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I want your next meeting to be a smashing success.

So in this video, I'm going to show you how to create a great meeting agenda and notes right here within Google Docs, and then link it back to your meeting event.

So not only you and your attendees can use it now, but you can also reference it in the future. We're going to get started here within Google Docs.

And you may have noticed these quick links here at the top of a new Google Doc. The first one is actually called meeting notes, and that's what we're going to take advantage of today.

But what if you don't see those helpful links here? Well, all you need to do is select the at symbol on your keyboard, and we will be brought up with a menu with a number of smart things, which we can include.

And down below the building blocks header, we want to select meeting notes. Now, when you first select meeting notes, it's actually going to give us a list of our up coming meetings within Google Calendar. 

Now, this is very helpful if we want to create an agenda or take notes for something that is happening soon.

But what if your meeting isn't listed here? Well, don't worry, just start typing in the keywords or the title of that meeting and we will find the meeting that you're looking for here.

I typed in the word budget and it's going to bring back everything that I'm looking for, but the particular meeting I'm looking for is happening later today. It's this one here, interview a new virtual assistant.

So I'm going to select it. And the great thing about using this feature is not only does it bring over all of those relevant details, including the date, the name, and our attendees, these are more than just text on a screen.

You can see here, if I hover over this, I have a direct link to that meeting within Google Calendar. And here, these are actually my contact cards. So if I need to see more information about any of these individuals, I can do so.

I'm also going to have the ability to email this agenda or these notes directly right here from within Google Docs. 

Now, on the right hand side, you'll see that there's a small dialogue here that says, do I want to share these meeting notes? Do I want to share and attach these meeting notes to my Google calendar?

And I'm going to say yes. Now, of course, this comes down to personal preference, but in our example, I want to take advantage of this. I want to make sure that these notes, whatever I add in advance or after the meeting, are accessible to both me and to those who are attending. So I'm going to say share and attach.

Now, if you do have other attendees in your meeting, you need to determine if you want to give them editing access, commenting access, or just viewer access. And I'm okay if they want to add some further comments. So I'm going to say commenter. In this particular case, I'm going to say share.

And just like that, we've created a link back to our Google calendar. If I come over here and select this calendar event here, you can see we have a direct link to those notes. If I open - This in full screen mode, you can see here within the description, we are just one click away from accessing these notes.

Let's go back to our Google doc and let's maybe fill in a few notes. 

Now, keep in mind, you can edit anything here within the document. This doesn't have to stay as notes. It could be agenda items, maybe that's what we want to call this.

And then down below we can start to add whatever we want. We're going to review the budget, we're going to address the cold temperature in the office. Maybe that's been an issue. And we're also going to discuss buying some new desks for everyone.

So these are the things that we're going to address in the meeting. Down below, we have an action items area, which is pre-populated with a checkbox. Now, in most cases, you're not going to add these action items until during the meeting or maybe shortly after the meeting.

But let's go ahead and just add a few as an example. Maybe there's going to be two or three tasks that we want to accomplish, and we want to make sure that people commit to this. So the other great thing about using this within Google Docs is that we can pull up that at symbol one more time, and I can make an assignment to any of these tasks.

So maybe I'm going to take on task number one here. I can assign myself directly to this task so I can stay accountable. We can make others accountable as well. And as things get crossed off, you can come here and check them off within the document as well.

When I'm finished adding all of my notes and making other changes here, I can go ahead and email these notes or this agenda to everyone who is attending without having to jump back into Google Calendar or without having to open up Gmail itself.

I'm going to come up here and select this email meeting notes link. And over on the right hand side, it's going to bring a small pop-up dialogue, which of course already has all of the attendees included. I don't have to add anything further.

I can edit the subject if I want. And here within the body of the email, we have all our agenda items and the action items. Anything that we would have included here within the document.

The benefit now is that either before the meeting, everyone can come in here and review the agenda, but in addition, this link to this doc is always going to remain here. So if we need to come back, maybe a few days have passed and someone wants to say, what was it exactly we discussed, or what were the action items from that meeting on Monday?

They can always come in here and see this live document where we can update one another with our different tasks.

Lastly, as a bonus, if this happens to be a recurring meeting, we don't have to create this all from scratch. In fact, we can keep all of our notes in the same doc here beside our email meeting notes. We want to select these more actions, and you'll see there's an insert, another instance. So here's our upcoming meeting.

I'm going to select that, and now I can add new notes for our upcoming meeting while still tracking the things that we created this week.

Now, if you enjoy today's video on getting the most out of Google Calendar and Google Docs, why not join the SimpliVity newsletter? Simply click the link on the screen or go to simplivity.com and subscribe for free.

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

You probably already spend a lot of time here within Google Calendar, so let's make it easier for you to find the dates and the events that you're looking for and get to where you need to be a lot quicker.

First off, let's take a look at one of my favorite shortcut keys, which is the letter G. If we select G on our keyboard, this go-to date, dialogue appears in front of us. So if I want to quickly jump ahead to the month of September, I don't even have to write in the full month. I'm just going to enter in SEP and hit enter on my keyboard and immediately I am brought to September.

What was I doing last November? Well, let's just type in November, 2023, hit enter, and I'm immediately brought back to that timeframe as well. So hitting G on your keyboard is going to be the fastest way to jump to a particular date, but rather than type in today's date, what if we are somewhere in the past or somewhere in the future? 

In that case, we want to use the letter T on our keyboard. Yes, T for today. We could, of course, always take our cursor and come all the way up here and select the today button, but why make all that effort when we can just select T on our keyboard and come directly to today's date?

Now, there's a couple of other shortcut keys that I want you to be made aware of, and they're tucked up here within our different views. You're probably already aware of the different types of views we have available to us, including a day, week, month, and year view. And you can see that the shortcut keys conveniently start with the first letter D for day W for week, and so on. But if you don't want to waste your time searching for these different letters on your keyboard, I've got an even faster way in which you can do. 

So all six of these views also correspond with the numbers one through six on our keyboard. Let me show you how, if I type in the number one, that's going to be our day view. Number two is our week view. Three is our month view. Four is going to be our custom view. This is the custom view we set up in settings. More on that in just a moment. Five is going to be our schedule view, a view that I often don't use enough, but I do find very helpful. And then six is going to bring us our yearly or our annual view.

So this is a much faster way as I cycle through my different views, I can use my keypad, I can use the numbers on my keyboard to quickly go through these particular views. Now, if you want to set up your custom view here, you can see that mine is set for two weeks. Let's use the shortcut key S to get us into settings. Otherwise, we'd have to hit the gear icon and then select settings. Oh my goodness, that's two whole clicks. Let's just hit S on our keyboard, go directly to settings, and then come down to view options. And here you can see under our dropdown menus, we can set a custom view. 

Now we've got a number of different choices available. Anything from between two days all the way out to four weeks. Yes, I bet you didn't realize that you could even have a custom view of two or three weeks in advance. Or maybe you just want something like three days. I'm going to set it to three days, and there's no need to hit save. There's no save button. Actually here within Google Calendar settings, everything is automatically saved.

So if I come back here and if I select my custom view of three days, I'm going to get those three days on the screen in front of me. But here is the last and bonus tip and something that I bet you didn't know you could do with Google Calendar. If we come over here to the mini calendar, which of course you're probably familiar with going to a specific date into the future or selecting a specific date on a calendar.

But instead, if we click and drag, we can get those custom views in front of us at any duration, at any time. Let's say I just want to see next weekend. Let's say this Friday to this Sunday, I can now see those three dates, but what if I want more than three dates? 

Maybe I want next week, Monday through Friday, I'm going to click and drag. And when I release, I'm going to see that entire week.

