms?

Be sure to let me know in the comments down 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.

My previous Zoom videos have received over 1 1/2 million views and thousands and thousands of comments.

So in today's video, I wanted to answer five of the most frequently asked questions I've received over the last few months. We're gonna talk about everything about managing participants to broadcasting, to our breakout rooms, and even some tips and tricks that you probably hadn't heard of before all in today's video.

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

And yes, you may be seeing a few different versions of me today because I wanted to show a few real world examples. And so I have myself on a separate computer on my iPad here next to me as I go through some of your most frequently asked questions.

Private Zoom Chat Messages

And we're gonna kick things off with the comment section.

One of the most frequently asked questions I get is: Scott, are private messages within the chat window actually private?

Now, I get the feeling that many of the people who are asking this have been students perhaps, and people who are maybe on other people's calls, and can the host really see what we're saying? When we say private in here, does it actually mean private?

Well, the good news is yes. The host cannot see private messages either during the meeting or even post the meeting. They truly are private. But let's take a look at some of the other options that we have down here.

So by default, when you open up the chat window, it is going to list everyone. And that's usually the most common way that we use messages here within Zoom chat. If I'm the host, I'm sending a message out to everyone. And if I'm a participant, maybe I want to ask a question and I want other people to know what I'm asking or if other people agree and that type of thing.

But I can always use this dropdown and select a specific participant. So if I want to say something directly to Jack, I can just say, "Hi, Jack." And yeah, this time I'm going to spell his name correctly. And we can have a conversation. We can have a discussion back and forth if necessary.

However, there's an easier way to do this, especially if you have a large number of participants. And that is, let's say that we're back on this everyone's setting and I want to say something to Jack. I don't want to go through this dropdown menu. And if there's 30 or 40 people in here, what I can do is I can actually just click on this link, Jack's iPad, and it's gonna automatically select that down below. So now I can continue my conversation or select someone else to do so as well.

Renaming Zoom Participants

So that moves us on to tip number two.

And this has to do with managing participants in particular. And if you are the host, you may find it a little frustrating when people have cryptic names as their usernames. So here I've got Jack's iPad. Well, what if there's more than one Jack? Or I know more than one Jack, or what if it's even worse? What if it's something like iPhone 23, something along those lines?

Well, what you can do is you can rename anyone here within your participant list if you are the host. So if I click on More, I can come down here and select Rename.

Now, you may be asking yourself: What if it's a long list, Scott, and here this person doesn't have a profile pic? What if I'm not sure which Jack this is or which individual it is? Well, what you can do is come up here and here you can see Jack's iPad. I can click on this little blue button and I can say Rename as well.

I often use this more frequently because I'm actually looking at the person. If their webcam is on, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I know which Jack this is. This is Jack Smith." Okay, we're gonna say OK. Perfect, now it's renamed.

Now, it's easier for me to see both in the chat window down below if I need to make him a presenter, whatever I need to do, if I'm interacting with this individual. So as the host, if you find it confusing or if you're not sure of someone's username, once you do find out, you can always go in and rename it yourself.

View Zoom Participants in Different Ways

Sticking with participants and how we interact in view participants, let's take a look at how we can view those participants in a few different ways.

So I'm gonna go here and actually share my screen because often that's what we're doing here within Zoom. And by default, typically you'll have just this small webcam window that will come up either in the top right corner, maybe the lower right-hand corner. And it will typically show the active speaker, showing me at this point in time.

But we do have a few additional options. We can choose this thumbnail view here, which is gonna give us a bit of a vertical list. Now I only have one other person in this meeting example. So I'm only gonna see the two of us. It usually maxes out at about four videos at a time. And then you can scroll through if you want to take a look at more. And don't forget that you can drag this wherever you like. If it's more comfortable or if you need to get it out of the way as you're presenting.

Now, if you don't like the vertical view, what you can do is you can drag this down to the bottom and it's going to adjust and give us more of a linear, more of a horizontal view here. Again, we can click and drag and move that around. If we wanna go back to vertical, you just sorta have to smash it. You have to push it to the right-hand side. So that's dragged to the right if you want the vertical, drag to the bottom if you want the horizontal. And you can put it in a variety of different ways. But of course, you can also minimize this altogether and hide the thumbnail view.

Here it's gonna show me who is talking. I'm actively talking, so it's gonna let me know. And if I'm listening to other individuals as well, but I usually prefer one of these other two options. The other thing that I like to point out with when you're using this single view is that you can only drag this anywhere on your screen.

If you have a webcam dead center on your screen, you can even drag it up into or high parts of it so that you're looking almost directly at the webcam. Now, in my case, my webcam is slightly off to the right. So if I drag this over here, it looks almost as if I'm looking at you straight in the face. I'm actually looking at my thumbnail on my screen at the moment. But this can be a great tip if you want to be more engaging with your audience, be more engaging with your participants.

Broadcast to All Break Out Rooms

All right, next on our list has to do with something called breakout rooms. And I have an entire video showing you everything you need to know about breakout rooms. I'll leave a link for it in the description, and also here in the top right-hand corner as well.

But a common question that I receive when it comes to breakout rooms is, "Scott, can I present to all of the breakout rooms?" If I create, let’s say, three breakout rooms as the host, can I present my slides? Can I talk to everybody?

Well, I've got some bad news for you. As of the recording of this video, you cannot broadcast or share slides, or actually address everyone using audio in all of those breakout rooms.

However, now that I've initiated my breakout rooms, what you can do is send them all a message. Down here on the lower left, there is something that says "Broadcast a message to all." If I select that, it's just gonna be a simple text field, and I can say, "Hello, we will be wrapping things up in five minutes." Maybe just give them a warning or something like that.

And I can broadcast that out. Now, all of my rooms, all of my participants are going to receive that message. That's the best that Zoom can do at this point in time. Perhaps in the future, they'll give us the ability to actually broadcast things to everyone individually. But this "Broadcast message to all" can be a great way to make sure that those rooms are on pace. Maybe you can remind them to move on to discussion question number three, something along those lines. Or maybe you can share a question that one of the rooms that you jumped into and joined for a moment and you thought was relevant, you can share with others as well.

So don't forget about this "Broadcast message to all" feature.

