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Adding filters and rules to your Gmail account is one of the easiest ways to keep things organized and to make sure that you can manage your email the way that you want. So in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about creating, editing and managing your Gmail filters.

Let's get started with an example.  Here within my inbox, I have a number of emails that are from my account and have this in the subject line event confirmed. In fact, three of my first four emails here are these event confirmed emails.

These are simply telling me that an event has been set up, but they're not very helpful and therefore I don't want to see them appear in my inbox. I want them to skip my inbox entirely and maybe I want to apply a particular label so I can go and review them later.

So in order to create our filter, we can either start by coming up here to the search mailbox and start to enter in our criteria, or we can click on one of these emails and at the top of the email, if we click on the more option, you'll see there's an option to filter messages like these.

I'm going to select this option, and once again, it's going to bring us up here to this search criteria, but it's going to give us some additional options.

Now the first thing that you may notice is that the only thing that it has brought in is the from address, and in this case it happens to be my email address. But if I come down here and select search, you will see that that's bringing in a lot more than just the emails that I want to filter. In fact, it's bringing in all of the emails that are from me.

That is not what I want. So what I'm going to do is come up here and select show search options. Once again, we still have my email address here, but I'm going to want to come down and be a lot more specific.

Now there's a number of different fields which we can add. We can include details such as who the email was sent to, what was included in the subject line, and even drill down into the body of the email as well, including things such as certain words within the message or maybe words that are absent. We can even go into greater detail such as the size of the message or if it includes an attachment.

But in our case, we want to focus on that subject line here in the background, you can see that all of them have this event confirmed as a part of the subject line.

So I'm going to come up here to the subject line. I've already typed this in previously, so I'm going to include event confirmed and we can go ahead and select that search button. Once again, you'll notice that we have a create filter option, - But I recommend that you start with a search.

Why? Because now I can be sure that the filter that I'm about to create is only going to apply to the emails that I wanted to. Here you can see those three emails have been returned, so now I can confidently go ahead and create that filter.

Once again, we're going to return to that search bar, come over here and select show search options. We still have all of those options available to us, and then we're going to select create Filter.

Now, in fact, it hasn't actually created the filter just yet because we have to answer some other important questions such as what exactly is going to happen when a message that matches this criteria enters into our inbox.

And we have about a dozen options available to us here. The first one here is to skip the inbox, which is really another way of saying archiving that message. And in my example, that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want it to start in my inbox, I want it to come over here to my all mail area here within Gmail.

But we're actually going to go one step further and add a label as well. I can always come back and select that search filter options, and we'll be returned to this screen here, some of the other ones for us to consider. 

Mark as Read, you will know the difference between something that is grayed out or something that you've opened up or that you've read versus something that is unread.

And maybe in my example, I want to make it unread as well. So I'm going to check that box. We can choose if we want to add a Gmail star to those messages. We can choose if we want to apply a label to those messages. And if I check this box and come to this dropdown, I will see a complete list of all of my current labels.

But if I want to add a new one, don't worry. I can do that here as well. In this case, I'm going to say a new label and I'm going to call this event Con Confirmations, something very simple like that. I'm going to select Create, and now I will have that new label.

You can see it actually appear here in the lower left under that label section. Now, if you'd like AI to help you create smart labels right here within Gmail, I recommend that you check out Same box with AI technology, same box prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, same box will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders.

Best of all, same box works with any email provider.

To get started, go to sanebox.com/sim or click the link in the description below. We also have the option to forward these emails to someone else, forward it to another address. You will see here in the dropdown, I have already set up a forwarding email address if I want to choose this option. If you want to forward it to another address, you will need to click on this add forwarding address button, which will take you into Gmail settings.

Just note that if you choose this option at this stage, you will have to start and create your filter all over again from scratch. It will not save it in this state, but this can be helpful if there is certain criteria and you want to forward it to someone else or perhaps another address that you manage Below that is the option to delete the message altogether.

Now, in my example, you can see that this is grayed out. I can't actually select it, that's because I selected Skip the inbox. You can't skip the inbox, meaning archive it and delete it at the same time. But if I did want to delete it, it would send that message directly to the trash. And remember, things in the trash will remain for a full 30 days before they are removed or deleted permanently.

Below that, we have the option to never send it to spam. Do you have a particular sender that always ends up in your spam folder even though you want to read it or be made known of that message?

Here, you can choose to never send those messages to spam. We can also choose to reply with a template, and if you've created Gmail templates in the past, you can reply with a template which you've created.

Just be very careful that the template that you have created or selected is appropriate for whatever criteria you have selected. We can also choose to always market as important or never market as important, and we can also categorize these particular emails. Now, these categories are the default or standard categories here within Gmail, including things such as primary social and promotions.

Now, the very last option here is very important. It states also apply the filter to three matching conversations. We know from doing our search that we have three existing conversations here that apply to this search criteria.

Now this is up to personal preference and maybe depending on the criteria that you've entered, if I leave this unchecked, these messages will remain in my inbox and everything that we've set up here will apply for new emails or new messages in the future.

But if I do select this option, it will apply this and therefore immediately archive it, mark it as read and apply these particular labels qs well.

So I'm going to go ahead and leave this as checked, and I'm going to select create filter. We are brought back to our search criteria, but let's go ahead and return to our inbox. And you'll notice that those emails are now removed. They no longer exist here in our inbox. And if I come over here down to labels and select event confirmations, you will see that there are our three emails and all of them have been marked as read just like we created within our filter.

But what if you've made a mistake and you want to go back and edit your filter or what if you just want to keep track of all of the filters which you've created in the past In order to do so, we're going to need to come up here to the right hand corner of our screen, select the gear icon, and then select See all settings.

And if we come over to about the fifth tab, you will see something called filters and blocked addresses. Here we will see a complete list of all of the filters which we've created and are currently applied to this account, including at the very bottom, the one that we just created. Here. We can see it includes the from address, the subject, and then it will also tell us what it is doing, skipping the inbox marking as red and applying this particular label.

So if I need to come back and edit this filter or any of the other filters here, I can come over here to the right hand side and select that edit link, and we will first be brought to the search criteria. So here I can change or add other email addresses.

Maybe I do want to include certain keywords or maybe I only want to include messages that have an attachment. I don't have to make changes on this screen. Maybe I'm happy with the settings that I've set up here. I'm going to select continue, and now we can come back and edit our filter criteria.

So maybe in this example, I don't want the messages to be marked as read. I'm going to uncheck that box, and then I'm going to say update the filter. I will be returned to the filter screen here within our settings. And you can see that this filter has been updated. And if there's a filter that you no longer need or is not behaving as you would like, you can also choose the delete option and remove any or all of your filters here on the right hand side.

Now, while we're here within our editing screen, let's take a look at some of the other helpful ways in which we can create filters.

Let's start by taking a look at this first filter up here, which you can see includes several different email addresses. I'm going to go ahead and select edit, just so it's easier to see.

You may want to apply the exact same filter, meaning you want a number of different messages, perhaps from a number of different senders to go to the same label or to have the exact same behavior, but you don't need to create a different filter for every single sender.

In this example, you can see that I've included three different email addresses, but the key thing is, is that I've added this operator or capital or meaning whenever I receive an email from this person or this person or this other person, all of my filter behavior, if I select continue here, everything that I've selected on this screen will apply to all of them.

Now, there's another search operator, which may be helpful for your filters and rules, and that's the and operator, capital A and D. Now, while this will not make sense in the from line, it could make sense within the two line, meaning maybe you want to apply a filter or apply a special label if someone sends a message to you and your boss or to you and someone else in particular.

In this case, this will only look for messages where a message has been sent to both of those individuals on the exact same email. Now, a third search operator, which can make your filters so much more powerful, but also easier to use is if you use the asterisk, which will be used as a wild card when you include it within your criteria.

How often have you received email messages from a particular domain, a particular sender? However, they have different people or they have different addresses in the front of their email address.

In this particular example, I've chosen to use an asterisk before the at symbol in this address, meaning that any email coming from this domain name will have this filter applied. 

I don't have to worry if it's from support or hello or marketing or from John. All of it will be caught as a part of this filter. So this can be extremely helpful if you don't want to include multiple email addresses or if you want to just zero in on a particular domain.

Now, if you're wanting to learn even more ways on how to keep your Gmail account organized and simple to manage, I encourage that you watch this playlist next and to be notified of new SimpliVity videos. Make sure to subscribe. 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.

- Adding filters and rules to your Gmail account is one of the easiest ways to keep things organized and to make sure that you can manage your email the way that you want.

So in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about creating, editing and managing your Gmail filters. Let's get started with an example here Within my inbox, I have a number of emails that are from my account and have this in the subject line event confirmed. In fact, three of my first four emails here are these event confirmed emails.

These are simply telling me that an event has been set up, but they're not very helpful and therefore I don't want to see them appear in my inbox. I want them to skip my inbox entirely and maybe I want to apply a particular label so I can go and review them later.

So in order to create our filter, we can either start by coming up here to the search mailbox and start to enter in our criteria, or we can click on one of these emails and at the top of the email, if we click on the more option, you'll see there's an option to filter messages like these. I'm going to select this option, and once again, it's going to bring us up here to this search criteria, but it's going to give us some additional options.