How about the last two weeks of this month and the beginning of next? I can do that here as well. So whenever you want to see a custom set of days, just remember that you can click and drag and view them immediately here within your calendar.

I hope you enjoyed these Google Calendar tips and tricks and would love to hear from you. Next, what are some things that help you be more efficient as you navigate and use Google Calendar?

And if you're wanting even more ways to get the most out of Google apps, be sure to visit simplivity.com and subscribe to our newsletter.

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

Managing notes in Google Keep can sometimes feel overwhelming. By default, all notes are displayed on the home screen, even if they’re organized with labels. This clutter can make it difficult to focus on high-priority tasks. However, using Google Keep’s archive feature can help transform your experience, making the platform more streamlined and productive. This guide walks you through how to optimize your Google Keep workflow using labels and the archive feature effectively.

Why Use Google Keep's Archive Feature?

One of the frustrations with Google Keep is that, despite assigning labels, all notes remain visible on the home screen. This creates unnecessary clutter and makes it harder to focus on specific notes. Here’s why archiving is a game-changer:

1. Declutters the Home Screen: Archived notes disappear from the main home screen but remain accessible in their respective labels.
2. Retains Full Functionality: Archived notes are still searchable, editable, and usable, just like regular notes.
3. Boosts Focus: By archiving less relevant notes, you can prioritize important tasks on the main screen.

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Step-by-Step Guide to Organizing Your Google Keep Notes

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1. Label All Your Notes

The first step to effective organization is ensuring every note has a label. Labels are categories that help you group related notes for easier access. Here’s how to label your notes:

• Open a note.
• Click on the three vertical dots or the "Add Label" option.
• Assign a relevant label, such as "Work," "Personal," or "Family."

For example, a note titled “Read the financial report from last month” can be labeled as “Family.” Once labeled, the note will appear both in its assigned label and on the main screen.

2. Archive Your Notes

To reduce clutter on the home screen, archive notes after labeling them. Archiving removes notes from the main screen while keeping them accessible under their labels. Here’s how:

• Locate the note you want to archive.
• Click the archive icon (a small box with a downward arrow).
• The note will disappear from the home screen but remain visible under its label.

To archive multiple notes at once, use this quick shortcut:

• Press Ctrl+A on your keyboard to select all notes on the screen.
• Click the archive icon in the top-right corner.

This method allows you to instantly clear your home screen, creating a blank slate for daily priorities.

3. Access Archived Notes by Label

Once archived, your notes can be easily accessed through their labels on the left-hand menu. For example:

• Click on “Work” to see all work-related notes.
• Navigate to “Personal” to find personal notes.

The notes will be organized into two sections:

1. Archived Notes: Notes that have been archived but are still assigned to the label.
2. Active Notes: Notes that are currently displayed on the home screen.

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4. Bring Notes Back to the Home Screen

If you need to focus on a specific task or note, you can unarchive it with one click:

• Go to the relevant label or the archive menu.
• Select the note you want to bring back.
• Click the unarchive icon.

For instance, if you’re focusing on “Wednesday Tasks,” unarchive the note, and it will reappear on the home screen. This flexibility allows you to highlight tasks that require immediate attention while keeping everything else neatly stored.

5. Understanding the Difference Between Archive and Trash

It’s essential to differentiate between archived notes and those in the trash:

• Archive: Notes are hidden from the home screen but remain searchable, editable, and permanently stored unless manually deleted.
• Trash: Notes moved to the trash are automatically deleted after seven days. However, you can manually retrieve or delete them during this period.

Rest assured, archiving a note won’t lead to accidental deletion. You can safely archive as many notes as needed without worrying about losing them.

6. Optimizing Google Keep Search with Archived Notes

Google Keep’s search capabilities remain fully functional for archived notes. You can search by:

• Keywords: Type a keyword (e.g., "email") to find all related notes.
• Filters: Narrow results by criteria like images, audio, or checkboxes.

For example, searching for “email” might bring up archived notes alongside unarchived ones. Filtering by “images” will show only image-containing notes, whether archived or not. This ensures that your archive system doesn’t hinder your ability to find specific content.

7. Tips for Maximizing Productivity with Google Keep

Here are additional strategies to optimize your Google Keep experience:

a) Use Labels Strategically

Choose labels that reflect your workflows or life categories. Common examples include:

• Work
• Personal
• Family
• Projects

Avoid overcomplicating your system with too many labels; simplicity is key.

b) Create Temporary Focus Zones

Unarchive only the notes that are relevant to your current tasks. For example, if you’re working on a presentation, unarchive notes like “Presentation Draft” and “Research Materials.”

c) Review and Clean Up Periodically

Set aside time weekly or monthly to review your notes:

• Archive completed tasks.
• Delete outdated notes or those no longer relevant.
• Ensure all new notes are appropriately labeled.

d) Leverage Google Keep Integrations

Google Keep integrates seamlessly with Google Workspace. Use this integration to:

• Attach notes to Google Calendar events.
• Sync with Google Docs for detailed documentation.

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Common Questions About Google Keep Archiving

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Q: Will archiving a note affect collaboration?

No. If you’ve shared a note with collaborators, they can still access and edit the note, even if you’ve archived it.

Q: Can I archive pinned notes?

Yes, pinned notes can also be archived. They will no longer appear on the home screen but remain accessible under their respective labels.

Q: What happens if I delete a label?

If you delete a label, the notes themselves are not deleted. They will simply lose the association with that label and appear in the unarchived section of your home screen.

Benefits of Archiving in Google Keep

By using the archive feature effectively, you can enjoy several benefits:

1. Improved Focus: The home screen becomes a clean space for your most pressing tasks.
2. Efficient Organization: Notes are grouped by labels and neatly stored in the archive.
3. Enhanced Searchability: Archived notes remain fully searchable, ensuring no information is lost.
4. Reduced Mental Clutter: A tidy home screen helps you concentrate on what truly matters.

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Conclusion: Simplify and Focus with Google Keep’s Archive Feature

Google Keep is a powerful tool for managing your notes, but its true potential is unlocked when you take control of the clutter. By leveraging the archive feature alongside labels, you can transform your workflow into a more streamlined, focused, and productive system. Follow the steps outlined in this guide to declutter your home screen, keep your notes organized, and make the most of Google Keep’s robust features.

This video is brought to you by SaneBox more about them a little later in the video. If you use Gmail for email, but you're not making use of the Chrome side panel, you are missing out. So in this video, I'm going to show you four different ways to make use of these side panel so you can be more effective and productive while dealing with Gmail.

Where to find the Gmail Side Panel

Now, first things first, if you don't see these icons here on the right hand side of your Chrome browser, when you're within Gmail, I want you to come down to the bottom right hand corner, and you may see this little arrow here. We want to expand it, and that's going to reveal this side panel.

Google Calendar

At the very top, we're going to have access to our Google calendar, and of course, this is very helpful if we want to glance at our schedule or our day. We have two different views here. We can view it here by day and then just toggle ahead to different dates, or we can come up here to the more option and select, schedule.

Now for me, this looks a little busy, so I prefer the day schedule, but I also prefer the day schedule for another reason. It makes it a lot easier for me to create appointments.

So for example, let's say that I've opened up this email here and it's reminded me that I need to set up a meeting. Well, all I need to do is click on my schedule here. I'm going to drag it out for an hour, and now I can immediately start to create that meeting. 

Now, by default, it's going to take the subject line of this email address and put it up here at the name of the event. I'm probably going to change that to something a lot more relevant, but the main benefit of this feature is I don't have to open up another tab.

I don't have to go somewhere else to create that meeting. I can do it all right here from within my Gmail account. Now, next up, we have access to Google Keep.