How to reuse Zoom Polls

The last and final tip I want to share with you today is a common question I receive about polls. If you'd like to learn more about polls, I'll leave a link to my screen share tips because polls are a great way to make your Zoom meetings that much more interactive.

For our poll settings, what we need to do is actually jump into our Zoom account on our desktop browser. In order to do that, you need to go to Zoom.us.

Now, when you're within your Zoom account, you want to come down to Meetings, and you're probably already familiar with this area. This might be where you schedule new meetings or see the previous meetings that you've had as well.

But if you want to be able to repurpose a poll, you don't want to attach that poll to a specific meeting. Otherwise, that's the only place where that poll is going to exist. That's the only place where you're going to be able to access that poll. So instead, I encourage you to go to your personal meeting room. If you are using your personal meeting room, that's the same link, right? That's the same meeting ID time and time again.

All you need to do is scroll down to the bottom here to the poll section. And here you can see I've already created two polls and I can say Add, and I can start to add a brand new poll. The great thing here is that when I add this poll, when I create these polls, I can repurpose them and reuse them time and time again. So I don't have to create them from scratch every time. I can use them as long as I'm using my personal meeting room, not a unique meeting with its own ID, something that I've created from scratch.

So if you want to repurpose those polls, make sure to use your personal meeting ID.

Well, I hope you enjoyed today's tips. And I'd love to hear further Zoom questions that you may have. Be sure to ask them and let me know in the comments. I may just make a new video and give you the answer in an upcoming video.

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

Are you tired of seeing unwanted emails in your inbox, even though you've unsubscribed multiple times in the past?

Maybe you're tired of seeing the same cold sales emails in your inbox, and it's wasting your time as you're trying to manage your email.

Well, in today's video, I want to show you a super cool way to send those messages into deep space so you will never see them ever again.

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

And I imagine you have probably subscribed to a number of newsletters over the course of the years.

Why Unsubscribe

And some of them are perhaps not as much value to you anymore as they once were. And you probably spent the effort scrolling down to the bottom of a message

and finding that Unsubscribe button. Perhaps you unsubscribed more than once.

You've come down, and you've found this link, and you've hit it, and then a week later

you still are getting messages or you're still getting offers from a particular sender.

When to Unsubscribe

Well, I often recommend that you go through that effort at least once, or maybe I should say, just once to unsubscribe. Now, anyone who is sending you information

Should respect that. I know different countries have different regulations. And should we just say the general rules of the internet should dictate that, hey, if you opt out,

You should not hear from those individuals ever again. Unfortunately, not everyone plays by the rules. And in fact, sometimes just this very act of hitting Unsubscribe sends that sender a signal saying, "Oh, a human being just hit that Unsubscribe button. "At least we know that that is a real email address. "There's a real person on the other end "of that email address." And therefore you might continue to receive information from them.

Cold Sales Emails

But there's a second scenario that you're probably familiar with as well.

And that is a cold sales email where someone reaches out to you, and you have no idea who they are.

And it's pretty obvious, perhaps by their messaging, that they have no idea who you are and what you do.

And you continue to see these, you continue to come across them, and they really weigh down on your email management efforts, right?

You only have a limited amount of time each day to deal with your email.

You don't wanna waste your time having to go through all of these messages that have nothing to do with you.

And you don't want to hear from these individuals again in the future.

Sane Black Hole

Well, that's where something which is called SaneBlackHole comes into place.

Now, SaneBlackHole is a special folder or label, as we see here within Gmail, that is a part of the SaneBox application.

Now, the great thing about SaneBox is that it's actually more than an extension or just a third-party app.

SaneBox is something that works with every single email client.

You actually don't need to install anything special.

And the great thing is, is that it works across your devices.

So, all you have to do is drag certain emails, particular emails, into the correct folder, or use the features that make the most sense to you.

So let's take a look at an example here.

Let's say that I no longer want to hear from Bed Bath & Beyond.

And no, I'm not knocking them. I'm just using them as the example here.

And maybe I have hit Unsubscribe, and I keep getting these messages.

All I need to do is drag this into my SaneBlackHole folder.

And of course it's gonna be removed from my inbox, but it gets better than that.

Now it appears in my SaneBlackHole folder.

However, it's only going to remain here for about seven days.

In case I made a mistake, I can always come back here and find it within that seven-day period.

However, at the end of those seven days, this message is automatically going to be sent to my trashcan.

Now, here within Gmail, when you send something to trash or something appears in trash, it's gonna remain there for an additional 30 days.

So, you really have plenty of time in case you need to go back and search for something in the event that you made a mistake or you want to go and review something.

But BlackHole is going to do this automatically for you.

So you don't need to come back in here and clean this out from time to time.

After about seven days, it's automatically going to send it to the trash, and you will never ever hear from this sender again.

Let's pick another one here as an example.

Let's say that this is, for this example, a cold sales call.

And maybe this individual has been reaching out to me every two weeks for the last six months.

And I've told them to stop emailing me.

But you know, it's probably some automated system.

All I need to do is drag it to my SaneBlackHole.

And one of the great things when it comes to these cold sales calls is that, of course, they don't have an Unsubscribe button.

They don't even have that option in there.

So again, it's gonna appear here in this folder, and then it's going to send it to my trash.

So if you are sick of getting the same email messages from people, either that you don't know, or from organizations or from newsletters that you have already tried to unsubscribe in the past, and they're not respecting your wishes, you may wanna check out SaneBlackHole.

Now, if you wanna receive a special offer, if you want to try SaneBox absolutely for free and receive a $25 credit, all you need to do is go to sanebox.com/simpletivity, something special for all of my Simpletivity subscribers.

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.

Do you manage a team and do you need to keep track of all of your employee hours?

Well, if you said yes, then today's video is just for you.

I'm gonna show you five reasons why you should check out OnTheClock for all of your employee time tracking needs.

Not only is it gonna save you time and effort, but it's probably also going to save you money because your time tracking is gonna be that much more accurate.

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

And whether you work in insurance, real estate, manufacturing, or any business where you need to keep track of your employees' hours, I wanna show you how OnTheClock can help you save so much time.

Easy time tracking for staff & managers

Now, my first reason for checking out OnTheClock has to do with ease of use, because let's be honest. If the application isn't easy for you or your staff to use, you're not gonna get the benefit that you need out of it.