Now the first thing that you may notice is that the only thing that it has brought in is the from address, and in this case it happens to be my email address. But if I come down here and select search, you will see that that's bringing in a lot more than just the emails that I want to filter. In fact, it's bringing in all of the emails that are from me. That is not what I want.

So what I'm going to do is come up here and select show search options. Once again, we still have my email address here, but I'm going to want to come down and be a lot more specific. Now there's a number of different fields which we can add. We can include details such as who the email was sent to, what was included in the subject line, and even drill down into the body of the email as well, including things such as certain words within the message or maybe words that are absent.

We can even go into greater detail such as the size of the message or if it includes an attachment. But in our case, we want to focus on that subject line here in the background, you can see that all of them have this event confirmed as a part of the subject line.

So I'm going to come up here to the subject line. I've already typed this in previously, so I'm going to include event confirmed and we can go ahead and select that search button.

Once again, you'll notice that we have a create filter option, but I recommend that you start with a search. Why? Because now I can be sure that the filter that I'm about to create is only going to apply to the emails that I wanted to. Here you can see those three emails have been returned, so now I can confidently go ahead and create that filter.

Once again, we're going to return to that search bar, come over here and select show search options. We still have all of those options available to us, and then we're going to select create Filter. Now, in fact, it hasn't actually created the filter just yet because we have to answer some other important questions such as what exactly is going to happen when a message that matches this criteria enters into our inbox. And we have about a dozen options available to us here.

The first one here is to skip the inbox, which is really another way of saying archiving that message. And in my example, that's exactly what I want to do. I don't want it to start in my inbox, I want it to come over here to my all mail area here within Gmail. But we're actually going to go one step further and add a label as well.

I can always come back and select that search filter options, and we'll be returned to this screen here, some of the other ones for us to consider. Mark as Read, you will know the difference between something that is grayed out or something that you've opened up or that you've read versus something that is unread. And maybe in my example, I want to make it unread as well. So I'm going to check that box.

We can choose if we want to add a Gmail star to those messages. We can choose if we want to apply a label to those messages. And if I check this box and come to this dropdown, I will see a complete list of all of my current labels. But if I want to add a new one, don't worry. I can do that here as well. In this case, I'm going to say a new label and I'm going to call this event Con Confirmations, something very simple like that.

I'm going to select Create, and now I will have that new label. You can see it actually appear here in the lower left under that label section. Now, if you'd like AI to help you create smart labels right here within Gmail, I recommend that you check out Same box with AI technology, same box prioritizes essential messages, saving you hours of time each week, and by learning from your behavior, same box will clean up your inbox, get rid of spam, and organize your emails into relevant folders. Best of all, same box works with any email provider. To get started, go to sanebox.com/sim or click the link in the description below.

We also have the option to forward these emails to someone else, forward it to another address. You will see here in the dropdown, I have already set up a forwarding email address if I want to choose this option. If you want to forward it to another address, you will need to click on this add forwarding address button, which will take you into Gmail settings.

Just note that if you choose this option at this stage, you will have to start and create your filter all over again from scratch. It will not save it in this state, but this can be helpful if there is certain criteria and you want to forward it to someone else or perhaps another address that you manage.

Below that is the option to delete the message altogether. Now, in my example, you can see that this is grayed out. I can't actually select it, that's because I selected Skip the inbox. You can't skip the inbox, meaning archive it and delete it at the same time. But if I did want to delete it, it would send that message directly to the trash. And remember, things in the trash will remain for a full 30 days before they are removed or deleted permanently.

Below that, we have the option to never send it to spam. Do you have a particular sender that always ends up in your spam folder even though you want to read it or be made known of that message? Here, you can choose to never send those messages to spam. We can also choose to reply with a template, and if you've created Gmail templates in the past, you can reply with a template which you've created. Just be very careful that the template that you have created or selected is appropriate for whatever criteria you have selected.

We can also choose to always market as important or never market as important, and we can also categorize these particular emails. Now, these categories are the default or standard categories here within Gmail, including things such as primary social and promotions.

Now, the very last option here is very important. It states also apply the filter to three matching conversations. We know from doing our search that we have three existing conversations here that apply to this search criteria. 

Now this is up to personal preference and maybe depending on the criteria that you've entered, if I leave this unchecked, these messages will remain in my inbox and everything that we've set up here will apply for new emails or new messages in the future. But if I do select this option, it will apply this and therefore immediately archive it, mark it as read and apply these particular labels as well.

So I'm going to go ahead and leave this as checked, and I'm going to select create filter. We are brought back to our search criteria, but let's go ahead and return to our inbox. And you'll notice that those emails are now removed. They no longer exist here in our inbox. And if I come over here down to labels and select event confirmations, you will see that there are our three emails and all of them have been marked as read just like we created within our filter.

But what if you've made a mistake and you want to go back and edit your filter or what if you just want to keep track of all of the filters which you've created in the past In order to do so, we're going to need to come up here to the right hand corner of our screen, select the gear icon, and then select See all settings.

And if we come over to about the fifth tab, you will see something called filters and blocked addresses. Here we will see a complete list of all of the filters which we've created and are currently applied to this account, including at the very bottom, the one that we just created. Here. We can see it includes the from address, the subject, and then it will also tell us what it is doing, skipping the inbox marking as red and applying this particular label.

So if I need to come back and edit this filter or any of the other filters here, I can come over here to the right hand side and select that edit link, and we will first be brought to the search criteria. So here I can change or add other email addresses. Maybe I do want to include certain keywords or maybe I only want to include messages that have an attachment. I don't have to make changes on this screen. Maybe I'm happy with the settings that I've set up here. I'm going to select continue, and now we can come back and edit our filter criteria.

So maybe in this example, I don't want the messages to be marked as read. I'm going to uncheck that box, and then I'm going to say update the filter. I will be returned to the filter screen here within our settings. And you can see that this filter has been updated. And if there's a filter that you no longer need or is not behaving as you would like, you can also choose the delete option and remove any or all of your filters here on the right hand side.

Now, while we're here within our editing screen, let's take a look at some of the other helpful ways in which we can create filters. 

Let's start by taking a look at this first filter up here, which you can see includes several different email addresses. I'm going to go ahead and select edit, just so it's easier to see. You may want to apply the exact same filter, meaning you want a number of different messages, perhaps from a number of different senders to go to the same label or to have the exact same behavior, but you don't need to create a different filter for every single sender.

In this example, you can see that I've included three different email addresses, but the key thing is, is that I've added this operator or capital or meaning whenever I receive an email from this person or this person or this other person, all of my filter behavior, if I select continue here, everything that I've selected on this screen will apply to all of them.

Now, there's another search operator, which may be helpful for your filters and rules, and that's the and operator, capital A and D. Now, while this will not make sense in the from line, it could make sense within the two line, meaning maybe you want to apply a filter or apply a special label if someone sends a message to you and your boss or to you and someone else in particular. In this case, this will only look for messages where a message has been sent to both of those individuals on the exact same email.

Now, a third search operator, which can make your filters so much more powerful, but also easier to use is if you use the asterisk, which will be used as a wild card when you include it within your criteria. How often have you received email messages from a particular domain, a particular sender? However, they have different people or they have different addresses in the front of their email address.

In this particular example, I've chosen to use an asterisk before the at symbol in this address, meaning that any email coming from this domain name will have this filter applied. I don't have to worry if it's from support or hello or marketing or from John. All of it will be caught as a part of this filter.

So this can be extremely helpful if you don't want to include multiple email addresses or if you want to just zero in on a particular domain. Now, if you're wanting to learn even more ways on how to keep your Gmail account organized and simple to manage, I encourage that you watch this playlist next. And to be notified of new Simpletivity videos. make sure to subscribe. 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.

I need a screenshot and markup tool that is fast, easy to use, and allows me to share them with others without having to get attachments involved.

And the good news is, is that I found something, it's called Markup Hero, which is a free Chrome extension, which does everything I need it to do. And then so much more. So let me show you how it works.

First off, one of my favorite features is the ability to take a full page screenshot. Here I am within a website and there's no way I can take a single screenshot and get everything in.

But with Markup Hero, I can come up here and take what's called a scrolling screenshot. What it's going to do is take a screenshot of the entire webpage and then stitch it back together. So I've got the entire page at my disposal.

Here I am within my Markup Hero interface, and you can see I've got the entire webpage here. Now I can continue to markup, add annotations, and edit it any way that I like.

Now, markup Hero has all of the standard features that you would expect with a markup tool. We can add text, we can add arrows, lines, and highlight different things as well.

But perhaps one of my favorite features is the call out arrow, which actually combines both the arrow and the text at the same time. So let's say I'm giving feedback on this website and I need to say something like This is way to small.

Not only is this feature quick and easy to use, but best of all, once I've added my text, I can continue to edit this. Actually, I made a mistake. I wasn't referring to this, I was actually referring to the title up here.

All I need to do is click the arrow and move it to where I want to. And if I don't think the text is going to be as visible, I can move that here as well. Maybe the blue isn't going to stand out the way I want. I can change it to green. It's even going to adjust my text to make it that much more readable for the person that I'm sending this to as well.