And of course, just like the other Google apps we have access to, it is a lot more convenient to access your checklist, your notes, your reference material without having to open another tab.

But there's an additional bonus to making use of keep right here from within Gmail. 

So once again, I'm reviewing or I'm dealing with this particular email, and maybe I want to come back and reference this information a little later in the future. Well, if I come up here and say, take a note, it will automatically create a link to this particular email, whatever email I currently have open.

Now, you don't have to keep that link. If I just decided to take a note while this email was up, you'll see that there is always going to be this little X if I want to remove this source. But if I want to say, review this email or something along those lines, I've quickly and easily created this note, and whenever I go to access it, I will have a direct link to this particular - Message.

Google Tasks

Next up, let's access our Google tasks. And here we can access all of our different lists. So whether you manage one or a variety of to-do lists, you can manage them all and access them all right here from within your Gmail account.

But just like how we saw in Google Keep, we can make a connection. We can do that here within tasks as well. Now, at this point, you may assume that if I come up here and select add a task, it will automatically add this connection. That's actually not the case.

I can continue to add and edit my tasks here regardless of what I have in front of me here on the screen. But if I want to make a connection, I actually need to come up here to the top of the email and say, add to tasks. Now, here again, by default, the name of the task is going to be the subject line, which is probably not that relevant.

We may want to change this to review the invoice or something along those lines. But regardless here you can see it has made that connection directly to this particular email. So this can be a fantastic way to process your email and deal with email and come back to those important emails in a more timely manner.

Contacts

Last but not least, let's take a look at the contacts option, which is a much quicker and faster way to access and create and manage your contacts rather than having to open up a new tab.

So here you can see I've got a full list of my contacts. I can come up here and search for those contacts. But what makes this even more valuable is that when I am dealing with a particular email message, it's going to show me exactly who is involved in this thread.

Let's say, for example, there's maybe a few other people who are CC'd, and I'm not sure who they are or what my relationship is with them. They will all be listed here within the, in this Thread tab.

And better yet, if I select one of these contacts, it's going to open up their contact information where I can further go ahead and edit it. 

But what I think is most helpful is coming down to the recent interactions. By default, it's going to show me the last three emails which they have sent or been a part of.

I can come down here and select more, and it's going to give me a full history, and then I can click on any one of those messages and go directly to them as well.

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Do you want to make it easier for others to book time with you or maybe you want to make sure that you understand all of your Calendly settings? Well, in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know to get the most out of your Calendly account. 

‍Calendly account settings

Now, before we go ahead and create our first or new event, I want you to come up here to your account settings and select profile.

‍Profile picture & name

There's a couple of things I want you to change or edit First. Number one, make sure that you've included a profile picture when it comes to your booking page. This makes it a lot more professional and will appear on your booking screen, so make sure that you've got a nice clear headshot to include within your profile. 

‍Account branding & logo

Next, we want to come down to branding, and I would also encourage you to upload an image such as your logo here within the branding section. Once again, when someone clicks on your booking page, you want to make sure that your visitors know that they are in the right place and that they're connecting with the correct business or the correct brand.

‍Calendar sync & connect

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, let's come all the way down to our account settings and select calendar sync. This is the place where we can connect multiple calendars where Calendly will check for conflicts, but will also place the correct bookings on the correct calendar.

Here in the first section, we can select this add calendar account button, and whether you use Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, or Apple iCloud calendar, you can easily and quickly connect your calendars. You can connect a maximum of six calendars per Calendly account.

Then down at the bottom of the screen is where you have the opportunity to match or select which of the above calendars will be checked for conflicts. So for example, I've included both my business calendar and my personal calendar to my account, and I want Calendly to check both of those calendars for conflicts.

So for example, if I have a dentist appointment on my personal calendar, and of course I'll have a number of other events and meetings on my business calendar, I want to make sure that I am never double booked. So in this example, Calendly will be looking at both of those calendars and then down below we have the option to select which calendar new Calendly events will be added to.

In my case, I want all new Calendly accounts to be added to my business calendar, so that's where they will appear based on this selection. Now let's return back to the home screen by selecting the Calendly link in the top left-hand corner. 

‍Availability & schedules

But just before we go ahead and create that next new event, there's one other place

that I want us to visit and it's important that you visit this area first. That's a section called availability. By clicking on this, we have the opportunity to create one or more schedules that will be applied to our event types. Now this is very, very important because you're probably wanting to use the same schedule or similar schedule for multiple event types.

So rather than creating this for each and every event type, you have the opportunity to create it once and then apply it to multiple event types. Let me show you what I mean by default. I have a schedule here called meeting hours, and if I scroll down below, you can see that I've made myself available Monday through Friday 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM. Now, it's very easy for me to edit these hours.

Let's say on Mondays I only want to be made available until 12 noon, so I can select that option here and maybe I don't want to be available on Wednesday at all. I'm going to come over here and uncheck this box. 

So now I've changed my meeting hours in just one place, but if this schedule is applied to multiple events, I don't have to change it anywhere else. Now in this particular example, it's showing me that it is active on actually zero event types.

This can also be very, very helpful. If I select this dropdown, I can easily check any of these other events which I've created and immediately apply this single schedule to multiple event types. Now let's take a look at these schedules in a little more detail. Number one, if you want to create multiple times in a single day, you can do so. Remember how I changed this from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM Well, maybe I also want to make myself available later that same evening. In order to do so, I'm going to come over here to the right and hit this plus button and it's going to add a new time interval for that day.

So maybe I'm going to say I also want to be available from 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM and yes, I can't have the start time be a little earlier. It gave me that warning, but now those changes have been saved, so now I'm available in the morning and also the late afternoon and maybe I want to be available in this exact same timeframe on Thursdays as well. 

Well, rather than hitting the plus button down here, I can come over to the copy button. I can select this and say, let's apply this to Thursday as well. I'm going to hit apply, and now that same multiple time interval has been added here down below.

Now on the right hand side of the screen, we can add date specific hours, so perhaps there's a particular date in the future in which I want to block off or change.

I can do so over here as well. Now if it comes to just blocking off a date, I'm going to recommend that you actually do that within your own personal or professional calendar by just blocking off the date.

Remember that Calendly is always going to be using that as a reference, but let's say there's maybe a date somewhere in the future where I want to make myself available from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM and that's something that I'm not going to do very often. This is where I may want to add that date specific hour.

You'll also notice up above here we can change from the list view, which is listed in weekly hours to a calendar view. It's going to show us the exact same information, but instead of a weekly view, it's going to show us a calendar in real time. 

Now, any of these available dates I can click on and start to edit, but I find that many users get confused and it can be a bit of a hassle to edit things here within the calendar view. So in most cases, I would encourage you to stay within the list view to make your changes. You'll also notice up above it will show you the multiple schedules.

Here, for example, I have three different schedules which I've created, and if I need to create a new one, I can simply come over here and create a new schedule. Lastly here in the availability screen, you will see that there's a tab called holidays. This can be very, very helpful. You can choose the country in which you live in or the country in which you want to see the statutory holidays, and you can enable either all of them or deselect certain ones as well.

This is much easier than removing certain specific dates or making sure that you have them blocked off on your personal or professional calendar. So make sure that you review this holidays tab as well. Now that we've set up our availability and our schedules, let's go back to the home screen and create our first event.

‍Create a new event type

Now you can do it in one of two ways. We can come up to this blue button and select create, and then select event type. Or we can come over here to the right and say new event type.

Now our first option is to choose what type of event we would like to create, and Calendly gives us four different options. One-on-one with one host and one invitee is going to be the most popular, and that's what we're going to use today for our example, but let's look at the other three options available to us.