Here I am in the administration dashboard, and I love the clean outlook of OnTheClock. Here on the top left-hand side, I can see immediately who's currently in and who's currently out, and I even get a punch map. So if I want to track where people have punched in or punched out, I can take a look at that as well.

Here on the timecards menu, I can see all of my employees' time card data. I can see all of their in and out times. I can even break things down by their regular hours versus their overtime hours so that everyone gets paid correctly.

I can also keep track of both PTO and holiday here as well. And if I need to make a change, I can just hit this edit button and manually update any of these records.

Employee view of OnTheClock app

But let's jump into what the employee is actually going to see.

So here I am logged in as an employee, and I love the simplicity of this layout because, as an employee, I just want to be able to punch in and then get on with my day.

As you can see here, Jane is currently punched out. She's not currently started her workday, so I just need to hit this punch in button—success! And now I can get on with the rest of my day.

I don't need to come back here until I finish my time or unless I want to change something else.

I get to log back into my account really quickly here, because I also want to show you the other easy features and displays that are available to your staff.

At the top, we have the "My Time Card" area, so your employees can see exactly when they checked in and when they checked out. And if they want to go back and see some historical data, they can do that as well.

But the other nice feature from an employee standpoint...

Manage PTO with OnTheClock

Is that you can allow them to submit vacation requests directly from within the application.

No longer do they have to send you a long-winded email, or do you need to keep track of this on a spreadsheet.

You can set what their PTO time is, how much they have available in a variety of different ways.

And then they can request it through the system.

On the administrator side, I can quickly and easily see all of the current PTO requests.

Down here, I can see that Jane has recently made such a request.

I can open up this request, review the details, review the dates, and then choose to approve or deny this request.

I can even add an additional note if I need to message something directly to my employee.

And the best thing is that all of this is automatically calculated, so I don't have to worry about the upcoming pay period or manually subtracting out that PTO over the course of the year.

Use GPS tracking for accuracy and limits

Now, another great feature of OnTheClock is the ability to track your employees via GPS or at the very least be able to prevent your staff from punching in or punching out from certain locations.

For example, here from the dashboard, I can see that both of my employees have punched in at the office.

That's great.

I can see that they've punched in at a location that I want them to, or at least where I expect them to be, but it can give me helpful information.

If I see that someone is punching in from a location that I'm not familiar with, if you're worried about that, when it comes to your staff, you can implement something which is called geo-fencing, and you can set up a perimeter as to where you will allow your staff to punch in and, or punch out from.

This prevents things such as time theft so that your staff can't get someone else to punch in for them.

They have to be within a particular location.

You can also set up other perimeters and other time tracking adjustments so that if you only want to allow them to punch in from a certain machine or a tablet or device, then you can set up that configuration as well.

Accounting & payroll integration

Now, having accurate time tracking information is important. What's really gonna save you time is how OnTheClock integrates with the most popular payroll and accounting software, including both the desktop and online version of QuickBooks

and other leading providers, including connect pay, ADP and Sage. And if you're an accountant bookkeeper or payroll professional, you may qualify to use OnTheClock,

absolutely free. You know how important it is to get accurate information from your clients to learn more, go to OnTheClock.com .

Access OnTheClock from any device

Last but not least, OnTheClock gives you so many options when it comes to access for both you, the administrator, but also for your staff, whether it's web-based or whether you want to give them the Android or Apple app.

You control how they access OnTheClock, how they punch in and punch out as you keep accurate time tracking.

To learn more about OnTheClock and to start your free trial, go to OnTheClock.com.

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.

Do you wanna view your inbox in a different layout?

Do you wish that you could customize your view right here within Gmail, to better suit your style?

Or perhaps are you tired of seeing things like this Meet and Chat window, especially if you don't use it, so that you can view all of your labels on the left-hand side?

Well, in today's video, I wanna show you all the different ways that you can view and interact with your messages, right here within Gmail.

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 look at 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.

Gmail Quick Settings

So in order for us to change our views within Gmail, all we need to do is go up here to the gear icon.

Now recently, this settings area was altered.

If you want to see all of your full settings, you'll want to come here and say, "See all settings," but Gmail has made it that much more convenient for us to change our different views.

Now most of these are not new, but they've been put in a location which is so much more...

Change Inbox Density in Gmail

Convenient for us to use.

So here, our first option is density. And by default, this is actually the default view.

Now the big difference here in the change that Gmail made just a few years ago, is that if you have an attachment like you see here in the default view, it will show that attachment on a separate line.

So you can see that this particular message really jumps out.

Now this can be convenient because I can go right to the attachment, I don't even have to open up the email.

This is especially helpful if I already am expecting perhaps a document and I don't need to see the message, however, this can be a little jarring I think in some cases, because that one really stands out.

And if you have a few different attachments here, they're gonna jump out and look twice or maybe three times as large as the other messages in your list.

So in that case, you might want to go to the comfortable look here.

Here we can still see that paperclip there, identifying that we have an attachment on that message.

If you want even to go even smaller, you can select compact and have even more messages on the screen in front of you.

For myself, I typically prefer comfortable, so I'm gonna leave it at that.

Edit your Gmail theme

I'm not going to spend a lot of time when it comes to themes, I'm using the default theme here, but if you want something a little more adventurous, or if you want to upload your own photo as your background, you can do so here within the theme section.

Change the Inbox Type in Gmail

But the real goodies come down below when we can choose between different inbox types.

Now by default, again, this is our view here. We're gonna have our new messages appear at the top, a fairly basic and straightforward inbox.

However, we can choose to have a different type of inbox where we have our important emails first.

So here you can see things have been split up, anything that has one of these important markers on it are going to show first at the top of my list here, at the top of my inbox.

And then I've got this section which is called everything else.

Now you can conveniently minimize or maximize these areas if you want, but this can be especially helpful if you are using that important marker.

You can next choose the unread first, so this is going to automatically put your unread messages at the top, and anything which you have opened or laid your eyes on before, are gonna show down below.

Our third option here has to do with a starred first. So if you are using these stars or perhaps you have some filters or rules where these stars come into place, well then those stars are gonna come up at the top as well.

And again, the great thing is, is that you can do this dynamically, you don't have to set this as your inbox for all the time.

You can always choose this gear icon and come down here and choose the one that is most suitable to you.

Next we have a priority inbox, which is going to sort of break out a number of different things.

Here we have important and unread at the top, then we have Starred and Everything else.

