Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed and maintained by Google. The service is used by business organizations, educational institutions, industries, start-ups, and even the government. It is the best tool for managing personal and professional schedules as it allows users to create and edit events, create reminders for events, invite others for an event, they can even add event locations.
There is really a lot that can be done with Google Calendar and this article tells you all you need to know about the Google Calendar.
Features of Google Calendar?
- You can create and edit events. Events have a start time and a stop time, with an option for an “All-day event”.
- Enable reminders for events, with options available for type and time.
- Invite other users to an event, you also have the option of adding the location of the event. Other Google Calendar users will see the event in their calendar, and non-Google Calendar users will get an email with an option for “Yes”, “No”, or “Maybe”.
- Enable/disable the visibility of special calendars like Birthdays, Holidays, Special Occasions. Google Calendar can retrieve dates of births from Google contacts and displays birthday cards on a yearly basis, a country-specific calendar can display dates of special occasions.
- Users can add a color to an event for easy recognition or to distinguish the event from other events.
- Users can view events in different types of setups, including day, week, month, 4 days, or schedule.
- Users can set notifications to remind them of an event, either through email or mobile push notification.
- Privacy settings allow the user to define how much of their calendar activity is open to the public.
Google has added a lot of functionality that makes use of machine learning; they include:
- “Events from Gmail”, where event information from a user’s Gmail messages are automatically added to Google Calendar; “Reminders”, where users add to-do activities that can be automatically updated with new information.
- “Smart Suggestions”, where the app recommends titles, contacts, and locations when creating events.
- “Goals” feature, where users enter information on a specified personal goal, and the app automatically schedules the activity at optimal times.
How to access Google Calendar
You need to have a Google account to have access to Google Calendar.
With your Google account;
- Go to calendar.google.com or open the Calendar app on your mobile device to use it.
How to Add Events to Google Calendar
To add an event is very easy;
- Open Google Calendar.
- Select a day, a month or an hour. You will see a dialog box that points to the day or time and lets you quickly schedule the event. Click the more details link and add more details. You can also add events from text links on the left.
- There is also an option to import a whole calendar full of events at once from Gmail, Outlook, iCal, or Yahoo. There are third-party tools that helps you sync between the calendars since Google Calendar does not sync with most of the email services except Gmail.
Sharing Google Calendars
One feature of Google Calendar that makes it outstanding is that you can share your calendar with others, while maintaining control. Most organizations requires their calendars to go public so that the team can see and view events, so the sharing feature comes in handy.
You can also share your personal calendar with friends, family, or coworkers. You can decide to share only times when you’re busy, or share read-only access to event details, share the ability to edit events on your calendar or share the ability to manage your calendar and invite others.
Google Calendar Mobile
The mobile version of Google calendar also allows you view and add events to your calendar from your cell phone. The interface for viewing and interacting with calendar events on your mobile device is different from the web, but it is still easy to navigate.