You can create a group event where there is one host with a group of invitees. This can be really great for things like webinars or maybe an online class. Maybe you want to allow a maximum of five people to join you in a group coaching session.

In this case, you would want to select the group option. There's also a collective event type. This is kind of the opposite of group. This is where you and multiple hosts are meeting with one invitee. 

This can be helpful in the case of a job interview when you and a group of others are interviewing an individual or perhaps if you are having other members of your team join on a group sales call, this can be helpful as well.

Lastly, there's an event type called a round robin where you have a host which rotates with one invitee. This can be helpful if you have a certain process as you're bringing a new client or perhaps a new lead through different members of your team, but the most common one is the one above one-on-one. So let's go ahead and continue with that example.

If you have multiple members as a part of your account, you can choose who will be the host. In my case, I am the only member here, so I will be the host by default. I'm going to select next. And now we are brought to our new event type screen complete with a preview here on the right hand side. 

Add name, duration & location

Now the first thing we're going to need to decide is to name our event. And remember, this is something that is going to be public or is going to be visible to people who both view this booking page, but it may also appear in other things such as a calendar invite and email reminders. So in my case, I'm going to give it a very simple title such as a 45 minutes intro deduction call.

Perhaps I am interviewing a new lead or wanting to get to know a new client to the left. You can also see that we can choose a different color if we'd like to be beside this particular booking type. If I change it from purple to red, you will notice that there is neither purple or red on the booking screen itself.

But if I go to my main booking page where all of my listings are, you can see that there will be a color.to the left of each event type. 

If you would like to create some distinction between your events, you may want to change those colors here. These may also be helpful as you're managing multiple events right here from within Calendly.

Down below we need to select our duration, and if it's a 45 minute meeting, I better make this 45 minutes in length. So I'm going to select that option here. If you need something beyond 60 minutes, you can select the last option here, custom and choose your desired length. I'm going to select 45 minutes, and then lastly, before we hit continue, we need to decide where this meeting will take place. Now by default, it's giving me three options of Zoom, a phone call or an in-person meeting, but if you don't use Zoom meetings, don't worry. Calendly interfaces with Google Meet Microsoft Teams, WebEx and GoToMeeting, so you can connect any one of your video conferencing clients directly to Calendly.

If you'd like to also set a custom option, you can choose that here as well. Now in my example, I'm going to choose a phone call and depending on the location that you choose, you may have some other options as well. 

So for example, by choosing a phone call, I need to decide if I will call my invitee or if my invitee should call me. So for example, in this case, I will have to require to ask them to leave their phone number so I know who to call or if I want them to call me, I can choose this option, but don't worry, Calendly will not provide your phone number until after the event has been booked.

In this case, I'm going to say I will call my invitee and I'm going to say update. So here it will be displayed when they are viewing my booking page. They will know ahead of time whether it's a phone call, a video conferencing meeting, or something in person.

At this stage we can hit continue. Our event is technically created, but we have a number of other options available to us and you're going to want to make sure that you review all five of these sections. So first off, let's come back to our event details

Event description & instructions

where we have most of the same information we just selected, but now you will see that we have a description slash instructions area. This can be really helpful to further explain what this event type is all about.

And remember, information such as this can also be included in email reminders, confirmations and on their own calendar event once they've booked the call.

In my example, I'm just going to put something very, very basic here, but you can add additional formatting, you can add additional details including links if you like. Right here, I'm going to say save and close,

Hosts & invitees

and we are brought back to our main screen and we're going to come down to hosts and invitees. Now, there's not a lot of options available to us here, but there is an important one.

Do we want to allow those who book a time here to be able to add other guests? Do we want them to be able to add other email addresses to this booking or do we want to ensure that this is strictly a one-on-one call?

If you want it to be one-on-one, make sure to uncheck this box, or if you're fine with them inviting others, you can leave this checked. There's one other area where we can make adjustments here, but this is probably going to be your quickest way

Scheduling settings

to make this type of change. Next up is our scheduling settings, and it is by far the most detailed and the most important options on this entire new event screen. So first up, let's select our date range, meaning how far in advance can someone book us into the future?

By default, when you are creating a new event in Calendly, it's going to be set to 60 calendar days in the future, meaning that someone could come to this page and see my availability for the next two months.

If that's too far out in advance or not far out enough, we can click on the number dialogue and maybe I only want to make myself available 30 days in the future. You'll notice beside the number, we can also choose between calendar days and weekdays.

Calendar days will count every single day where weekdays will exclude the weekends and only count business days Monday to Friday, so you can choose which one is right for you. 

Now, while this first option is the most common way to set up your event types, you can also choose a particular date range. If I choose this option here and click within the field could say something like, I only want to be able to be booked between April 1st and April 30th and hit apply, meaning that that is the only availability that will be made available in this particular case.

The last option here is indefinitely into the future, and I would be very hesitant to select this option. It basically means that someone could book you anytime into the future, even next year or perhaps beyond.

So I would encourage you to look at one of the first two options. In most cases, these rolling days, a certain number of days into the future is going to be your best option. Now down below we have our hours and calendar settings,

Hours & calendar settings

And this is where that availability comes into play, which we set up earlier. Now, if you already have one or more event types created, you will see a dropdown here called copy from. By selecting this, you will find a full list of all of your other event types where you could select and have their availability, whatever availability they are using apply to this event type.

So let's say this 45 minute introduction call is very similar to my standard meeting. I could simply select that meeting here and the same availability would be carried over, but I can also come down below and select this arrow.

This is going to open up a window where we can choose our availability, which we set up earlier within our settings. So down below you can see that this is the availability that we set up as our default, and if we come up here you can see that it is listed as meeting hours. 

That's the name of our default availability, but if I click on this dropdown, you can see that I have my other schedules available as well. So in just a single click, I can apply that schedule to this event type as well.

Now, while Calendly does give us the ability to make some changes here within this screen, be careful. Sometimes it can be confusing to change your availability and change your schedule event type by event type.

I would encourage you to go back to your settings where we were earlier so that you can manage your availability and your schedules at a higher level. Now that we're happy with our availability here, I'm going to hit save and close and we are brought back to this screen and we want to scroll down a bit to event limits.

Event limits & buffer time

Now, don't ignore these options here down below. The first one is called buffer time, and by default none will be set. Buffer time allows us to give a little bit of room either before or after an event so that we don't have bookings right after one another.

How many times have you had a meeting that was supposed to end at the top of the hour and you have a new meeting starting at the top of the hour, but it goes a little long? This can be both embarrassing and unprofessional when you are meeting with new clients.

So if you want to make sure that you don't have meetings that run right into one another, you can choose to select a buffer time. So for example, if I select 15 minutes, it will make sure that it will never make an available option here if I have a meeting 15 minutes before that time. So you can choose if you'd like to add a buffer time or not.

Next up is our minimum notice, and you are definitely going to want to change or review this setting. This means how far in advance can someone book me

Minimum notice

for this event? Now, by default, it is going to be set for four hours, meaning that if it's 10:00 AM right now my local time, someone could book me as early as 2:00 PM this afternoon. That may be fine in your case, but depending on your needs, maybe that is too soon. Maybe you want to make sure that you have several more hours notice or maybe even a few days.

So for example, I'm going to change this to one and I'm going to say one day, meaning that here in my preview you can see that tomorrow is no longer available because it doesn't meet this minimum.

Instead, the person who is looking at my booking page, we'll have to look out further in advance. So make sure that you review these options here. And then down below we have an option called daily limit.

Daily limit

Now, this may not be applicable to everyone and every event type, but if you want to set a maximum number of events a day, you can choose that here. For example, maybe you only want to allow two consulting sessions per day.