How to customize your inbox type settings

What you'll notice here when it comes to priority, multiple inboxes, and also the first one, default, is that we can always click on this customize option here.

So here I can choose what do I want to show within that priority inbox.

Under priority inbox, you know, what are the different sections that I want to display here?

You can choose what you like here within the regular settings area. You can do that for the other types of inboxes as well.

Let's jump back to our inbox though. I'm gonna hit that gear icon so we can come back down to that inbox type.

Multiple inboxes, again, very similar to what we've seen before.

In this case, it's branched it out into a few different ways. I've got a few different filters, starred, drafts, inbox, but I can customize that the way that I want.

For the sake of today's demonstration, I'm gonna go back to that default, which is probably what you're most used to here, but I know a lot of people are not aware of all of the different inbox types that they can set up and the customization.

Edit the inbox reading layout and split pane in Gmail

That comes along with it.

Now, the next one can be really valuable to those of you who may be coming, especially from a Microsoft Outlook world.

And one of the things that I routinely hear is that Scott, this looks very different and I'd love to see the messages, I'd like to interact with one message but also see the rest of my emails.

Which is pretty standard within an Outlook world.

Well, by default, you're gonna have no split. You're just going to see these messages and if I want to go into this message, I open it up and then I have to go back to my inbox, back and forth.

But we have two other reading pane options here. The first one is right of the inbox.

So let me just close this for a second here, and again, if you're an Outlook user, you'll probably be familiar with this.

Here I can select the message on the left-hand side, and then I can read, I can reply, I can do whatever I want. I can go to the next message, I can go up and down this list, and I can interact with my message here on the right-hand side.

But we can also choose another view. We can come down here to below the inbox.

So here you can choose, you can drag and see how many messages you'd like to see at the top of the screen. And then you can see your message down below and interact with it down here.

Now I think one of the caveats of using this particular view is that sometimes this reply and forward, some of these quick buttons down below, get a little hidden depending on the screen size that you have.

But again, you can drag that up and down to your liking.

Toggle between split views with the quick icon

But there's one other thing that I wanna highlight here is that you don't always have to come up here to the gear icon to make this switch.

Gmail recently has also made this more convenient for us here by giving us the ability to toggle between these modes.

So, for example, I can immediately go back to no split or the vertical split, or the horizontal split, depending on my mood (chuckles), depending on how I'm working, depending on the screen size.

You don't always have to select the gear icon; you can come here as well.

Conversation view and email threading

So the last thing I want to show here is at the very bottom of these quick settings is the option for email threading.

By default, this is going to be selected, conversation view.

In summary, conversation view is going to group all of your email threads together.

So if you're having a back and forth conversation amongst people with the same email thread, it's gonna keep everything tightly together. You're not gonna see those as separate emails.

In today's day and age, I find it's really odd, or I find a really hard argument to turn this off, because otherwise you're gonna find yourself replying to an email, which may not be the most recent in that particular thread.

So I would encourage you in most cases to keep this turned on.

Minimize the Gmail label and menu bar

All right, so now for a bonus tip as a part of today's video, and this comes over to the left hand side of the screen.

A couple of things to keep in mind here, as we were looking at the different split and the toggle panes here, keep in mind that you can always minimize this side of the screen.

If you don't want to see all of those labels, you can have them minimized just by selecting the little hamburger, main menu icon in the top left hand side of the screen.

And if you just hover your mouse over, it will auto-expand.

And then I can come back over here. This gives me a lot more real estate as a part of my email inbox.

But let me open this up again.

How to hide Meet and Chat section in Gmail

One of the frustrations is that this Meet and this Chat window is displayed by default.

I know that there are many of you who are not using either of these features, or at the very least, you're not using them very frequently.

That can make the top of the screen a little cumbersome because you have to scroll through and you may have a lot of labels, like you see that I have here in this demonstration account.

I want to be able to click them more easily.

Well, how do we get rid of Meet and Chat?

What we need to do is come here, back to the gear icon, but we are going to say “See all settings.”

This is going to open us up to the main settings screen.

Near the top, near the end, we’re going to have this Chat and Meet area where we can choose to turn off either both or just one of these areas.

I'm going to turn them both off for now.

Don’t forget to hit “Save changes.”

Now it's going to refresh our screen, it’s going to refresh our Gmail account, and look at that—I have access to all of my labels. I don’t even have to scroll very far.

Right, I can access all of my labels here on the left hand side.

If you want to get even more out of Gmail, be sure to check out my video below where I show you seven settings I feel every Gmail user should know.

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

Do you wish your meetings were more engaging?

Are you tired of people not participating?

Even though you know that they have something to say?

Well, in today's video we're gonna solve that problem by using Slido.

A guaranteed way to make your meetings, whether they're in person or virtual, more engaging.

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

And Slido is a tool that I use on a regular basis.

So let's get started.

Here's a quick example of what Slido can look like for your participants.

Here I've set up a poll, and this is actually a poll I delivered recently, where I asked a question.

Sort of a great way to break the ice, at the beginning of the presentation, or something that you're delivering.

Whether it's a town hall, or maybe a brainstorming meeting.

And I asked my participants,

Create an event

"Hey what are the most common sources of your interruptions?"

And this is what they said.

And the great thing about it, is that it's interactive, and it's live, and your participants don't have to download or install anything.

All they need to do is use their phone, or other device that they may have with them, and go to slido.com.

So let's get started.

Once you've signed up for your Slido account, what we need to do is come in here and we're gonna select, Create an event.

And a couple of things that we need to do here.

Number one, let's give it an event name.

Now you wanna name it something that you're gonna be familiar with.

So you manage your different events here within Slido.

But also keep in mind that this is something that your participants are going to see as well.

So let's say, I'm gonna call this one, a Brainstorming Session.

I don't mind if they see that.

Maybe you have a catchier title, or something else that is relevant to your subject.

Next up we need to select a start, and an end date.

And you can see that many of these end dates, are a few days out.

Because if you are hosting a conference, or maybe you're holding several meetings,

over the course of several days, you wanna use the same polls, or ask the same questions, or collect the same feedback.

So you can either set the start and end date to the same date, or, I'm just gonna leave it as is here.

From July 2nd to July 5th.

And then the last thing we need to do here is either confirm this event code.

It's gonna give you a random number.