Another one of my favorite features is the ability to blur sensitive information. How often have you shared a screenshot, maybe from your email or from a document, and you want to make sure that you are not sharing other people's contact information or private financial information?

Here I can simply drag over the area that I want to blur. I'm going to say apply that blur. And yes, here within Markup Hero, it's actually going to permanently blur that markup.

Why is that important? Far too often, other markup tools will only apply a temporary blur, meaning that we can come back and delete this or others could remove it as well. But in this case, we can safely send or share this document knowing that they will not see the information down below.

And speaking of share markup, hero keeps it very, very simple. So we don't have to get our email attachments involved here on the top right hand corner. We can click the share button and choose if we want to make this markup Collaborative meaning do we want to allow them to add their own markups and make edits, or do we only want to allow them to view this markup itself?

We can choose whichever one is suitable for our needs. I'm going to click that share button again. And now that link is copied to the clipboard. That's right. I can now share this link within a project management tool within an instant messaging tool. I don't even have to get email or attachments involved, but let's go back to some of the other features that make Markup Hero so valuable.

You'll notice if I click on the icon here within my browser, we actually have a lot of features available to us as well. Of course, we can select a particular area. So if I just want to focus on perhaps this image, I'm just going to come over and select it and immediately it will bring it into my editor where I can go ahead and make further changes. 

Another feature that I appreciate is the ability to simply take a screenshot of the tab. That's right. You don't want to have the other components of your browser or your desktop involved in the screenshot.

If I select screenshot tab, it will only take a screenshot of what's on screen, and again, I can continue with my editing needs.

Now, when taking screenshots and making markups of your images, sometimes it can be hard to keep track. So many screenshot tools are simply a one and done meaning it will take the screenshot and allow you to make an edit, but it can be hard to retrieve and find that information later.

Well, here within Markup Hero, it makes it very easy for us to either add our own collections or keep everything in one centralized place so I can quickly and easily go back to a previous screenshot, make an edit, or even combine different pages together.

So for example, maybe within this screenshot, I'm wanting to replace this image with something else that I already have on my computer, but I don't want to send an email with multiple attachments. I want them to understand that I'm talking about the exact same image or perhaps the exact same project here at the bottom.

I can add multiple pages to any of my screenshots. I'm going to go over here to my file folder, and I'm simply going to drag and drop in this image, which is related to this screenshot. Now it is added as a second page where I can of course continue to make changes or apply edits and annotations here, but it's not going to arrive as a separate document. I can share it as a link and add as many pages as I want together.

Now, if you want to try Markup Hero for yourself, you can do it absolutely for free, either without - Creating an account at all or by creating your own free account. And if you want to use all of the features of Markup Hero, I've got a special deal for you.

If you use the Code SimpliVity 50, you can get 50% off any monthly or annual plan. Just go to markup hero.com and get started today.

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.

This video is brought to you by Pipedrive ai. More about them later in the video.

There are a number of add-ons and extensions and more expensive tools like Calendly, which will allow you to embed possible meeting times within your email. But did you know that you can do this absolutely for free within your Gmail account?

Here I am composing a new message. I'm wanting to meet with someone this week, but I don't want to waste my time going back and forth discovering our availability. I want to share the times that I would like to meet with this person and allow them to book that time in just a single click.

So after I've written maybe a brief introduction here, all I need to do is come down to the very bottom, select the more options, and at the very bottom we have the option here to set up a time to meet.

Now there's two options available here to us. Offer times that you're free or we can create an event. Now, this second option here is really no different than just creating an event within Google Calendar and then inviting them directly. So let's focus on this first one here. 

By selecting this, what it's going to do is open up the Google side panel here on the right hand side and open up our calendar. You'll notice within the email it's got a bit of a placeholder and it's giving us some instructions. Select times in the calendar sidebar for a one one-to-one event.

So here on the right hand side, I've got a preview of my calendar, and all I need to do is click and drag any available times that I would like to offer. I'm going to move over to Wednesday here, and I'm going to say, well, I'm available between 10 and 12. I'm going to click and drag and then release. And here you can see it's added this placeholder.

I'm going to come down here in the afternoon. I'm going to do the same thing. Click and drag and then release. And here you can see down below it is showing the availability in which I have added.

Now if you want to change or if you've made a mistake, you can always remove one here. You can see is the X beside. I can remove that slot if I need to and if I want to change the duration, I can also click and drag. You'll notice these little white dots at the top and bottom.

So if I want to shorten this up, for example, I can do so there. If I want to maybe extend it all the way to nine 30, I can do so here as well. But let me go ahead and add a few more times. I'm going to go back and add that afternoon. I'm going to maybe go out to Friday and say that I'm also available early Friday morning, going to say seven to nine.

Now this does not mean that I'm requesting a two hour meeting. I'm simply offering my availability slots. - You'll see down below. By default, it's going to select a one hour meeting, but we can come in here and change that anywhere from 15 minutes to a custom duration. I'm going to say 30 minutes in this particular example. And you can even see in the little graphic up above, it's split it into 30 minute increments.

Now, down below, we can also edit and add things as well. You can see here if I wanted to change any of these times or add additional times on a particular day or simply remove it, I can do that down here as well. I just find it so much easier to click and drag.

Let's say I want to just move this entire block up from 6:00 AM to 8:00 AM I'm going to move it back here. I just find it so much easier to do.

So up here, this is much better for seeing sort of a summary of the available times that I'm going to offer when I'm happy adding my availability. I'm going to select this next button here, and now we can give this meeting a title. So maybe I'm going to call this one chat with Ted, maybe that's who I'm meeting with. 

So I can give it any event title that I want. I can once again change the event duration. It's giving me sort of a second chance to change that event duration and then also review my availability as well.

Now, this isn't mandatory, but down below there is a more info area here I can add a specific location or conferencing information. If I select this dropdown, I can automatically add a Google Meet video conferencing link. I can say, actually, let's meet at this location and add an address. I could also say that this is going to be a phone call and that will require them to provide their phone number, or I can say none to be specified later.

Now, you may be asking yourself, well, what if I don't use Google Meet and you use something like Zoom, for example. Well, you could just come down here to the description and paste your Zoom link into this area as well. I'm just going to leave this blank in this particular example.

And the last step is to add it to my email. And now within my email, they can browse the available times and choose the one that is best suited for them.

Now, it may seem like there's a lot more available times here than what we selected, but remember we selected a number of 90 minute and two hour blocks and gave them half hour increments. So here are the half hour increments that you're seeing here on these two particular days.

Now you're probably wondering, does this only work with fellow Gmail users? And what does it look like to the end user? Let's go ahead and hit send on this email. And let me show you, we are now taking a look at what the receiver will see.

And as you can tell, yes, this does not just work for Gmail or other Google users, you can safely use this feature with - Anyone that you are wanting to meet with. In this example, I'm using outlook.com.

So I'm going to go ahead and open this email. And here you can see it's everything that we saw in our last screen, just the way that we set things up so they can come in here and browse the available times and say, yeah, you know, Wednesday at 2:00 PM that works for me.

If they click on that link in a new tab, they're going to be brought to this screen. Now, this is important because we want to confirm both their name and their email address for this particular event. This is especially helpful if for some reason that email got forwarded or sent to someone else.

So this is really just a confirmation step. And as mentioned before, if we had made this a phone call, they would also be required to input their phone number. At this stage, they can say, confirm.

Jumping back to my email here, you can see I have just received an email notification saying that this event has been confirmed for 2:00 PM and if I open up my Google calendar, here is this chat with Ted. 

Here is that meeting event. Now, one key thing that you will want to remember when it comes to sending out your availability, like the one that we did here in this example, it will not reserve any of those times on your calendar, nor will it check for any double bookings.

So for example, we made ourselves available or gave this individual available times of 7:00 AM through 9:00 AM on Friday. If I went ahead and booked other meetings or blocked out times within this two hour frame and then they chose one of these slots, it would still proceed with booking that calendar event.

So I would recommend that you limit the number of options that you give to your recipients, and also make sure that these are times that are going to remain open or remain available at least within the next 24 hours, so that they can safely select that time and book a meeting with you.

Now, if you're wanting to turn your calls and appointments into actual sales and new clients, I recommend checking out Pipedrive AI. Pipedrive AI gives your CRM almost magical abilities, including the option to analyze your entire sales pipeline and identify what is most valuable and what you should be working on next.

It also includes great AI features such as writing your own emails and replying to customers and summarizing their information so you can determine who should you be reaching out to Next, to get started with Pipedrive AI for free, and to receive a special bonus just for SimpliVity users, click the link in the description down below.

Do you want to make your Google sites faster, more interactive and easier to navigate? In this video I'm sharing with you seven tips that will save you hours of frustration and make your website so much better. Let's get started with tip number one, and that's starting with a brand new site.

Now of course, you don't have to start with a blank site. You can start with something that you've already used in the past or choose from a template, but don't forget you've got so much more than just the four or five templates that are available to you here.

If we come up and expand the template gallery, we've got so much more to choose from. Now, Google tries to make it helpful by putting these into different categories. We've got personal work, small business, and education, but don't let these headers fool you.

I've used many of these education sites for business purposes and I've used many of these work and small business templates for educational purposes. So before you get started with that new site, take a look around so you can get there that much faster.