If that's the case, you're going to want to enter in the number two, meaning that if two of these event types are booked on the same day, all of the other event types will no longer be made available.

Again, this may not be applicable to all users, but you may want to experiment with this if you want to create a maximum. Lastly, we want to come down to the bottom and look at additional options.

Time zone display

Now, the time zone display by default will be the invitees, meaning wherever they are in the world, regardless of their time zone, this will be shown in their local time. I strongly encourage you to use this and keep this setting unless you are meeting in person.

If you are having people book you for a meeting at your office or a physical location, then you will want to use your local time zone or the time zone you'll be meeting in. But in almost all other cases, we want to leave this as the first option so that anyone who views this page will see it in their own time.

Start time increments

Lastly, we want to take a look at our start time increments, meaning when can someone book us within the day? If I click on this date of the third, you can see with 30 minute increments, I have options such as 2, 2 33, 3 30, but if I only want to be made available on the top of the hour, I can come down here and select 60 minutes.

You will notice now that I'm available at two, three and 4:00 PM and while this may look a lot cleaner, keep in mind that you may reduce the total number of bookings that you have in a day depending on the increments that you choose.

You have a lot of options here when it comes to those increments. I would say that 30 minutes is the most standard or most common, so I typically leave mine at the 30 minute slot.

Once we're happy with making all of these changes, let's select save and close and move on to the last two sections of this screen. Next up is our booking page options.

Booking page options

So these are a combination of the fields in which we are going to be asking someone, but also the questions which we may ask as well. Now, at the very top of this screen, we have the opportunity to change the link or the URL to this particular booking page.

Don't worry, anything that you change here will not change the name of the event, but for example, maybe I'm going to reduce this to 45 min, meaning that the link that I will share will be calendly.com/simplivity/ 45 min.

That's relatively short. It's also relatively easy to remember, so this is a great opportunity to shorten your links and make it a lot more meaningful.

Booking form questions

Down below we have our questions. Now by default name and email will be required, but we can choose the name format. Do we want it just to be listed as name or do we want them to include their first and last name separately? I try to leave this as name to make it as easy as possible for those who are booking with me.

We also have the option here to allow an autofill if someone has already booked time with us, that information will automatically be input into the form. We also have the option here again to choose if we want to allow invitees to add guests, and it's as simple as a toggle on or off.

This is the same option that we saw earlier, but we can choose to change it here as well. 

Lastly, in this question section, we can choose to ask a default question or even multiple questions before they confirm their booking. 

So by default it's going to ask, please share anything that will help prepare for our meeting, and that might be a perfectly fine question to ask, but if we select on edit, we can come up here and change this question to anything that we want. We can choose if we want to make it required, and we can also choose if we want to change this into a radio button or a checkbox or a dropdown menu. So you have an awful lot of options available to you. Here.

You're also not limited to asking just one question. Maybe you want to ask two or three separate questions as a part of the booking process. You can come down here and select add new question.

Collect payments

Now, below this, you also have the option to collect payments. Now in this tutorial, we are not going to go into the details, but you can connect either your Stripe or your PayPal account if you want to require a payment in order to complete the booking.

This can be very beneficial if you provide coaching or consulting sessions and you want to take payment upfront, but of course, this is not required and in most cases we can say that we do not want to collect payments for this event type.

Confirmation page

Lastly, we have a section called the confirmation page. Now, this isn't the confirmation email that's coming up next. This is simply the page that people will be redirected to once they've completed the booking. By default, it's going to send them to a Calendly confirmation page, but if you like, you can redirect them back to your website or to your own custom thank you page down below.

Last but not least, we can choose if we want to ask them to schedule another event or add a custom link. So if you're expecting people to make multiple bookings at once, you may want to turn this on, or if you want to encourage them to click another custom link, you can add that here.

When we're happy with this screen, we are going to select save and close, and we're brought to the final or the last section within our new event type screen

Communications & reminders

that's called communications. And here we're going to take a look at all of the reminders and also how this event will appear within their own calendar. Let's get started with our first notification, and that is our calendar invitation.

Calendar invitation

By selecting the more buttons and then selecting edit, we can see how this booking will look like within our calendar. It's broken down between title, body and timing. Now, by default, Calendly is going to put in a number of variables.

Anything that has this gray shade around it is going to be pulling directly from our event type. So for example, the title would read invitee full name, so Jane Doe, and well, it's going to be my name, Jane Doe and Scott Friesen, but maybe that's not the title that I want to appear within their calendar.

You can edit any of these variables and include additional text as well. So I'm going to remove this and instead I'm going to click on variables, and I'm going to say I want it to read the event name. I want it to say 45 minute introduction call. And here's where I could include my name as well. 

So any combination that you like. You don't have to include any variables if you don't want to, but this can be very helpful if you do end up changing this event name. It will also change here as well. We can come down to the body and again, review the different things that will be listed here.

I find that the default works fairly well. It's going to include the name, this description, the location, and also any questions and answers which they have added down below. We can't change it, but it will tell us that it will send immediately once it is booked.

And lastly, we can choose if we want to add a cancellation policy and if we want to include cancel and reschedule links.

Email confirmation

Now, before we hit save and close, we actually want to scroll all the way back to the top because there is a switch to email confirmation. I'll be perfectly honest with you, I find that this is very difficult and almost hidden to many Calendly users.

We've been looking at the calendar invitation, what will show up on their calendar, but of course they will also receive an email confirmation. So let's be sure to click this link. And we have a different set of options available to us. So for example, if we want to edit the reply to address, we can do so here. Maybe the subject will be a little different.

The default is going to say Confirmed event name with my name on this - Particular date, but we may also want to change the body of that email as well. So pay special note to this link.

If we want to switch back to the calendar invite, we can do so here, but that is separate and we can't access it from the main menu. When we are happy with that, we can come down and select Save and Close. And next we can move on to email reminders.

Email reminders

Now, I find this is one of the most powerful things with using Calendly or any booking tool. If you want to make sure that someone shows up to your meeting, make sure that you turn on at least one email reminder by selecting edit here.

We can come in here and choose what those email reminders will look like if we want to change the formatting at all. But I think what's most important of course, is the timing.

For example, by default, it's going to include a 24 hour reminder, which I think is great to give people 24 hour notice that this meeting is coming up, but I don't think it is often enough. So here I can select another interval if I want to. So maybe I want to remind them two hours before the event as well.

 Keep in mind this timing will apply to the exact same information up above here. So they'll receive the same subject and the same body of the email, but they will be sent at two different intervals. You can add as many reminders as you like.

I would suggest not adding more than three, but making sure that you have at least one, perhaps one to three hours before your event is scheduled.

And to make sure that this is on, make sure to change the status to on here, and you can choose a different or custom cancellation policy if you like. When I'm happy with those settings, I'm going to select save and close Text Reminders is also an option available to you here.

It's available on a credit system here within Calendly. We're not going to go into those details, but if you like, you can choose this option to edit. And then lastly, we have an option here

Email follow-up

to add an email follow up. So if you'd like to automatically send a custom message or something for them to review afterwards, you can do so here as well. Just take note.

Depending on what this event type is used for, you may want to be careful with how you use this automatic follow up. For example, what if the meeting didn't go well and they don't want to do business with you? Don't create a follow up email that says, here's the next step in doing business together.

So just be careful of if you need the ability to send an email follow up or not. Finally, when we're happy with all of the changes here within communications, we can come down and hit save and Close. We've now created or edited all of the - Components of our new event type.

Sharing your event type

What's next? Well, we want to share this event type. Now, the easiest way would be to come up here and copy the link. If I come up here to my browser and I'm going to paste it into my browser tab, it will bring me directly to this booking screen where people can immediately start to look at my availability and start to book me for that event type.