This is how participants are going to access Slido, so that they can participate.

But I recommend that you use something custom.

You use something that is very specific, and also maybe simple for your users to remember.

So in this case, I'm gonna say, brain, I don't know, that sounds a little funny to me, I'm just gonna say brainstorm.

Now if someone else who uses Slido, is going to be using this event code in the same time frame, it will not be made available.

And Slido will tell you that up front.

But it looks like I'm safe.

For these three days I can use the event code, brainstorm.

Let's hit, Create Event, and now we're ready to set up our event.

Whether that is setting up our Q and A, or maybe asking some live questions, as in the poll that I just stated here.

So here on the right-hand side.

Q A

This is where our Q&A will be displayed.

But why don’t I show you what it’s going to look like for your participants?

The great thing about Slido is that your participants can participate anonymously.

This means they can ask questions they might be a little embarrassed to ask live, in person, or if their username is attached in a video conferencing setup.

So, I’m going to click “Try Sending a Question.”

We get a preview of what Slido will look like on users' phones.

Typically, you’ll have two options up here at the top: the Q&A, where people can ask questions throughout the presentation or brainstorming session, and the polls.

We haven’t set up a poll yet, but we’ll do that in just a moment.

Let’s pretend we are participants.

I’m going to type, “When are we launching the next product?”

I have the option to add my name, but most people prefer to ask anonymously.

As a presenter, I often encourage anonymity to encourage more feedback and more frequent use of Slido throughout the session.

I’m going to hit “Send,” and you can see on the right-hand side that I can view the questions as they come in.

Below, participants can see their own questions as well as everyone else’s.

Let’s ask a few more questions: “When is lunch?”

There’s always someone asking about the break.

And maybe, “Can we release these notes to our friends?”

Participants can see everything coming in.

Now, I’m going to go over to the right-hand side and go into present mode.

This is what you will share with your viewers, whether you're live, in person, or sharing via video conferencing.

Here, you can see the top questions listed.

I only have three questions in this case, but the great thing is that whether you’re presenting on a large screen or via video conferencing, everyone sees what’s rising to the top.

People can vote on these questions using the thumbs-up icon.

We haven’t upvoted anything yet, but if I go back to the preview and upvote a question, it moves to the top of the list.

This encourages participants to get more involved and read other people’s questions.

You can display about three to five top questions on your screen, prompting people to upvote what interests them most.

This helps you, as the presenter or moderator, see what’s most relevant to your audience.

As a presenter or moderator, you can hover over questions to see options.

For example, clicking the up arrow will bring a question to the top and give it a different color, notifying the audience that this is the question being answered now.

If you like, you can hit the checkmark to remove that question from the list, so only unanswered questions remain.

But it gets better.

As a moderator, you get this preview view on your smart device or desktop.

I love opening up the Q&A early in my presentation to review questions throughout.

I don’t always show this screen to the public; I might be showing my slides or video as I talk.

However, I can preview all the questions coming in and adjust my presentation on the fly based on audience feedback.

This is useful even in large crowds where you might not hear from many people directly.

You can get a sense of what’s going on and address the most relevant concerns or interests first, rather than just responding to the quickest hand-raiser.

Polls

To be quiet, and keeps talking over everyone else.

So a fantastic tool for engagement.

But, it doesn't stop there.

Let's go over here to Live Polls, and see if we can set up a live poll, like I showed you right off the top.

Now there's a few different polls that we can create here.

Multiple choice, is a great ice breaker, it's very engaging, it's very easy for people to use right?

'Cause they don't have to enter in any text.

But there's some other good ones you wanna keep in mind as well.

You can create a word cloud.

This is great if you're asking a question such as, "In one word, how would you describe this?", or "In one word how would you describe how you're feeling today?"

The reason why I suggest using the one word, for the word cloud is that, of course, the answers that are given multiple times are going to grow, and they're gonna show bigger, like we see here on this example with clear goals.

You can add a quiz, which is relatively new here within Slido.

You can add a rating, you know, "Out of four stars", or "Out of ten stars, how are you feeling today?"

Another great ice breaker.

Multiple Choice

And you can also just do open text, which is similar to Q and A, although you can't vote on these ones.

So this is more just bubble text that will be appearing.

But probably the one I use most often with my meetings, with my presentations is multiple choice.

Now it's fairly straightforward, but let's just go through the different features, the different options here, so you can create your own multiple choice questions like a pro.

So, multiple choice, let's say, let's do something very, very easy here, "What is your favorite pet?" okay, we'll say "What is your favorite pet?"

And of course we gotta give a few different options here, so I'm gonna say, dog, cat, I'm gonna say fish maybe, and let's say other.

Let's give another other option as well.

Now, there's a few other choices here.

We can say, mark the correct answer, if this is more of a quiz format, right?

If you want to try and see, maybe you wanna test your audience, halfway through, or part-way through your presentation.

Have they been listening?

Give them a multiple choice question, and see if they can guess the correct answer.

I'm gonna leave this one unchecked for now, but the one below, can be very helpful, depending on what you want to have your participants' feedback with here.

Do you want to allow multiple options?

Now, by default this is gonna be unchecked, but you can check this, and then also set a limit.

So this can be great if you wanna maybe ask a question like, "What are your two favorite pets?" Or "What are your two most favorite, or three most favorite?"

And then you can say what that limit is, so that they can't choose more than that.

I'm gonna uncheck it in this particular case, I just want them to pick a particular option here.

And all I need to do now is hit Save.

So now my multiple choice is ready to go.

By default, my Q and A is gonna be the thing that is presented, when I go into this presentation view.

And as I mentioned before, your participants will never have to worry where they need to go.

Whether they have a phone, any device with a web browser, just go to slido.com and here is going to be the event code listed right below.

But let's say I wanna ask this multiple choice question.

So in the administrator view on my phone, or here within the desktop version.

I just need to hit, Play.

And by hitting Play, the right side of my screen is going to showcase this, but you'll see, if I go back to the presentation view, it is now gonna show the poll.

It's gonna switch over from the Q and A, and show my poll.

And the great thing about it is, that you can see if the majority of people are coming into the poll, because this little ticker in the right-hand side, you can see over here, if I go to my first example, I had 19 people participate in this poll.

This ticker will go up live, so you can tell if people are having trouble, you can tell if the majority of the room, or the majority of your audience is coming in or not.

But the other great thing is that this poll is dynamic.

So, as people start to vote, these bars will start to expand, or get smaller, depending on what is most popular.

And I find time and time again, people really, really enjoy this.

When I use Slido at a conference, or in a live situation, people are often laughing, they're having a good time, sometimes they change their decision, based on what they see up here.

It's often a fight to the end.

You know, is dog gonna win, is cat gonna win?

And it comes right down as a nail-biter.

People really, really enjoy the engagement level, here with Slido.

Now if you wanna make your online meetings more engaging, I would encourage you to view my video on how to use breakout rooms in Zoom.

It's a fantastic way to get the conversation going.

Or you can click the video to the right, to watch the latest video, right here on Simpletivity.

Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult.

In fact, it's very simple.

Do you like wasting time? No, I didn't think so.

So why do we waste so much time when we're managing all of our cards and lists within Trello?

Well today I'm gonna help you save time by showing you some of my favorite Butler automation tips.

But first, I'd like to thank today's sponsor, Pipedrive! Pipedrive is the easy-to-use CRM system that integrates directly with Trello. To learn more, go to Pipedrive.com.

When it comes to saving time in Trello, using Butler automation, we want to look at things that we do most frequently or most often.

Make Trello Due Date complete when moving into a List

And so my first tip for you has to do with dragging something into your final list.

In many cases your final list will have a title such as "Completed" or "Done" or "Finished" and when you drag something into that list you often will have a due date remaining and isn't it time consuming for you to not only drag it over there, but then we have to open up this card, then we have to come over here and check off this due date so we can get into this green state as we see with these other cards below.

Why don't we just have that happen automatically?

Well, let's do so with Butler.

What we're gonna do is that when this gets dragged over into my completed list I wanna have that due date checked automatically.

So let's open up Butler and we are gonna select Rules and we need to hit that Create Rule button and add our first trigger.

We're gonna stay on this first option which is Card Move and we're gonna actually look at the second choice down below.

When a card is and we're gonna select moved into, we have to pick a particular list when a card is moved into the Complete list and I'm gonna say by anyone, not just by me, but in case I'm working with a team or if I happen to add other individuals to this board.

So when a card is moved in the list Complete by anyone I have to make sure to hit this green button.

So that's my trigger at the top.

Now I have to tell Butler what is going to happen.

So in this case we actually want to select the Date field because although it is a checkbox, it's attached or it's associated with that completed field or with that due date.

So the very first option here is mark the due date as complete. That's exactly what we want.

Come over here, hit that green plus button.

We can scroll to the top just to review both the trigger and the actions, and let's make sure we hit that Save button.

So now, if we come back to my board, let's take a look at that exact same card, remember it's unchecked.

It's due in a few days.

I'm gonna drag it over here into complete and boom!

There it is. It's changed to green.

It has been completed for me.

So, I don't have to go

Move Trello Card to a List when Due Date is complete

And open up that card anymore.

But how about something else?

Here's another one that we have with a due date attached and what if I'm inside this card and I see that everything has been completed and I want to come up here and check off this due date?

Wouldn't it be great by just checking this box? It would automatically move this card into the Complete list.

Well let's make that happen.

Once again let's open up Butler and we are gonna stay with our Rules.

Now in this case we're gonna create a new rule and we have to pick a new trigger.

So we're gonna say add a trigger and this time we're gonna come down to Dates.

And we are gonna say when a due date, the second one here, when a due date is marked as complete in a card, once again, I'm gonna select by anyone.

That is gonna be our trigger. I'm gonna hit that plus button and now we need to tell it what is going to happen.

And what we wanna do is we wanna select this first option here under the Move tab.

Move the card to the top of the list or the bottom of the list, that's up to your personal preference.

I'm gonna say to the top of the list and we are gonna select that complete list.

Don't forget to hit that green arrow at the end because some of these have multiple options.

You have to choose multiple choices here, but make sure you hit that green plus button that will actually add it to your automation.

So, when the due date is marked as complete in a card by anyone, we wanna move that card to the top of the list Complete.

Let's hit Save and we'll close out our Butler dialogue.

So here we go.

Here is this one. Instead of dragging it over into Complete, what I want to do is I'm gonna come in here and I'm gonna check off this Due Date box.

And what's gonna happen?

It's not only completed, but you can see up top here, it's already moved us into the list Complete.

I don't even have to close out this card yet.

We've already been moved into Complete and if I do close it, here you can see we are moved to the top of the list.

It has been moved to the top of the Completed list.

Add Trello Due Date and Member when Custom Field is checked

Just by hitting that checkbox sorry, within that due date.

All right, let's go one step further here and let's take a look at how we can add some automation to our custom fields because one of the great things about using custom fields within Trello is that you can add some specific information such as Client Name.

Here I have a checkbox called Approve.

I can even add a particular Start Date or have multiple dates or due dates here in addition to the main due date within a Trello card.

But let's take a closer look at this Approved checkbox.

Perhaps you have a Trello board where there's a process where it gets to a particular stage, a particular part of your workflow, and then you want some specific actions to be taken.

So in this case what I wanna do is that when this Approved checkbox is checked I want the due date to automatically go to 72 hours from now and I want to assign myself to this particular card, okay? And we wanna do that all with just a single action, just by checking this box.

So let's close down this card and let's go back into Butler.

We are gonna stick with Rules. This is gonna happen under our Rules and we’re gonna select Create Rule once again.

Now we wanna add our trigger.

Now when it comes to custom fields within the Butler dialogue or within the Butler interface, don’t be confused, we are not going to Checklist. This is a checkbox. It is not a checklist.

Custom fields will appear under this last option here labeled Fields. So we’re gonna select Fields and we might have to scan down here just to see which one best suits us.

Now in this case, we wanna come down to about the fifth or sixth one here which says when custom field, blank Field name is checked by me or of course, we can choose anyone. We can choose different options here. But let’s select the proper field name.

Now since it’s the only checkbox, it’s the only custom field checkbox I have it’s gonna be my only choice here. So when custom field Approved is checked by anyone.

Now, don’t forget, you can actually have different rules for when things are unchecked. But in this case we wanna say, when the Approved checkbox is checked by Anyone, let’s hit that plus button, that is the trigger.

Now, what do we want to have happen?

Well, let’s start with the due date. We’re gonna come down here to Dates and we’re gonna set that due date not to now. We wanna open up this dialogue and give us a few more options here.

Now I could choose three days if I wanted to. I can change the duration or the scheduling value here, but in this case I’m gonna say 72 hours. I’m gonna be really specific. 72 hours from when that checkbox is selected.

I’m gonna hit this plus button here which is only gonna add it to this level here. Don’t forget to hit the green plus button. Set due date in 72 hours which is actually gonna add it as an action.

But we’re not done just yet. We wanna go to Members because I wanna add someone specifically to this card. The third one down says add member @.

Now this is great if you have other members of your team. Maybe you have a sales associate. Maybe you have a support team member that needs to address these cards when a particular checkbox is selected.

Now in this case I’m just gonna select myself, but don’t forget, you can choose specific people if you like. So, I’m gonna say add member myself to this card as well. Hit that green plus button and now both of those actions are going to take place.

Don’t forget, if there is a specific label you also want to add. If there’s a comment you would like to add, you can do that here as well. But in this example we’re just gonna leave it for these two.

I’m gonna hit Save and let’s close out our Butler dialogue and see what happens.

So we’re gonna come up here to this Contact client about meeting and let’s say it is Approved.

So I’m gonna select this checkbox and let’s see what happens.

Up top, first the date quickly jumped in at 72 hours from right now and I have been assigned to this card, all by a single action, just by checking a single box.

This is a great automation to add to some of those processes where again, you need multiple things to happen and you don’t want to waste your time clicking all over that card or even moving things around within your Trello board.

Next, let’s look at something that’s perhaps.

Add new Trello Lists on a regular schedule

A little more advanced, and that is adding new lists to your board along with adding some variables.

If I scroll over here to the left hand side of my board, you can see that I've had an automation working for me over the last few days.

I've been adding a new list with a very specific title for each of these days.

So how this particular automation is working and I had a great question just a week ago about someone who is using Trello for their own personal to-do list and the way they like to manage it is that they have a new list that they create for each and every new day.

But they want that to happen automatically.

Well, we can do that here within Butler.

Here you can see each morning at a time that I specify I am getting a new list created at the beginning of my board, but not only is it just a new list, but it has a very specific title with actually that date attached to it.

So how did I do it? Well let's go and create it for ourselves.

Once again we're gonna come into Butler, but unlike the other rules that we looked at we are not going into Rules.

Or I should say other automations.

We are not going into Rules because this is happening on a scheduling basis, we want to select Calendar this time.

So once we're in Calendar we want to select Create a Command.

We start with our trigger as always and this one's pretty straightforward. We're gonna just do this one every day.

It's gonna be the first one here, every day.

Now what you might want to do is click on this little clock icon and specify when this is going to happen. So, let's say I'd like this to happen pretty early in the morning.

I'm gonna say every morning at 5:00 a.m. That’s when I want this new list to appear. So I’m gonna hit that plus button. That is our trigger and now we have to determine what is going to happen.

So in this case, I wanna choose the third option over which is titled Lists.

And what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna use this first option which says create a new list, okay?

So I wanna create a new list named.

Now here is where we’re gonna give it a specific name. Now in many cases, if you’re creating a new list on a regular basis you probably don’t want to use the exact same name, right? It’s gonna become confusing. Especially if you’re creating other automations or other rules to have lists with the exact same name.

So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna say Tasks for and so I can get the accurate date, so I can get that day’s date, what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna insert a curly bracket and I’m gonna say date, d-a-t-e short. S-h-o-r-t. All one word, no spaces. Dateshort and then I’m gonna close it with another curly bracket.

This is what’s called a Butler variable. So what it’s gonna do it’s gonna put in that day’s date in a somewhat shortened or abbreviated month format as you saw on my board before.

So that’s all we need to do. This is the action. Tasks for, and it’s gonna put in the date for that day.

I’m gonna hit that plus button over here to the right and don’t forget to hit Save.

Now this one’s a bit harder for me to show you live because it’s not gonna happen until tomorrow morning at 5:00 a.m., but what I’ve already shown you is this is how it’s going to look. It’s dateshort because as you can see it’s only giving me the three letter abbreviation of the month, instead of the e on June it’s just giving me J-u-n.

But let’s take a closer look at where you can find out how to add these variables and many more

Full list of Trello Butler Command Variables

to your Trello board.

On the official Trello support website you can find a full list of all of the variables that you can include within your Butler automation.

Now you can also simply do a quick Google search for Trello Butler variables, and you'll come directly to this page or I should say it'll be the first option in those search results.

Once you're here you will see the full list of all the variables in which you can include.

So here under Time related, if we scroll down here you can see that dateshort, which I just included in my Butler automation. If I wanted datelong I could just input that and then I could get the full month, maybe I just want the datenumber format, I can do that as well.

But whether it's time related, and yes you can do the day before or weeks after or number of days after. You can give it board data. You can even include card data.

In fact, this is some of the variables that I will use if I'm creating a custom email notification or adding a comment within a particular card. I can actually add specific links or I can add other information about that card.

But you can scroll and find the full list of all the variables in which you can add here, within your Trello Butler automation data.

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(air whooshing)

Google Forms is a great way to create easy contact forms, quizzes, samples, surveys, and so many other things.

So in today's video, I wanna share with you five of my favorite tips to get the most out of Google Forms.

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

Email notifications for new Google Forms responses

And let's dive right in with tip number one, and that has to do with our responses.

Now, once you've set up a form and you've shared it with others, you can always come up here and click on the Responses tab.

And it gives you a great summary, whether it's a chart format and telling you how individual users or the group as a whole has responded.

But what if you can't wait or what if you want to reply to that individual as soon as they send the form? This is especially helpful if you're setting up a contact form.

Well, over here under the Responses tab, we wanna select these three dots. We've got this option to Get email notifications for new responses.

Now this is essentially just a checkbox. If I click on this, it has been unchecked, but if I come back and click on it, you can see that it has been checked.

Meaning now for every time that this form is submitted, someone submits this form, I'm gonna receive an email notification.

Now just make sure that you know that this notification is gonna be sent to this email address. Wherever you have created this form, that is where that notification will be sent.

You don't yet have the opportunity to customize or change the email address, but by selecting this, you will get an immediate response whenever someone completes your form.

Add Google Forms to your website

Now, speaking of completing their form, what about if you want to share this form in a different format?

One of the most common ways to share our form is to come up here and select Send, and we can either send an email directly, but probably more frequently, we are sharing this link.

And don't forget to hit the shortened URL option here. So you can share this via social media or it just looks a little bit cleaner.

So you can copy and paste this link and send it to those who you would like to fill out the form.

But what if it's something that you'd like to include on a web page, such as your website? This is very useful, especially if you're creating a contact form.

Well, the third option here is to actually embed your form. You can embed the HTML of your form.

Now, if you need to, you can try some trial and error with the width and height here to see what best suits the page that you're gonna paste this.

But all you need to do is select Copy, which is going to copy this piece of code and then bring it into your website editor or wherever you would like to include it.

So let me just delete this for a second. I'm just using a quick and easy HTML Code Editor to show my example here.

So I'm gonna paste the HTML here on the left-hand side, and we're gonna get a preview on the right-hand side.

So if I paste this, here you can see my form the way I've designed it. It's gonna be displayed just the way I like, everything from the formatting, the colors, and the behavior of that form.

So instead of creating a button on your website and instead of just creating a link, you can actually embed the form itself.

So they don't have to click anywhere else or go to a new page, they can fill out your form. All you have to do again is come up to Send, choose that last option, and copy this piece of code and place it on your website.

Create an auto-grading quiz in Google Forms

Now tip number three is especially for teachers or for those involved in training, or maybe you just want to quiz the people that you've been speaking with or who have been taking some of your training or reading some of your content.

You can turn any form into an auto-grading quiz, and this is all you need to do to make use of this. Here, I've created a quick and easy sample quiz with just a few questions based on this video.

So in order to do so, what I need to do is come up here to the Settings, and I'm going to choose the third option, which is Quizzes.

And I can say, "Make this a quiz." If I select this option, I get a number of different options down below. Number one, do I want to release the grade or release the scoring immediately after each submission? Or do I want to wait until I see it and then tell them when I've reviewed it and released their score?

Down below, we also have a few options in terms of what the respondent can see. Can they see the missed questions? Can they see the correct answers? And can they see the point values? You can determine what you want to allow those who are participating in the quiz to see. Make sure you hit Save before leaving this page.

Once you’ve saved this setting, come back to your form. Now, remember, I haven’t actually set this one up as a quiz yet. So now what I need to do is click on these questions, and down in the left-hand side, you can see, I want to click on the "Answer Key."

If I click on the Answer Key, I’ve got two options here. One, I can say how many points this question is worth. I’ll say that this question is worth five points. And next, I’m going to say that Yes is the correct answer. If they want to get the five points, they have to click Yes.

Come down here and say Done. Now I can see the point value here and this little check mark indicating what the correct answer is.

Let’s go down to this second question, which is different. It’s not multiple choice. I’m going to click on this, again click on the Answer Key, and I’m going to give this one, oh, I don’t know, I’ll give this 10 points because it’s not multiple choice.

Here I can add one or more answers as the correct answer. So in this particular case, I’m the one who created that video. So I can say it’s Simpletivity.

If you want to add other variations, maybe you think they’re going to have trouble spelling the name or if it's the first and last name or just the first name, you can choose to add multiple correct answers and say, "Mark all other answers incorrect."

I’m going to check that box and say Done. So here I can see the answer key when I’m previewing, or if I’m wanting to add more questions to this form, I can do that as well.

Now I can send this as a quiz, and after it is submitted, the person who has filled it out will receive that feedback immediately. They’ll see how many points they received and what the correct answers were.

Give specific questions based on Google Form answers

Now, tip number four is something that many of you have been asking me over the last several weeks and months, and that is, "Scott, can I use logic branching within Google Forms? Can I give someone some special questions depending on how they've answered an earlier question or something else in my survey?"

And the answer is absolutely yes. Let me show you how to do this.

Here, I've got a sample survey. The key to logic branching, or presenting other questions based on their earlier answers, has to do with sections.

So a reminder, on the right-hand side, the very last option is to add a section. You can add as many sections as you want. This is often used to break up your quiz or form into more manageable or digestible chunks. For example, maybe they answer three questions per page, and then they go to the next section.

To use logic branching, you need to create sections for the different places you may send respondents based on their answers. Here I have section one of two, which is the main quiz with a simple yes or no question. I want to send them to section number two if they answer No. If they answer Yes, the quiz or form is complete, and they can go on with their day.

Here’s how to set it up:

1. Add Sections: Create a new section by selecting the last option on the right-hand side.
2. Set Up Questions: For the main question in section one, click the three dots next to the question and select "Go to section based on answers."
3. Choose Actions:
   • For the answer “Yes,” select "Submit form" to end the form.
   • For the answer “No,” select "Go to section [number]" to direct them to the next section where you can ask additional questions.
4. Configure Subsequent Sections: After each section, you also need to choose what happens next. In this example, you can choose to submit the form after section one, but ensure the logic still applies if they answer “No.”

Let’s see it in action:

1. Preview: Click on the Preview button.
2. Test Responses:
   • If "Yes": The form will end after showing a thank you message.
   • If "No": It will direct them to section number two with additional questions.

By using logic branching, you can create dynamic and responsive forms that adapt based on the answers given, making your surveys or quizzes more engaging and tailored to the respondent's input.

Add video to Google Forms

Now, the last tip I want to give you today is about adding something that can really enhance your forms: embedding videos. Adding a video can often spruce up your forms and make them more engaging.

Here's how you can do it:

1. Add Video: On the right-hand side of your form editor, select the fourth option down from the end, which is "Add video."
2. Search for Video: You can do a video search directly within the form. For example, search for "Google Forms tutorial" if you're looking for a specific tutorial.
3. Select Video: Once you find the video you want, click "Select." The video will be added to your form.
4. Position the Video: You can drag and drop the video to the desired position on your form. For example, you might want it to be the first thing respondents see.
5. Add Instructions: While the video itself isn’t a question and can’t be graded, you can add instructions above or below it. For instance, you can write, "Watch this video and then answer the following questions."
6. Preview: Click the Preview button to see how the video will appear to respondents. They can watch the video directly within the form and then proceed to answer the questions below.

Embedding videos is a great way to provide context, instructions, or additional information, making your forms more interactive and informative.

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