Now the second tip, which is going to really make your website stand out, is taking a look at your navigation. 

Now by default, your menu is going to appear here in the top right hand corner. It may vary a little bit by the theme that you've chosen, but this isn't the only layout or the only color scheme which you can choose from.

If we come up here and hit the gear icon, navigation is the very first setting, and we can move that top navigation to a side navigation if we want. Now this is a great choice if you want to put all the attention and more focus on what you have here in the header and what's going on above the fold. You'll see that it becomes a collapsible menu here in the left hand side.

So we still have all the same pages, we have all the same menu options that we saw before, but it's going to be hidden in the left hand side. This is a fantastic choice if you are creating a portfolio or something else where you really want people to focus here on the main screen or your homepage, but remember, this is not the only option available to you.

Now, in my case, I'm going to go back to that top view because I do want people to see this, but also don't forget that you can change the color of your navigation menu by default. Most themes will have this set to transparent, meaning that you can see the text directly over the background image I have here, but maybe I want to change it to white. This makes it stand out that much more, especially when I have this darker image here.

You also have the choice to choose black if you like. In this particular example, I don't think it stands out quite as much, so I might go back to that white option here that really I think makes my menu stand out, something that might make it easier for my visitors to find exactly what they're looking for.

Now, staying here within settings for tip number three, we also want to take a moment to click on our brand images, and don't forget that you can upload your own logo and favicon.

Let's start with the logo by selecting upload. Here I can choose any image on my computer. Let's say that maybe this check mark is my logo, so you'll see that that will now appear here in the top left hand corner. And if you do have a logo that perhaps has your full name included, don't forget that. You can also edit and remove the text here for the name of your site.

If this logo, for example, had my full company name and was perhaps a little more horizontal and it would stretch out here, I would probably just remove my site name altogether and let the logo do the work. 

In my example here, maybe I'll just call this checkbox marketing. Maybe that's the name of my business. So I am going to add my name here as well, but there's a couple of other things that we want to pay attention to here.

Once you've uploaded your logo, there's another feature here that you may not have seen before. You can use one or more of the colors within your logo for the rest of your theme. Here you can see that I've got sort of this orangey color from my page, but if this is the color of my logo, why don't I use the exact same green?

Now I am pulling the green directly from my logo and everything else, even when I've got a few different shades, will be brought directly into my website. So already it's making it that much easier and that much faster for me to create or edit my existing site.

Lastly, still under brand images, we want to come down to our Fon. Now what exactly is a fon? Well, when you're browsing the web, you'll notice that there is almost always an image here to the left of each of the websites that you're on here.

You can see that since I'm in Google sites, I've got this mini Google Sites logo and I've got my live site here on the right hand side, which because I don't have a favicon, is also showing the Google Sites logo.

Well, that's a no-no, you don't want someone coming to your website and seeing this Google Site's logo. Let's go ahead and hit upload. I'm going to come back down here and select that checkbox again. And don't forget, you will have to hit publish for this to be applied to your website with my Google site now published. You can see that now I have that favi con listed here right beside my website.

And as always remember, you don't have to have the same logo that you use here within your menu. These can be completely different. They can be a different shade or a different color, but I would say uploading a favicon is a must have to make your website look professional.

Now, the next tip on our list has to do with adding information on any webpage, but only show it when someone wants to see it. And that involves adding a collapsible group. Here you can see under the insert menu, it actually happens to be the very first option under our content blocks, but I find that not enough people use this or make good use of it within their website.

I'm going to go ahead and select it. Here is going to be my collapsible block, and as always, if I want to move it up, maybe I want to have it here below my speakers here, I can add it here as well.

Now, there's two components to a collapsible group. The first one is to give it a title or a section heading. This is always going to be visible and you're going to want to make sure that you give it such a title that people will want to expand it or realize that there's more information underneath. 

So an FAQ section is a great option here. Maybe I'm going to punch this up by making it bold and I'm also going to make it centered here as well. You'll see then down below we have a click to edit text section, and this is where we can add our questions and our answers. Another really good use of this space is maybe you want to include a person's bio.

I don't know how many times I've been on a page and they've just dumped the entire speaker's bio or the founder's bio when maybe it's better if that information is optional. I don't want to see or read your entire backstory unless I want to click on something. But let's stay with our FAQ example here.

So I'm going to quickly copy and paste some information here into this section and then click outside of the box and you'll notice that all we see is the header. Let's go ahead and select publish and see what this is going to look like on the live page. Here we are on the live page and you'll see here is the FAQ section.

Now there is a down arrow here on the right hand side, but they actually don't have to click that. They can click anything within this space and it will expand. They can click again and it will collapse. So again, this is a great way to maximize your real estate on any webpage. If you don't feel that you need to share that information to everyone, only want to display it when people want to learn more, you can include a collapsible group just like this.

Next up, let's take a look at another feature that I don't think gets used either often enough or at least the right way. And that is an image carousel in particular. You can do a lot more than just add images. This can be a great tool for adding testimonials and quotes as well. So let's make sure you know how to use it right.

By selecting image carousel, we're first going to be prompted with which images do we want to add. And yes, in order for it to be a carousel, you must have at least two images. So I'm going to go ahead here and select images.

You can either upload them directly from your machine or you can select an image. In my case, I'm going to go straight to Google Images, and this is an event, so I'm going to search for audiences here, and I'm going to go and click on a few different ones. Maybe this one, this one, and I kind of like the way that this one looks as well.

So I've got four images. I'm going to go ahead and select insert. And of course, keep in mind you can always rearrange these images by just simply dragging them. Maybe I want this to be in the third position, so I'm going to go ahead and drag this over here. Now, first I'm going to go ahead and select insert, just so you can see what this looks like, but we're going to come back and adjust some of those settings.

Now, when you first insert an image carousel, it's probably not going to look great, just like the example here, it's much too large and it's also on the left hand side of the screen. 

So all you need to do is drag your blue dots, which you may be familiar with in other parts of Google sites as well. And I do want this to span the entire length of my page, so I'm going to go ahead and do that as well.

But there's a couple of other options that we have available to us. If you want to add captions, you can do so, and that will appear here in this white section down below. But you'll also notice by default, it's added these dots here at the bottom indicating the total number of images in my carousel. Well, I don't want either of these things, so let's go ahead and click on the carousel and then we'll click on settings. And then we want to come up here and click on the gear icon.

So number one, I'm going to turn off showing those dots. I don't want to show any captions. I haven't added any captions yet, but even if I did, I can turn that off here. I do want it to autostart, meaning I want it to move through those images when someone lands on that page.

And then we can also adjust the transition speed. Now I find that even medium is much too fast for my liking, so I'm going to slow that down a bit to slow, and I'm going to hit update already.

Even before we go to look at the live site, I think this looks a lot better. We don't have that caption space and we don't have those dots. I'm going to go ahead and hit publish and let's see what this looks like on the live site.

Now, when someone visits my website, you can come down below here and here is my image carousel, which is transitioning through naturally between the four images which I've selected. Now, if the user does choose to hover over the images, you will notice that we have the forward and back buttons available to us. So they will have the option to go back or to go forward, and as soon as they do, so that will pause the carousel.

This can be a great technique if you want to include testimonials or quotes or things that you want people to maybe read, and then they can go through either at their own pace or you can set up that automatic transition for when they first land on the website.

So don't ignore the power of an image carousel. It can bring a lot of great interactivity and excitement to your webpages.

Now, number six on our list, we are going to bring in the power of another Google application - And bring it directly into our website. And that is taking advantage of using Google forms. There's a very good chance that you want to create a contact page, or in this case, maybe I want to collect information from those who are thinking about attending my event. So for this, I'm going to come down to almost the very bottom of the insert tab, and I'm going to select forms. 

By opening up this tab, you have access to all of your Google forms, whether it's something you're currently using somewhere else or something that you've just created in the past. So in this example, I'm going to go ahead and select this. How can I help you form?

And all I need to do is come down to the bottom after I've selected the appropriate form and select insert. And what it's going to do is bring that form directly into my website. And just like other sections, we could drag this to other parts, but I want this at the bottom of my homepage.

Now, as we've seen before, we can still manipulate our form. So for example, if I do want to center it on the screen, which I think makes the most sense, I'm going to drag it over here. And now I have this form directly integrated with my website.

Now, the one bonus tip to keep in mind when embedding Google Forms into your Google site is to go ahead and stretch out that form to the bottom of the screen. Let me show you what I mean. If I was to leave it in this case, you can actually see that this isn't the end of the form, and therefore when someone comes to this page, they're going to see an additional scroll bar here, so they can access that form.

But by clicking on the form itself, we can take that blue.at the bottom, drag it down so we can see the next or the submit or whatever it is at the end of the form, and that will reduce the chances of any additional scroll bar appearing on the right hand side.

Now, my last and final tip may be the most helpful of them all, especially if you've taken the time to customize logos and layouts and colors and everything else on a particular page. When we come over to the themes tab here, you know that you can quickly transition between a number of different themes, but did you know you can create your own custom theme so you can use this again and again and build those new websites even faster?

Here under custom, we're going to select that plus button here, and I'm going to call this my event theme. Maybe every time that I create a new event, I want to use this theme. And here we can make some other selections here as well. So for example, maybe I'm always going to use that particular logo, so I'm going to upload it.

