Getting Things Done with Google Calendar

mediator tech tips Imagine a calendar you can access from anywhere there’s a computer with Internet access. One you could share entirely or in portions with select others. One that allows you to share your organization’s events with the public and can be integrated with your website. One that you can synchronize with your PC’s or Mac’s calendar program and also with your web- or bluetooth-enabled phone. One that integrates with your email program and with free online mapping software, as well as one that sounds an alarm when appointment start times are approaching. One that’s free.

If you can imagine such a program, then you’ve imagined Google Calendar. Actually, it would be more accurate to call it Google Calendars. Google allows you to create multiple calendars and overlay them onto a single calendar page. So, you can view all calendars, some calendars, or no calendars…whatever you want. Each calendar can be associated with a different color, making the discernment between calendars easy.

I first started using Gcal when I needed a simple way to give my assistant, Yvonne, access to my calendar from her office, and I’m sold on it. My husband can now view my calendar when planning the days we need the dogsitter, and my Woodbury colleagues use it to plan our course schedules. I keep discovering new uses for it and have lost count of the ways its made managing my busy schedule easier.

Here’s why Google Calendar is an effective and truly useful element of any effective ADR practice management hub:

It’s accessible from anywhere you can get on the Internet, especially helpful if you travel on business.
It’s a great way to advertise your training events or speaking engagements and make it a cinch for people to add them to their own calendars.
You can integrate it with Outlook (PC), iCal (Mac) and, through them, with your bluetooth-enabled phone…your calendar on the go (more on this below).
Your colleagues, assistants and clients can have access to some or all of your calendars.
You can easily add, edit or move appointments with a few clicks.
You don’t need advanced tech knowledge or to learn a complex program…you can be using Gcal in just a few minutes.

Synchronizing your Google calendar with your desktop calendar program has gotten easier and more effective, thanks to enterprising folks out there. If, like me, you own a Mac, you can download Google calendars to iCal but not the reverse; that’s ok if you only want a backup but is less than ideal if you want true synchronization. That’s about to change, with SpanningSync, now in public beta and promising to deliver the final version in coming months. There’s also a Mac widget available for your Dashboard.

If you own a PC and use Outlook, there are a couple of options that have received decent reviews: SyncMyCal and CompanionLink. And if you own a PC but don’t use Outlook, you can use Calgoo to maintain a copy of your Google Calendar on your computer.

To learn more about Google Calendar, try these articles: