Google Calendar Rocks!
OK, I may be behind the curve here, but I just set up my Google calendar last night—actually my first set of calendars, one for each of the major roles I interact with at Church on Sundays. It was kind of like eating from that proverbial bag of potato chips—I couldn’t have just one!
The background is that I’ve recently been called to serve as an executive secretary serving several local congregations. (This is an unpaid calling, not my full-time job here in Salt Lake.) As such, I’m responsible for scheduling a lot of meetings, not just for myself, but for other very busy people. I thought Google Calendar might be a good way to coordinate.
I haven’t had a chance to “roll out” the calendars to others yet, but even if I just keep it to myself, I think it’s going to save me a ton of time and hassle. My only complaint was that it was not immediately clear how to get started (by signing up for a new Gmail account for each person I wanted to make a calendar for).
Things I like about it:
- Easy to set up multiple calendars. Within about 20 minutes I had set up 4 calendars (2 for other people, 1 for shared events, 1 for my Church role, 1 for my personal life). You can also add calendars other people have made public (holidays, company events, political campaign trails, etc.)
- Easy to manage adminstration rights. I gave myself rights to administer all calendars, everyone else rights to manage their own, plus view everyone else’s (except my personal calendar).
- Easy to add and edit items. Nuff said.
- Easy to manipulate the view. By default, I can see all calendars that I have created or that others have shared with me, all in a combined view. With a click I can turn off any calendar (to just show my personal calendar, for example, or to see only interviews set up for a specific person). Also of great value: No Blinking Ads. (Nor any other kind of ads.)
- Easy to add someone else’s item to my own calendar. I probably won’t use this much, since I want to keep everybody’s calendars distinct. But I can see how people in other roles might want to do it that way.
The most repeated word above is, of course, “Easy”. I’m sure I’m only beginning to discover all the cool ways I can use this tool, but all the coolness is not overwhelming. It’s Easy, and out of the way till I need it.
Just what you’d expect from a Google Calendar, I guess.