Now, maybe there's a particular banner image that you want to place here when you are starting with a new page or with a new website. I'm going to leave this off in my example, but you can choose to add one yourself. I'm going to select next, and we can either go from a selection of preset colors or we can choose custom colors. 

So you probably already have two or three custom colors related to your logo or related to your brand. Here is where you can come in here and choose and copy and paste your hex code directly into these fields. I'm going to go ahead and select next.

And then the last choice we have here is selecting our custom fonts, and we have a difference between our titles and our headings and also our body text. So I'm going to select maybe Georgia in this case.

And now not only has it been applied to my existing website, but I can continue to make custom adjustments here, whether that be the colors that we looked at, maybe there are particular images, navigations, all of these things are now adjustable, and I can save and repurpose this theme in the future.

Now, I'd love to hear from you next. What is your favorite tip when it comes to creating websites with Google sites? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

Stop. Are you wanting to create a fillable form like the one you see here, where people get to enter in information and then have to save it and then upload it and then send it back to you? Well then this video isn't for you because in this video I'm going to show you how to turn any document or PDF into an actual online form in just minutes so you don't have to waste your time collecting and reviewing each PD F1 by one.

Instead, you can collect information in real time in a table like this. And best of all, you can do all of this absolutely for free. So let me show you how to get started. We're going to go over to jot form.com and make use of their smart PDF forms.

Now, the best thing about this is that you can turn any PDF or document into a fillable form. It will convert it in just a matter of seconds. And not only can people access it on any device, have you tried filling out A PDF on your mobile phone, but you can collect that information in an easy to use table, but keep your PDF format.

So let's go up here and we're going to say try now and we're going to create our first form together. Now, you don't have to start with A PDF, you can simply start with a doc or a Doc X, and you don't have to put in anything complicated either. Let me show you what I mean. In my example, I'm going to be using this PDF, which I simply created in Google Docs, and you'll notice that nothing is fillable here. 

In fact, these are just underscores on my keyboard. I've simply included the different headers and the different areas that I want to be filled in. And then I just used underscore to create a line within this document. Anyone can do this in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, or if you want, you can take an existing PDF and do this as well.

So going back to my JotForm account, I'm simply going to select upload document, and I'm going to go find that exact PDF that I just showed you a moment ago. And not only is it uploading it to my account, but it's actually going to convert it as well. Yes, you can see here on the right hand side, it's already created a fillable form here. This is my original PDF, but on the left hand side, it has already gone ahead and created a true online form for me to start using.

Now it may not be absolutely perfect, but all we need to do is make a few tweaks and then we can send people this actual form, which is linked to my PDF and make it that much easier for both them and also myself. So here, starting on the right hand side, we have our original PDF, and you can see that it's already identified the different areas that we need to fill in. And in fact, if I click on any of these, it will help me in showing which thing it has linked to over here on my online form.

So if I click on, for example, this date area here, it's going to draw a simple little line and sort of highlight - These two things together. And yes, it's even correctly identified things that need a date field, the start date, the end date, and then down below here under the signature, this date area as well.

Now of course it may not be absolutely perfect, but Jot form makes it very easy for us to edit this. For example, there's two things that I'm going to want to adjust. Number one, it didn't seem to pick up on this fixed price amount. And number two here, you can see that it has identified this signature area, but it's not a signature box. We're going to change that here as well.

Let's start with this fixed price amount. So under my deliverables here, I want to add a new element. So up in the top left hand corner, I'm going to select add form elements, and here's the variety of different elements in which I can add to my form.

Now you may think that I want to add a short text field. It's not a bad idea, but we're talking about numbers, we're talking about pricing. I don't want to allow people to add in text or to write in a name. I only want to allow them to add in numbers. So I'm going to choose this number element here and simply drag it onto my form. 

And then here at the top you can see I can match it with what is the area going to be on my original PDF. And yes, of course it's going to be my fixed price amount. So over here under number, I can say this is my fixed price amount. So it matches with what's on my PDF over here. And now within this field, they can only enter in a number when they enter in their pricing amount.

Now below you'll see that we have this freelancer area here, but I really want to collect a signature instead. So what I'm going to do in this case is I'm actually going to remove it. I'm going to come back to my add form element and you will notice that yes, we have the ability to add a signature so I can place it in here. And yes, we can drag and drop these elements up and down to wherever we need to.

Once again, on the right hand side, I'm just going to drag it over here to my signature box. I can change the length or the size of it if I need to, and perfect. I actually don't need to do anything else. It already has the signature title here so they know what to do. And now people can go ahead and sign this form.

Now in my example here, I'm happy with a fairly basic form, but don't forget, you can add your own logos if you like. We can come over here to the form designer panel and change our entire theme if we want to add colors and change our fonts and everything else. But for this example, I'm going to keep things relatively basic. The next thing that we can do is come over here to our settings and if we want to give the name a particular title and look at some of the other integrations or maybe some of the other options that we have available to us, one of them could be the thank you page. For example, if you want to give a customized thank you or perhaps redirect - Them to somewhere else on your website.

But let's get to that published phase 'cause I want to show you what this is going to look and feel like for the people that you send this to. Here we have our custom link, which I'm simply going to copy and let's paste it into our browser. And this is exactly what they will see. So again, you can choose whatever title you want here. It's actually going to show the original PDF, so they know that they're getting an official document or perhaps they've used this document or seen this document before in the past. I'm going to select start filing. And now we have this fillable, actual fillable online form which they can access on any device. And best of all, they don't have to remember this complicated date format. We've actually given them something a lot more convenient, like a calendar date picker here. 

Here they can enter in their name and other deliverables that need to be provided. Remember our fixed price amount column here I am attempting to type in letters here. It won't allow me to because I want them to only add in pricing information.

And then yes, we have that signature field, which is super easy for them to fill out as well. Now down below, they can submit it right away, but they can also preview the PDF as well. And this is the additional bonus because it's giving you and your clients the best of both worlds.

Not only can they easily fill out this PDF, but here you can see they can have a saved copy for themselves. Here are the dates in which they filled in. Here's that fixed price amount, and it even has their signature, which is date stamped at the time in which they signed that document. They can go ahead and download and save this document if they want, or they can go back to the form and then hit submit at this case.

Now jumping back to my Jot form account, I'm going to select the form that we just created and I'm going to select submissions. And here I have all of that information available to me, including their signature, including everything that they included. Now as those forms are filled out, I get to view and collect and analyze all that information in a helpful table.

No more do I have to open up the documents which they've emailed or uploaded to me and look at each and every individual field. Trust me, the days of fillable traditional PDF forms are over.

Now to get started creating and converting your own PDFs to online forms, just go to jot form.com or click the link in the description down below. And if you have any other questions on how you can simplify your software and make things easier for you and the people you serve, be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching, and remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple. - Stop.

Are you wanting to create a fillable form like the one you see here, where people get to enter in information and then have to save it and then upload it and then send it back to you?

Well then this video isn't for you because in this video I'm going to show you how to turn any document or PDF into an actual online form in just minutes so you don't have to waste your time collecting and reviewing each PD F1 by one.

Instead, you can collect information in real time in a table like this. And best of all, you can do all of this absolutely for free.

So let me show you how to get started. We're going to go over to jot form.com and make use of their smart PDF forms. Now, the best thing about this is that you can turn any PDF or document into a fillable form. It will convert it in just a matter of seconds. 

And not only can people access it on any device, have you tried filling out A PDF on your mobile phone, but you can collect that information in an easy to use table, but keep your PDF format.

So let's go up here and we're going to say try now and we're going to create our first form together. Now, you don't have to start with A PDF, you can simply start with a doc or a Doc X, and you don't have to put in anything complicated either.

Let me show you what I mean. In my example, I'm going to be using this PDF, which I simply created in Google Docs, and you'll notice that nothing is fillable here. In fact, these are just underscores on my keyboard. I've simply included the different headers and the different areas that I want to be filled in. And then I just used underscore to create a line within this document. Anyone can do this in Google Docs or Microsoft Word, or if you want, you can take an existing PDF and do this as well.

So going back to my JotForm account, I'm simply going to select upload document, and I'm going to go find that exact PDF that I just showed you a moment ago. And not only is it uploading it to my account, but it's actually going to convert it as well.

Yes, you can see here on the right hand side, it's already created a fillable form here. This is my original PDF, but on the left hand side, it has already gone ahead and created a true online form for me to start using. Now it may not be absolutely perfect, but all we need to do is make a few tweaks and then we can send people this actual form, which is linked to my PDF and make it that much easier for both them and also myself.

So here, starting on the right hand side, we have our original PDF, and you can see that it's already identified the different areas that we need to fill in. And in fact, if I click on any of these, it will help me in showing which thing it has linked to over here on my online form. So if I click on, for example, this date area here, it's going to draw a simple little line and sort of highlight - These two things together.

And yes, it's even correctly identified things that need a date field, the start date, the end date, and then down below here under the signature, this date area as well. Now of course it may not be absolutely perfect, but Jot form makes it very easy for us to edit this. For example, there's two things that I'm going to want to adjust. Number one, it didn't seem to pick up on this fixed price amount. And number two here, you can see that it has identified this signature area, but it's not a signature box.

We're going to change that here as well. Let's start with this fixed price amount. So under my deliverables here, I want to add a new element. So up in the top left hand corner, I'm going to select add form elements, and here's the variety of different elements in which I can add to my form.

Now you may think that I want to add a short text field. It's not a bad idea, but we're talking about numbers, we're talking about pricing. I don't want to allow people to add in text or to write in a name. I only want to allow them to add in numbers.

So I'm going to choose this number element here and simply drag it onto my form. And then here at the top you can see I can match it with what is the area going to be on my original PDF. And yes, of course it's going to be my fixed price amount. So over here under number, I can say this is my fixed price amount. So it matches with what's on my PDF over here. And now within this field, they can only enter in a number when they enter in their pricing amount.

Now below you'll see that we have this freelancer area here, but I really want to collect a signature instead. So what I'm going to do in this case is I'm actually going to remove it. I'm going to come back to my add form element and you will notice that yes, we have the ability to add a signature so I can place it in here. And yes, we can drag and drop these elements up and down to wherever we need to.

Once again, on the right hand side, I'm just going to drag it over here to my signature box. I can change the length or the size of it if I need to, and perfect. I actually don't need to do anything else. It already has the signature title here so they know what to do. And now people can go ahead and sign this form.

Now in my example here, I'm happy with a fairly basic form, but don't forget, you can add your own logos if you like. We can come over here to the form designer panel and change our entire theme if we want to add colors and change our fonts and everything else. But for this example, I'm going to keep things relatively basic.

The next thing that we can do is come over here to our settings and if we want to give the name a particular title and look at some of the other integrations or maybe some of the other options that we have available to us, one of them could be the thank you page. For example, if you want to give a customized thank you or perhaps redirect - Them to somewhere else on your website.

But let's get to that published phase 'cause I want to show you what this is going to look and feel like for the people that you send this to. Here we have our custom link, which I'm simply going to copy and let's paste it into our browser. And this is exactly what they will see. 

So again, you can choose whatever title you want here. It's actually going to show the original PDF, so they know that they're getting an official document or perhaps they've used this document or seen this document before in the past. I'm going to select start filing.

And now we have this fillable, actual fillable online form which they can access on any device. And best of all, they don't have to remember this complicated date format. We've actually given them something a lot more convenient, like a calendar date picker here. Here they can enter in their name and other deliverables that need to be provided.

Remember our fixed price amount column here I am attempting to type in letters here. It won't allow me to because I want them to only add in pricing information. And then yes, we have that signature field, which is super easy for them to fill out as well.

Now down below, they can submit it right away, but they can also preview the PDF as well. And this is the additional bonus because it's giving you and your clients the best of both worlds. Not only can they easily fill out this PDF, but here you can see they can have a saved copy for themselves. Here are the dates in which they filled in. Here's that fixed price amount, and it even has their signature, which is date stamped at the time in which they signed that document. They can go ahead and download and save this document if they want, or they can go back to the form and then hit submit at this case.

Now jumping back to my Jot form account, I'm going to select the form that we just created and I'm going to select submissions. And here I have all of that information available to me, including their signature, including everything that they included.

Now as those forms are filled out, I get to view and collect and analyze all that information in a helpful table. No more do I have to open up the documents which they've emailed or uploaded to me and look at each and every individual field. Trust me, the days of fillable traditional PDF forms are over.

Now to get started creating and converting your own PDFs to online forms, just go to jot form.com or click the link in the description down below. And if you have any other questions on how you can simplify your software and make things easier for you and the people you serve, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

This video is brought to you by Pipedrive, AI more about them later in the video. How can you use AI to create better spreadsheets and in a fraction of the time? In this video, I'm going to show you how to use Gemini AI with Google Sheets.

Now, first things first. In order to use this functionality with your Google Drive account, you must subscribe to either Gemini Advanced or Gemini business, both which are paid services. But the good news is, is that currently you can use Gemini Advanced completely free for two months at no charge. To learn more, go to gemini.google.com.

So here I am within a brand new spreadsheet and I want to create something, but I know it's going to take an awful lot of time to get all of my columns in the right order and even to start entering in some of that data. 

But here with Gemini AI enabled, you can see that we have a little icon here called Help Me Organize. It's directly to the right of the Search Menus option. By selecting this, we are going to get a new side dialogue here called You Guessed It Help me Organize.

Now, the first thing to note with this new AI feature is that it says Create a custom template, and you're going to see why this is important in just a moment. So in this example, I'm going to give it a fairly simple prompt.

Create a project plan for a customer, summer event, four 50 people. I'm then going to select Create, and you'll notice that it has this interesting looking graphic, which telling me that it is processing and it's thinking about what it's going to do before it creates my spreadsheet.

Now here you can see it's generated a number of tasks. I've got my columns here at the top complete with filters, and it's even included some dropdown menus, which I can start to use right away. 

It's put in some placeholder dates and some notes as well. But remember, this is meant to get me going, to get me started. Obviously, Jane Doe and Mary Jones and John Smith are not real people. They're not a part of my team, but I can easily replace them with other members that I'm working with.

Now, if I go ahead and start to click on any of these cells, I will receive this prompt insert or discard preview. What I like to insert this preview as a table in my sheet or discard it so you can see if I click X here down at the bottom, I've got these same options here as well.

It's telling me that it's in preview mode that I'm just seeing it at this point in time. If I want to insert it and start editing it, I can or I can close it all together. In this case, I'm going to say close this preview, and let's try a more sophisticated prompt here.

I've asked it to create a marketing plan for a new app that will be promoted on social media. I've also said to include a budget of $5,000. Let's see what it comes up with. With this set of instructions. Again, I'm going to select Create. And in my experience, the results have appeared in as little as three to five seconds. 

And here you can see it's giving me really exactly what I'm looking for. I've got a platform column here to start off. So I've got the major social media platforms, the type of content, and again, if I do choose to insert it, you'll see the other options it's given me as well. And then it's displayed a lot of other helpful information including strategy, target, audience, target metrics and tactics.

And yes, it's even included a budget, and it's actually pretty close. I said a maximum of $5,000. And if we total this up, you can see it's actually a total of $5,500. It's gone $500 over, but it's certainly kept it within that range.

And it's included a timeline. This time I'm going to select insert, and now you can see it is actually a part of my spreadsheet. And that side window that helped me organize window has now disappeared.

Now you can see if I click on this images dropdown for an example, you can see that I have the other dropdown menu options available to me. Here you can see I can change from all of my social media platforms. And remember, we can easily select this edit button and not only edit the existing ones that it's given me, but I can add other options here as well.

So this is going to get me so much further, so much closer to where I want to be, and at the very least, give me a lot of great ideas. 

Now let's look at one more way in which we can harness the power of AI with even more detail and bringing in more information from around the web. Here I've given it a travel prompt. I've said, create a four day travel plan for London, England for a family of three.

I've even given it the details of what that family consists of and keep the total cost below $7,000. I'm going to go ahead and select Create, and let's see how much detail we can not only get out of this, but see if we can start to use it immediately without having to plug in additional information.

And here in just a few moments, you can see that it has given me an awful lot of detail, including some pricing information here as well. Now, what I love about this particular example is not only has it given me a true itinerary broken down by days of the week and even the time of the day, but it's even given me some recommendations and some costs for a local hotel. It's given me the actual address of the different restaurants and the different places that we are going to visit and the average price per person.

And on the right hand side, it's even given me some helpful notes in terms of how 

To get to certain places and if we need to book our tickets in advance. Now, if you're wanting to take advantage of AI with your business, I recommend checking out Pipedrive ai. Pipedrive AI gives your CRM almost magical abilities, including the option to analyze your entire sales pipeline and identify what is most valuable and what you should be working on next.

It also includes great AI features such as writing your own emails and replying to customers and summarizing their information so you can determine who should you be reaching out to next, to get started with Pipedrive AI for free, and to receive a special bonus just for SimpliVity users, click the link in the description down below.

Mastering Google Calendar Notifications: Stay Organized and On Time

Managing your schedule efficiently is essential in today’s fast-paced world. Whether it’s an important meeting or picking up your kids from soccer practice, staying on top of your events requires reliable notifications. Google Calendar offers powerful notification and alert features that can help you stay on track. This guide will explore everything you need to know about customizing and optimizing notifications on both desktop and mobile devices.

What You’ll Learn in This Guide

• Understanding notification types and their differences.
• Setting up default notification preferences.
• Customizing notifications for individual and all-day events.
• Managing email notifications for events and changes.
• Optimizing notification settings on mobile devices.

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Getting Started: Event-Specific Notifications

When creating or editing events in Google Calendar, you can add or adjust notifications directly under the location field. For instance, you can:

• Change Existing Notifications: Modify the notification timing.
• Add Notifications: Set multiple notifications at different intervals.
• Email Alerts: Choose to receive notifications via email for critical events.

While these event-specific settings are useful, managing your default notification settings ensures consistency and saves time.

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Customizing Default Notifications on Desktop

To adjust default notifications, click the gear icon at the top-right corner of your Google Calendar and select Settings. There are two key sections to focus on: General Settings and Individual Calendar Settings.