But you may want to be able to share your booking page with others in a few different ways. For that, we want to come up here and select the share button. Once again, we're going to be presented with that link, so you can copy this link and include it in an email, or you can add it to a button on your website. We also have the option to add times to an email.

This can be great if you only want to offer a few different options.

Here within Google Chrome, there's a good chance that you're making use of the bookmarks bar. It's the easiest way to get to the websites that you frequent very often, but there may be a problem with this setup.

Now, we have an awful lot of tabs we need to manage up top, and the bookmarks bar area can get crowded very quickly. So, let's take a look at an alternative that I think makes so much more sense.

Here in my Google Chrome browser I have something here called G Productivity. You can see that it's listed here within the bookmarks bar, but when I click on it, it's going to automatically launch the three tabs that I want.

Now, that might not sound that impressive, but the better thing here is if I click on G Productivity, it's going to minimize everything within there, and I can move it anywhere that I like.

So, for example, if I want quick and easy access to my Gmail account, my Google Calendar, and my Google Tasks, but I want to minimize it when I don't want to see any of those notifications or any of those tabs, I can do so. 

Now, what I am using here is called grouped tabs. Now, that's not anything new, but what is new is that we can now save those tabs, and add them to our bookmarks bar.

For example, here I am viewing my Gemini account, and perhaps I'd like to include it with this G Productivity group. What I'm going to do is just drag it over, and you can see that red color is now appearing over that tab.

I can put it in the order that I want, and then release it. Now, when I minimize or maximize this group, Gemini is included.

And, remember, you don't have to keep it up here. If I go and say "Hide this group," it's no longer appearing in this tab, but it will always appear here within my bookmarks bar. Let's create our own tab group here.

Maybe I want to keep my social media pages together because I always want to review them at the same time. All I need to do is right click on one of those tabs, and say, "Add tab to new group."

I'm going to select this option here, and I can name it. I'm going to name it "social media" in this case, the default color is going to be gray, but let's make this one blue. 

And, the next step we want to take is to enable this toggle, "Save group." This is that more recent feature that we didn't have available to us in the past.

By selecting this, now, this will be added to my bookmarks bar. I'm going to go ahead and just drag in my LinkedIn and my Twitter tabs here. So, again, we have that same functionality available to us.

And, if I want to go ahead and open up that G Productivity, I can do that. Maybe I prefer to have that in the far left. I have saved so much real estate. I've got a grand total of seven tabs here that I can access them in just an instant, whenever I need to.

But, I'm not distracted by the number of unread messages or other alerts that I may see, but they are so much easier for me to get to.

So, if you want to clean up your bookmarks bar, and group relevant tabs together, be sure to experiment with Chrome tabbed groups, and let me know if you have any further questions 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.

Are you sick of wasting so much time creating that new presentation?

And do you wish that someone else could take care of all of the design and formatting? Well, with the help of AI, you can create stunning and amazing presentations in a matter of seconds.

And in this video, I'm going to show you how. What we are using is a tool called Gamma. You can find it at gamma.app.

And once you've signed into your free account, you can get started with Gamma in a few different ways.

You can always paste in some text if you already have an outline, or perhaps you want to import a file either from Google Drive or maybe upload an existing Word doc or a PowerPoint file.

But in our example, we're going to use the one-line prompt to create a complete presentation from just a simple set of instructions. So I'm going to click this one in the middle, and my first choice is if I would like to create a presentation or maybe something else completely. 

You can create documents and webpages with Gamma as well. But in our example, we are going to stick with a presentation. Now down below, I can enter in the prompt I want.

I want to produce a presentation that is going to help entrepreneurs to overcome that feeling of overwhelm and help them to simplify their to-do list.

So I've put in that information here, and just before I hit Generate Outline, I can double check the language it is going to be using and I can also specify how many cards it will produce.

Now, Gamma uses the term cards instead of slides. So in this case, we are going to be producing eight cards.

If I think that's too much or too little, I can always adjust this here or I can also adjust it once it has generated the presentation for me.

I'm going to select Generate Outline, and it's going to take that one-line prompt and give me a complete outline of my presentation. 

So if I want to change anything here, I can click on any one of these titles and edit them to my liking. Maybe I don't want to say time management techniques to reduce overwhelm.

I'm going to say to reduce maybe stress in this case. And if I want to reorder them, I can do that here as well. So for example, maybe I want the tools and resources to come first. I can simply click and drag and put this in a better order to my liking.

Remember, nothing we do here is absolutely final, but it can give us a better outline to get started with. Down below, we've got a few other options we can choose from.

For example, we can decide if we want less text per card, if we want a medium amount of text, which is probably recommended to get started, or if we want a lot of detail.

And then down below, we can choose our image source. Now, this is one that you're not going to want to miss.

Now by default, it's going to scour the web and look for appropriate web images, but I really like the AI images feature because it's going to generate original artwork and original graphics specifically for my presentation. 

So let's choose that option and see what it comes up with. I'm going to click on Continue at the bottom of the screen. And our last step is to choose the theme we would like for our slideshow.

And this is where I think Gamma really hits it out of the park, especially when it comes to comparing it to other AI-generated presentation tools. There is an awful lot of themes for us to choose from.

We can filter it by a few different options here, or we can select this shuffle theme and just see if there's a few that stand out to us once we hit that shuffle button.

Now, although I'm not exactly sure how to pronounce this, I kind of like this theme here, a mix of greens with a dark background and light font.

Next, I'm going to select this Generate button and Gamma will start to produce my presentation in real time, taking all of the information that I gave it from a single prompt and put together a complete presentation, which I can start to use right away. 

Now, the reason why I recommend that you start with the AI image generator is that the colors will be spot on with the theme that you choose. I think this is a fantastic background image for the title of this slide "Understanding Overwhelm".

If I skim down below, you can see that this is a very complex image here on the right-hand side, probably fits fairly well with the power of simplification. But again, as the case with most AI images, you may want to double check.

Of course, your presentation is so much more than just the design and the graphics. You can now come in here and adjust any of the text, move things around, remove things if you need to as you refine your presentation.

But wait, the AI doesn't stop here. We can continue to use AI to help us refine our presentation.

On the right-hand side of the menu where we have a number of editing options available to us, at the very top, there is an edit with AI button.

What this will do is bring up a prompt, which we can use to expand on more detail or ask it to change this image, or maybe make this a bit simpler. For example, on this card here, maybe I think that this title is a little boring So I'm going to say, "Make the title a little more exciting," something like that.

It's going to take just a few seconds and give me some options to consider. So do I want to change the color or do I just want to change the title itself? I'm going to go with a suggested one here, but I can always come back in here and change that default color.

 If I want to go back and say, you know what, let's go with the one that is the same with the rest of the slides. Let's do that here. But it's going to give me some suggestions that I don't have to go with, but I can choose before applying to my slides.

Now, when we're happy with our presentation, there's a few different ways in which we can share it or present it to others. We can come up here and select this Share button and send a link either to those we would like to collaborate with on, or we can share the finished product with them so that they can just view it.

But we can also export it to popular tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint, or perhaps you'd like to download it as a PDF. We can do that here as well.

But you don't have to do any of that if you don't want to. Here, we can select the present button and immediately start to share our presentation perhaps in your favorite video conferencing tools.

Now things get better though when it comes to sharing or presenting your slides. 

Here just to the left of your profile picture, you can actually view analytics for your presentation. So for example, you can see exactly when this presentation was last viewed, but if I come up here and select Card Engagement, I can see exactly how long people have spent on each one of these cards.

So if I'm sending this out to a potential customer or a client, or maybe just someone within my own organization, I can see exactly what is keeping their attention and even if they completed the entire presentation at all.

So if you're ready to make your presentations, documents, and webpages look amazing in a fraction of the time, go to gamma.app to get started for free.

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.

If you already use Google or Gmail for your business, you know that you can use Google Contacts as a simple CRM. Here in my example, I've got a number of special labels including New Leads, Qualifying, and WON.

Special Labels

However, there are some limitations here. For example, if I want to change Blair to a qualifying lead, I could take his name and just drag it into Qualifying, but it actually just adds that label. It will never remove the New Leads label. I've got to come over here and manually remove that as well. You will also see, if I go over to the Qualifying area and click on Blair, I'm pretty limited with the history and the amount of information that is available to me.

Why Sync 

That's why I recommend syncing your Google Contacts account with a true CRM system such as Pipedrive. So let me walk you through how you can sync your contacts from within Google Contacts, so that they will show up and appear here within Pipedrive.

How to Sync

Inside your Pipedrive account, we want to come up to the top, right-hand corner, select your profile picture, and then select Personal Preferences. And on the left hand side, we want to come down to about the fourth option called Contact sync.

Now it's true, you can sync your contacts with other platforms, including outlook.com or Microsoft Office 365, but in our example, we are going to sync it with Google.

To get started, we can select this Add New Account button, and all we need to do is enter in the email address of the account we would like to connect. I'm going to select Continue here, and next, we will be presented with the standard Google sign-in screen.

I'm going to choose the correct account here. I'm going to give it the permissions that it is requiring. I'm going to select Allow, and then we are brought back to our Pipedrive account.

Sync Settings

Now, before it can start syncing with your account, we want to take a look at two particular settings. The first one is which group of contacts would we like to sync with Pipedrive. By default, all contacts will be selected, but perhaps you don't want to sync all of your contacts.

n my case, I only want to sync those that are new leads. So I'm going to come over here, select this dropdown menu, and we will see all of the labels within our Google Contacts account. I'm going to select New Leads in my example, and then next, we have a choice in terms of the sync direction.

We can choose a one-way sync, where Pipedrive will only receive new contacts that are added within Google Contacts, or we can choose a two-way sync, meaning that contacts that we create within our Pipedrive account will also be synced with that account. 

In our example here, I'm going to select One-way, but you can choose which one is best for your case. At the bottom, I'm going to select Start syncing. It will give me a brief warning that Google does have a limit of 25,000 maximum contacts.

If you are anywhere near this number, please let me know in the comments, but for most users, this is a pretty healthy maximum. I'm going to select Enable contact sync, and immediately, Pipedrive will start to sync those contacts between your Google account and here within Pipedrive.

Now, depending on how many contacts you are syncing, this could take up to a minute, but in our example, it is pretty small. Here it's telling me that the last sync was a few seconds ago, four total contacts are in sync, three were added today, and one was updated today.

And if I ever need to come back here and change my settings, for example, if I want to change to a two-way sync or to add other labels, I can do so here, or I can choose to stop the sync as well.

New Contact

Now, when we come to our contact section here within Pipedrive, we have a few extra contacts that are being brought in here from Google Contacts. Let's go ahead and create a brand new contact just to see how quickly this sync is working. So I'm just going to call this one New Contact just so we can find it over in Pipedrive. And let's make sure we have that New Lead label, because remember, that's the only label that's going to bring that contact over.

Save

I'm going to go up here and select Save, and of course, it may take a few seconds, but if I go ahead and even just refresh this page here, now you can see that that new contact that was created in Google Contacts is listed here. And once it's in Pipedrive, I can add detailed notes. I can add activity and track that activity. I can even go ahead and email and manage all of my email conversations right here from within Pipedrive. So I have so many more options available to me, so I can win this deal and keep generating more business.

Conclusion

Now, if you're not already a Pipedrive user and using these powerful Google integrations, I’ve got good news for you. You can get started for free, and Simpletivity viewers get an additional 20% off of their first year. To learn more and get started, click the link in the description down below.

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

With just a few simple add-ins, you can make your PowerPoint slide shine and also make your life a lot easier. So in this video I'm going to share with you 5 PowerPoint add-ins every user should know. Let's get started with add-in number one. 

Add your own QR codes

And this has all to do with making it easier for people to go directly to a website or a URL. How often have you had a slide like this where you are inviting people to go to a particular form or a survey or a website?

And even if you create this as a link within your PowerPoint deck, it does no good to your viewers because they can't click on this when they are watching your presentation, whether it's in person or even if they're watching it online.

Well, if we come up to add-ins, we are going to make use of a tool called QR4Office, which makes it quick and easy for us to add a QR code to any of our slides.

So in this example, all I need to do is come up here and type in the name, or maybe I could copy and paste the name of the URL where I want people to go. So I'm going to type in Simpletivity.com/streamline. 

Now, down below, we do have a few additional options. If I want to match my own branding or change the color, I can do so here, I can select that blue. And then I would recommend adjusting the size here, not the image that it's going to produce.

When it comes to working with QR codes, you want to make sure that these pixels, these shapes are as accurate as possible so that everyone can access it from their phone. When we're happy with our color and our size, all we need to do is select insert,  and it will immediately be inserted into our slide. 

Create amazing timelines with Office Timeline

Next on our list, let's take a look at making timelines so much better. Now, here within PowerPoint, you may be familiar with the ability to insert a simple chart or insert smart art. And, yes, there are a variety of different timelines which we could include, but they are all very, very basic.

And even once you've set up your timeline, like the example I've got here, if I want to adjust this review date, if I go to drag this over to the left, oh yeah, everything is separate. These are all just individual elements. I got to come down here and separately drag the text for that.

And this April 15th, if it's actually April 1st, I'm going to have to manually change that as well. Well, what if you could create a timeline that looked like this, that had a lot more detail, that was a lot more visually engaging, or maybe a timeline such as this?

To create these types of timelines, I'm using an extension called Office Timeline. And best of all, I can go into this timeline and start to adjust things any way that I like. Let's take a look at this executive decision here. And let's say I need to move the date into May. I'm going to click and drag it.

And not only is everything staying together, but do you notice that the date is changing as well? Even if I need to move it way over here closer to the executive review, it will automatically raise it up so it's easy to read. And best of all, I can do this with any element within that timeline.

Maybe I want to highlight this final release, but I want to bring it down here within the product development space. Everything is brought together, the text, the images, everything on screen. And if I want to dive into the data, I can come up here and select the data tab. And here I can change the text, I can change the shapes, I can change the colors.

I can come in here and change the dates. And better yet, I don't have to type it in. It gives me a nice convenient calendar as well. But perhaps the biggest time saver with using Office Timeline is that you don't have to create this at all. You can let it do the work when you upload your own spreadsheet or your own data.

I'm going to come up here and select Import. And here you can see a variety of tools which you can import and sync with directly. And if you don't use one of these tools, almost everything will export into Microsoft Excel. Meaning, that you don't have to continually update your data in two different places.

You can update it once in your spreadsheet and make sure that it is represented right here within your slides. To learn more about Office timeline and any of the add-ons in today's video, be sure to check the link in the description down 

Build a presentation with ChatGPT

Now, the third add-in in our list today is going to help prevent you from staring at a blank slide. And for this, we're going to take advantage of AI. ChatGPT for PowerPoint allows us to give a particular prompt or just a few set of instructions and create slides in a matter of seconds.

To get going, we can either start from our own topic, or if we already have some text or an outline, we can go and paste that in here. But I'm going to use this create from topic in our example today. Here within the prompt area, I'm going to say "Highlight the pros and cons of waking up extra early and its effect on your workday."

