Google Calendar: Effective Strategies For Getting The Most From This And Other Google Business Tools

In May Google acquired Timeful. Timeful was built as an app to allow users to use artificial intelligence to help them keep track of both their personal and professional lives. These changes integrated behavioral science. Instead of introducing a new tool, Timeful changed the environment users were working in.

Although Google isn’t saying how much this acquisition cost them, Google will be changing the way Google Calendar works and integrating many of the features Timeful offers into the Google Calendar tool. These features may include adding things users want to do, as well as tracking good habits.

Jacob Bank, Timeful’s CEO, will join Google as a product manager and will work on Google Calendar and Gmail. In Fast Company, he had the following to say about how the Timeful calendar app increases productivity.

“We can evolve tools to become smarter in subtle ways. When you add up all these small changes over time, in five years they can have a big impact.”

This acquisition comes at the same time that Microsoft acquired Sunrise, a calendar app designed for both iOS and Android. It remains to be seen if this new app will give Google any competition in the calendar market. Google plans to integrate features from Timeful across many of its products in order to make them more productive.

One interesting feature Google recently brought to Google Calendar, Gmail and Drive is the integrated search feature. Google also created a more consistent look across the three products to make them more efficient. The new feature allows users to use keywords to search for documents, events and photos to quickly locate what they are looking for. Results open in a new tab. [Bidness Etc]

One feature users may have found helpful is the SMS alerts. Google decided to remove this feature from Google Calendar. Since Google Calendar integrates with so many desktop applications now, this may not be an issue for most.

Another feature users may find helpful, especially if they attend a lot of meetings is the Google Calendar rescheduler feature. This allows users to take a currently scheduled event and reschedule it to a different time by having the Google Calendar Smart Rescheduler search for an alternate time for the event. It finds a time that is available for all participants.

For now, Google Calendar does remain quite vanilla although with the drop down menu on the right of the calendar, users may use the menu feature to sync their calendar with the mobile Google Calendar app. Other features allow users to change their settings, and there are tabs so users may look at different views of the calendar: day, week, month and agenda. One of its best advantages is its integration with Gmail, and with the tools linked easily gives users an online environment to keep them productive.

The final feature to be aware of is the “New Calendar” feature. This feature allows users to create multiple calendars so users may have different calendars for different reasons as in personal and business. Google Calendar users may also import the calendars of others using different methods including import and add URL.

Will the search feature for Google Calendar, Gmail and Drive help you become more productive? Does the consistent look and feel of Google products help you get more done?

[Photo Credit Pin Digit]