General Notification Settings

1. Notification Types:
   • Turn Off Notifications: Disables all alerts for events.
   • Desktop Notifications: These pop up regardless of the application you’re using.
   • Alerts: Notifications only appear if Google Calendar is open in your browser.
2. Each option has unique features:
3. • Desktop Notifications: Can include sound alerts and customizable snooze intervals.
   • Alerts: Offer browser-based reminders without snooze functionality.
4. Conditional Notifications:Enable notifications only for events you’ve RSVP’d “Yes” or “Maybe” to. This applies to events created by others.

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Adjusting Individual Calendar Settings

Google Calendar allows you to tailor notifications for each calendar. Access these by selecting a calendar in the left-hand sidebar under Settings for my calendars.

Event Notifications

Set default notifications for newly created or existing events:

• Timing: Choose how far in advance you want to be notified—minutes, hours, days, or even weeks.
• Multiple Notifications: Layer notifications for flexibility, such as a pop-up 10 minutes before and an email 30 minutes in advance.
• Default Email Notifications: Receive email alerts instead of pop-ups for specific scenarios.

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All-Day Event Notifications

All-day events, such as birthdays or business trips, require different notification timings. Customize these notifications to suit your preferences:

• Set notifications to appear the evening before or earlier in the day.
• Add multiple reminders if necessary, using either pop-ups or emails.

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Other Notifications

Manage email notifications for specific updates:

• New Events: Alerts when someone adds an event to your calendar.
• Event Changes or Cancellations: Notifications for updates to events you didn’t organize.
• Event Responses: Receive responses for events you created.
• Daily Agenda: Get a 5:00 AM email summarizing your day’s schedule. This feature is customizable per calendar.

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How to Customize Notifications on Mobile

For on-the-go productivity, Google Calendar’s mobile app allows granular notification settings. Here’s how to get started:

1. Access Settings:
   • Open the app and tap the hamburger menu (three horizontal lines).
   • Scroll to the bottom and select Settings.
2. General Notification Settings:
   • Enable Notifications: Ensure notifications are toggled on.
   • Customize Alerts: Choose whether notifications override "Do Not Disturb," appear on your lock screen, or include sound and vibration.
3. Event-Specific Adjustments:
   • Customize notification preferences for individual calendars.
   • Any changes you make here will sync with your desktop settings.
4. Calendar and Task Notifications:Separate settings allow tailored alerts for events and tasks, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.

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Best Practices for Notification Management

To make the most of Google Calendar notifications, consider these tips:

• Set Realistic Notification Times: Avoid cluttering your schedule with too many alerts by spacing them out strategically.
• Use Email Alerts for Critical Events: Important meetings or deadlines benefit from email reminders.
• Enable Daily Agendas: Start your day informed with a clear overview of your commitments.
• Test Your Setup: Ensure notifications are working on all devices to avoid surprises.

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Conclusion: Simplify Your Productivity

Google Calendar’s robust notification settings are invaluable for staying organized. By customizing your alerts on both desktop and mobile devices, you can ensure you’re always on time and never miss a critical event. Start fine-tuning your notification preferences today and experience a smoother, more productive schedule.

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I'm about to share some sensitive information via email, and I really wish I could prevent the other person from forwarding or copying or downloading this content.

Well, fortunately for us here in Gmail, we can do just that by using a feature called Confidential Mode.

Before I go ahead and hit send on this email, I want to come all the way down to the bottom where we're familiar with other functions, such as attaching a file or inserting a link. And if we come over here to the right, you can see that there's this little lock icon called Toggle Confidential Mode.

By selecting this option here, we are given the following dialogue box, which tells us that recipients won't have the option to forward copy print or download this email.

And then down below we've got two different options to choose from. The first one of course is when will this email expire? If we select the dropdown, we have five different options available to us. Everything from a day, a week, one month, three months, or five years. Yes, it's a pretty big jump from three months to five years. 

And the nice thing is, no matter which one that you select, it will tell you here to the right of the dropdown what that date will be.

So instead of doing the math, well, how far is five years and oh yeah, 2029. That makes a lot of sense.

So depending on what it is you are sending and what you think would be an appropriate amount of time, let's go with one week here. I'm going to say it's going to expire in one week, that's April 23rd.

And then down below, the second thing that we need to decide is if we are going to require a passcode. So by default, it's going to be set to no SMS passcode, meaning they will not receive a text message or an email message depending if they are a Gmail user or not.

Or we can require them to use a passcode when they receive this email. For our example, I'm going to select this to no SMS passcode, and I'm going to hit save.

Now nothing has been set yet. I can continue to add other files or edit my email, but you will notice down below that we have this new section, which is telling me that this content will expire on this particular date.

If I want to remove confidential mode, I can simply click the X over here. And if I want to change any of my settings, I can hit edit and go back to the dialogue. But let's go ahead and hit send and see what this looks like to the recipient.

I've now switched over to my other email account. Now I've received this confidential email, and here you can see, I can still see the subject line, but in the preview text, it's already telling me that this message was sent in confidential mode. Let's go ahead and open up this email here.

You can see I have all the same content of the regular email, including the attachment here down below, and it's notifying me that the content will expire on this particular date. But the big thing that you may not notice is that I am actually trying to click and select these words. I'm also trying to right click on these words and I can't do it. It's not allowing me to select or copy the words on the screen here.

And if I do, go ahead and open up this attachment. You will notice here that if I click on the more option, I do not have the options to download to print or to save this document. Either I can only open it here within my browser.

Now of course, there's nothing that will stop someone from doing a print screen or taking a picture of this screen, but at the very least, they cannot download or print or copy this attachment or any of the texts that you've included here within this screen. 

Now, jumping back to my original email account, I want to show you how you can revoke or remove access to someone that you've sent a confidential email. Here we are, and you can see that this sent email is the same. It's going to expire in about a week's time, but to the right, I have the option to remove access for that user. I don't have to wait until April 23rd. If I want to no longer give them access, I can simply select this, remove access link, and it will immediately be removed. And of course, I can still come back in here and renew that access in case I've made a mistake.

Jumping back now into the recipient's email address, you can see that it doesn't remove or eliminate the email. Here you can see this is the same email that we saw a moment ago, but when I go to open it, it tells me that this email has expired. There is no content here, and there is no attachment.

So the next time you go to share some sensitive or personal information with others, consider using confidential mode if appropriate for your needs. Thank you so much for watching this video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

Evil Problem 1

Do you have an evil to-do list? In this video I'm going to share with you four signs that your task list may be working against you, but I'm going to give you four solutions to those big problems.

Now, number one, you may have an evil to-Do list if everything on your list is to even, what do I mean by too even? Well, I mean that as you scroll through your various tasks, there is no distinction between what is important and what can wait until later, what's urgent and what's not. What needs to be done today and what can you wait to do later in the week? As we look at this sample to-do list on the screen in front of us here, it's really hard, if not impossible, to determine what we should be doing next.

So how can we go about and solve this problem? Well, there's a couple of ways in which we can address this issue. Here I am using Google tasks and one of the fastest, if not easiest ways is to use the star feature. So I can take a look at maybe the two or three tasks that I need to do first or the things that I want to accomplish by the end of the day and I can star them and they're going to automatically appear at the top of my screen.

Within your respective task list, you may be able to add a flag, you may be able to add colors and some other way to prioritize certain tasks, but even if you don't want to use these star feature, there's a few other options we have available to us as well. We can always add a separate list which will highlight the things that we want to work on next.

So if I take those same tasks for example, I can simply drag them over into this second list which I've called priorities. So with this setup, it's very easy for me to see the distinction between the things I should be working on right now and the things that can wait until later. 

Evil Problem 2

Number two, you may have an evil to-do list if your to-do list is too vague. What do I mean by vagueness? I mean that as we scroll through most of the tasks in this sample to-do list, it can be difficult to determine exactly what I should be doing.

So for example, track marketing data. Do I need a payment provider marketing strategy review? Am I creating a marketing strategy review? Am I reviewing in an existing document exactly what am I doing when it comes to a number of these tasks? If the to-dos on our lists are too short or too vague, we can often waste a lot of valuable time spinning our wheels and asking ourselves, get client feedback. Well, which client? What type of feedback and how are we going to collect that feedback?

The more time we spend deciphering our own - Task, the more we are liable to skim down to something else which is more action oriented or something that we can engage with right away. Even though something like this one here with the question Mark May in fact be the most important thing on my to-do list.

So in order to avoid having too vague of a to-do list, we want to make sure that we start each of our to-dos with an action verb. So for example, important client calls. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing with that, but I can make this particular task so much more actionable by just changing a few words.

I'm going to turn important client calls into schedule two phone calls with three key clients. Here I've made it so much more actionable. Number one, I know exactly the type of call or the type of meeting that I'm doing and I've also set a very specific limit in terms of how many clients I'm going to be engaged with.

Looking a little further down the list, I have something that says last month's website stats. Well, I'm just going to change one word, which is going to make this so much more actionable. I'm going to say review last month's website stats. Just having that word review tells me exactly what I should be doing and no longer do I have to second guess or start scanning for something else on my list. 

Evil Problem 3

Now number three, you may have an evil to-do list if your task list is to inactive. And what I mean by that is that you're not reviewing it or you're not engaging with your task list on a regular basis. This so often happens when we have to go to another screen or another tab to view our task list.