Now, we have a limit of 250 characters, so I could put in a lot more description if I want to. And then down below we have two other choices available. 

We can choose the language in which we want the slides to be produced in. And then we can also choose the number of slides. I'm going to leave it at the default of seven and select continue.

What it's going to do first is create an outline so I can review this before it goes ahead and produces the entire presentation. So here you can see here are the titles of each of the slides, early wake up pros and cons, this is probably going to be a title slide, the benefits, the challenges, the impact, healthy morning routines, tips for successful early rising.

Now, I can go in here and change any of these titles if I want. I can also come here to the left and change the order as well. So maybe I want healthy morning routines to come at the end before the conclusion, so I can add items if I want or remove them. But let's leave them as is, and I'm going to select Continue.

Lastly, we can choose a particular template. Now, the templates are fairly basic, but remember, you can swap these out with any of your PowerPoint templates here as well. I'm going to choose the first one and select Continue.

Now, it may take a few seconds depending on how many slides which you have asked it to produce, but really this will probably produce my slides in, oh, a little less than 15 seconds. Here you can see it producing it for me live on the left-hand side, and it's even incorporated pictures as well.

So I've got my title slide, here's the benefits, here's the challenges, appropriate images, appropriate bullet points. Of course, I would never just go ahead and produce this as is, but this gives me a great framework to go on.

So if you are stuck or want to get ahead just a little faster, you may want to check out ChatGPT for PowerPoint.

Create word cloud images from text

Next, let's take a look at how we can make our slides that much more engaging and useful for our audience. In this example, I've collected a number of responses. Maybe I surveyed my participants in advance, or maybe this is just some user data and I just have the raw outcome here.

These are the answers that people gave, but this isn't very engaging, and it's actually kind of hard to see what were the most popular responses. Well, I'm going to produce a word cloud in just a few seconds, and it's also going to give me a lot of helpful options along the way.

For this, we're using something called Pro Word Cloud, and all we need to do is select what kind of font we want to use. Maybe I'm going to use this telephoto font here. I can choose from a variety of different color schemes if I want. I'm going to keep things pretty simple here. I'm going to choose this celebration one. 

I can change the case layout or my case preferences. I can even limit it to a number of words, If I have more than 100 in my list here. The one thing I would make sure that you do is actually increase the default pixel size I'm going to put 1000 by I think 800 in my example here, just so it takes up most of my slide.

And then the last thing that we to do before selecting this button is to actually come over and select the words you want to use in that word cloud. So I'm going to come over here, I'm going to select create word cloud, and instead of putting it directly within my slide, it's first going to give me that image up above here.

And this is helpful in case I want to tweak any of the design options down below. But when I'm happy with the result, all I need to do is click on the image, it copies it to my clipboard and now I'm going to say paste here within my slide.

Now, I've got something which is a lot more engaging, a lot more useful. We can quickly see that joy and peace were the two most popular words, and things like success and abundance were much less popular in this particular poll.

Add free stock images by color

Next, let's take a look at making it easier to add images to our slides without having to copy and paste from different websites or traveling to other tabs within our browser. For this, we are going to use the free Pexels add-on.

Now, Pexels has been a very popular site for getting free stock photos, but instead of minimizing and maximizing your PowerPoint slides, we can search all of those photos directly from within PowerPoint.

So, for example, maybe I want a picture of a computer. I can type in that search, and then I can preview all of those images here right from within my application.

But the feature that I like the most is that I can color match my images. So here on the left-hand side, you can see I've got this very dark background with this purple theme going on in the left and right lower corner.

So within the Pexels add-on, I'm going to select this color picker, and I'm going to select this purple, which happens to be the same purple as the one within my slides. 

And maybe I want to look at something like a monitor screen or something along those lines. I'm going to type in the word monitor, and what it's going to do is bring back a number of images that are related to a monitor, but that have that type of shade or that type of tone within it.

So as I browse through these, I can see that all of these are going to fit very, very well with this slide on the left-hand side. I'm going to select this image here. I can choose from large, medium, or small. I'm going to go with medium. I'm going to say insert photo. And maybe all I need to do here is say send to back.

And that looks great, and it fits very, very well with the other colors and the other themes that I have on screen. So if you want to quickly find the right photo for you, be sure to use the Pexels PowerPoint add-on.

Now, I would love to hear from you next. Which of these five add-ons were your favorite? And do you have any that you would like me to feature in a future video? 

Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.

How do you archive Trello cards and lists? And perhaps more importantly, where do you go to find those archive cards and return them to your board? In this video, I'm going to show you everything you need to know. Now there's a few different ways in which we can archive our cards.

Archive Cards

Number one, you can open up your card and scroll near the bottom and you can see that there is an archive button here, which we can select. By selecting this button, we can scroll back to the top and we have this identifier telling us that this card is archived. If we want to return it to our board, this is synonymous with unarchiving a card. I can select this option. You can see that that label is now removed and this card remains on this board.

Fast Way

Now there's a faster way in which we can do this. From the front of our card, we can select this stylus, and here you can see there's an archive button here as well. But the fastest way to archive your Trello cards is to use a shortcut key. If you hover your mouse over a particular card and select the letter C key on your keyboard, that will instantly archive that card. 

Undo 

Now you'll notice down below we get a warning where we can actually undo that action if we want to. This can be very helpful if you accidentally hit the C key on your keyboard over a card when you didn't mean to archive it, and you can select Undo.

Now, while it is common to archive cards one at a time, there may be some cases where you will want to archive an entire list. A good example of this would be a completed list, a finished, a done, a published, any list that may be accumulating a large number of cards that you don't really need to see anymore.

Well, at the top of any list, we can select these three dots, this more menu, and come down to the bottom. Here, we can choose to archive all the cards in this list, but notice that we also have an additional option with a very specific distinction.

The last option here is to archive this list, meaning archiving not only all of the cards, but the list itself. If I go ahead and choose this option, it will remove that entire list from this board.

What is Archiving

Now, at this point, you may be asking yourself what exactly is archiving and why should I consider doing so? Now the good news is, is that by archiving any of your cards or lists, it is not the same as deleting, nor does archiving put it in a temporary state where it will be deleted in 30 days.

The most common use case for archiving cards is when you no longer need something viewable or no longer need something here within your Trello space.

Searchable Cards

Every card that is archived will remain searchable, so you can go back and find it and reference it at any time. If I come up here to the search bar, I'm going to type in the words meeting minutes 'cause I'm looking for a particular card with that title.

Here you can see at the top, I have found the card I'm looking for. It's from this board and it's telling me that it has been archived. By clicking on this result, it will open up that archive card, which is completely preserved with the way that I had it before.

So I can go through and reference and look at this information, and if I want to return it to my board, I can come down here and select send to board. But what if you don't know the search term? What if you want to see all of the cards which you've archived within a particular board?

Archived Items

Well, in that case, we can come up to the board more option and the third option down within the menu is archived items. By selecting this, you will see a complete list of all of the cards which you have archived.

You can scroll down and find the one that you desire, you can immediately send it back to the board if you want here, or you can choose to permanently delete by selecting the delete link. Now, what might be more helpful is to use the search feature here at the top.

This search field is only going to search archived items for this particular board, which differs from the global search up here, which will search all cards, lists and boards within your Trello account. But while we're here within the archive area, you'll also notice that there is a switch to lists button. 

By selecting this, it will show us all of the lists in which we have archived and we are only one click away from sending them back to the board.

Remember this waiting for list, which we archived a few moments ago? I can come over here and select send to board, and not only is the name of the list restored, but all of the cards that were within that list when it was archived will be returned as well.

So now that you know everything about archiving cards and lists within Trello, what other Trello questions do you have? 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.