Fortunately here within Google tasks, we can toggle between Google Calendar and our full task list or multiple lists if we have them on the exact same screen. In addition, we can also take advantage of the Google side panel here on the right hand side. You don't have to have it viewable at all times, but if I want to come over here and click on tasks, I can see all of my tasks here on the right hand side. If I have started a few things, I can focus on those items here and I can also easily navigate between my different lists.

But another thing that we want to keep in mind is the ability to drag any of these tasks onto my actual calendar here. As I'm looking at my day tomorrow, I can see that I have a lot of time available in the afternoon. So maybe that's a perfect time to review last month's website stats or maybe that's also a great time where I can schedule those phone calls. I can simply drag it from my task list on the right and put it directly on my calendar.

But keep in mind you don't have to give every task a specific time either. Maybe I need to set up these client referrals here. I'm going to come down to the date. I'm going to schedule it for the 18th and I'm purposely not going to select a time. I'm going to say, okay, and you can see here within my calendar, it's going to appear at the very top. So I don't have a particular time to accomplish this task, but I can see it here at the top of my calendar.

And even if that is minimized, even if I'm accessing my calendar on my phone, these tasks will appear as long as I have my tasks enabled here on the left hand side under my calendars. This is a great way to make sure that you don't leave things behind or that your task list does not become out of date. 

Evil Problem 4

Last but not least, you may have an evil to-do list if your task list is too long. When we have too many things staring back at us at any given time, it is only human nature for us to scan and scan and often read too many things at any given time.

Every time that you've completed a task, you don't want to come back here and have to review everything on this list. Not only is that going to be time consuming, but it also tends to increase our levels of stress and worry as we think about all of the things that we need or want to accomplish.

Now, we've already seen how we can separate our lists by priorities, but you may want to consider separating your lists even further. Here within my Google Tasks account, I've created two additional lists called this Week and Next Week so I can determine what are the smaller number of tasks that I want to accomplish this week and which ones can wait until next week.

This can help me be extra focused as I drag in a number of my tasks here under this week, and then I can safely say, you know what, some of these other tasks I can defer to sometime in the future. This way I can always minimize things such as the next week or my master list and just focus on the things that I want to hear.

And if I am taking advantage of the Google Calendar integration, once again, I can simply focus on those tasks on the right hand side of the menu. So if you feel that your to-do list is actively working against you, consider these four evil criteria and how you can solve these most common issues. And if you have any further questions about how you can keep your to-do list more organized and relevant, be sure to let me know in the comments down below.

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

This video is brought to you by Tool Finder. More about them a little later in the video. So what are the tools that I actually use each and every day to help me stay productive? In this video, I'm going to share with you my top five. 

1. Google Calendar

And it all gets started right here within Google Calendar. I consider it the foundation of my productivity system. Now of course, everyone needs a calendar to find out where they need to be and what appointments and meetings are coming up, but I use Google Calendar for so much more than just keeping track of my events.

Number one, I use it daily to block out my most important tasks and my projects. So for example, here you'll see that there are a number of blue events. These signal the things that I have time blocked for my day. So if I want to make sure that I draft that contract in time for a meeting with a client, or if I review the Q2 budget in time for an upcoming meeting, I place it directly here on my calendar. And because it's so easy to add multiple calendars and also both hide and disclose those calendars, I like keeping them separate here so I can see that distinction between my actual meetings with other people and the things that I've blocked out time for. 

But my number one tip with using Google Calendar is taking advantage of Google tasks, which is now integrated seamlessly with your calendar. Here you can see that I have my task listed here at the top of the following two days. It's nice and easy for me to see, but I don't have to keep them there.

When you go to click on a calendar event, you can select a task and insert it directly here. You can also have access to your tasks into additional ways. We can make use of the Google Chrome side panel and both add and manage our tasks here, or while staying within Google Calendar, we can simply toggle to our tasks view, manage our tasks here with our multiple lists, and then easily get back to our Google calendar. 

2. Calendly

The number two app I use most often is Calendly. Not only does Calendly make it super easy for people to find a convenient time to book time with me, so I can eliminate all of that email back and forth, but I also use it as an opportunity to collect payments in advance. For example, here I am offering a coaching session where the user can clearly see how long the coaching session will last and the price point.

But what's better yet is when they do go to book a particular time with me, not only are they providing me the important details, but they are entering in their payment information on the exact same screen. I love that not only can I collect payments in advance, no longer do I need to track people down or remind them to complete payment, but it's easily done in a single screen so it makes checkout that much easier for the user. And then I can get - Upfront before this particular coaching session, Calendly has also made their editing screen that much easier to use and to find.

And that leads me to my number one Calendly tip. Under scheduling settings, I always pay special attention to the minimum notice event limit. What does this mean? This means how many hours in advance someone can book me right now. Now, by default, when you set up a Calendly event, this is going to be set to just four hours, and I find that for many people, that is much too soon. So make sure to review your scheduling settings and double check your minimum notice hou

Now, speaking of meetings, when it comes to taking notes, my number one used notes app is Google Keep. Now, Google Keep does not have all of the fancy features and integrations as many of its competitors, but when it comes to the speed of both accessing your notes, taking a new note and finding the note that you're looking for, Google Keep is unmatched. That's why when I start a meeting, I usually immediately open up Google Keep and start to jot down those notes. It's quick and easy and lightning fast, and that speed continues within the mobile app. Something that we can't always say about other note taking apps.

Now, when it comes to my number one tip when using Google Keep, I encourage you to set reminders for certain types of notes, but don't just set a date and time reminder. There may be some notes we're actually setting a location reminder may be better. In this example, I've created a shopping list for my local Staples office store, but I don't need these right away. I just need to pick these up the next time I'm in the area. So what I'm going to do is select pick a place, and all I need to do is type in the name of my local store. Here it is on 32nd Street, I'm going to hit save. And now the next time that I'm in, within about a mile of this location, I will receive a notification on my phone.

So another great way to maximize your use of this lightning fast note taking app. 

4. Trello

But when it comes to bigger and more complex projects, I use Trello. I've been a longtime Trello user, and I've always been a big fan of the Kanban method of managing our projects.

Now, Kanban means moving things from one list to the other. In most cases, we are moving things through a set of stages from the left hand side of your screen to the right hand side. So for example, in this particular board, I've got my ideas starting on the left hand side. Some of them get turned into tasks, and ideally I'm going to work on them and complete them and end up over here within my completed - List.

Now, unlike many other project management tools, Trello has kept its interface relatively clean. Even if I go to open up a Trello card and review the details within, you can see clear distinctions between the description, the custom fields, attachments, checklists, and the other buttons that are located here on the right hand side of the screen. 

So I'm not bogged down by unnecessary information. I can just see the details that I need, and if there is a piece of functionality that you can't find here within Trello, Trello has a massive library of power ups, so you are bound to find exactly what you are looking for.

Now, when it comes to my number one tip when it comes to using Trello, I encourage you to get used to using the shortcut keys. You don't always have to open up a card and then open up this next card and make simple edits. If I want to change the date, it's simply D on my keyboard. If I want to change the labels, it's l on my keyboard. If I want to add members, yeah, you get it. It's M four members. So a variety of single key shortcuts, which makes using Trello that much easier and that much quicker. 

5. Text Blaze

Lastly, there is a tool that helps me be productive in all of the applications that I use, whether it's email calendars or anything else. And that is Text Blaze.

Now, at its core, text Blaze is a text expansion tool, which works with the Chrome browser. So for example, here on the left hand side, I have a collection of responses replies and other things that I use on a frequent basis. But rather than having to type them out each and every time or copy and paste them from some other document, I can use text expansion.

For example, when someone completes a coaching call with me, I want to send them a particular follow up email. I'm just going to enter in forward slash ce on my keyboard. And in just an instant, I've got a lot of detailed information, which is immediately inserted wherever my cursor is.

For example, you can change all of the formatting that you like. You can even include particular links like you see here as well. This cuts down on so much wasted time and allows me to make quick and easy edits.

If I need to come in here and change these links or change anything, I just do it once and that expansion set of keys remains the same, so I can use it absolutely anywhere.

Now, my number one tip when it comes to using Text Blaze is be sure to take advantage of variables. For example, here I have a snippet where I promise that I will get back to someone by the following Monday, but I don't want to just say the following Monday. I want to give them a specific date. So I have a variable here, which will always include the following Monday.

If I return now to my test area, all I need to do is enter in those few short keystrokes and it will say, sure thing, I'll get back to you by April 15th, which yes, of course is the following Monday. So you can take advantage of different variables, whether they be text-based date-based, name based, anything that you like. 

You can include it right here within Text Blaze. Now, if you're wanting to find out more information about the tools that I use, or to find the right productivity tools for you, I would encourage you to check out to Finder the world's best place to find the very best productivity apps. It doesn't matter what type of tool that you're after, whether it's project management to-do list apps or email apps. You'll find more than 500 in-depth reviews so that you can find the tools that you're looking for.

Not only are the reviews up to date and they get a rating, but here you can double check the availability, look at the pros and cons, and even compare the pricing amongst different tools. So stop wasting time. 

Visit Tool finder@toolfinder.co and find the tools that are best for you. 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.