Why share calendars?

Productive people save time and focus with electronic calendars  

People who are slow to adapt to electronic calendars continually pay for their resistance.  My wife does electronic most of the time but she still uses our paper wall calendar normally just to schedule family haircuts.  This month she also scheduled parent teacher conferences.  She spent hours scheduling them because the teacher conferences are a bear to schedule.   When she was  finally “done” she emailed me and I politely reminded her that she choose her hair cut night.  The wife was not happy to miss her hair cut and is still struggling to work it out.  On short notice she now gets last choice.  It was a big waste of her time.

With shared electronic calendars many people can always access only the updated calendar so re-scheduling is not a waste of time.  Further, changing information can be replace rather than just re-announced.  It is cleaner, generates less errors, and takes the whole group less time.  Its OK to screw up your own calendar once in awhile, but when a group leader miss-schedules dozens of peoples there is embarrassment and ill will.  On the plus side with a shared group calendar each entry is immediately correctable by other key group members.  Many hands make light work for a calendar  and the peer review makes data more accurate.

What about paper calendar people?  Some people do not have or use a smartphone calendar and or a computer.  Great news! If you are a paper calendar person  we can print our electronic calendar for you.  Choose the format you want.  Weekly, Daily or or easiest to read the “agenda” list of event details.    You could even print our calendar early and then add your other stuff on top of it.  Amazingly we can co exist and paper people saved time too!

How should we handle last minute changes?   When the calendar changes and you want to call this to people’s attention here is what to  announce:  “Due to the sever weather, tonight’s event was rescheduled for tomorrow.  Details are in our Google calendar”.

Send that out by text, twitter and/or email.  Using this method you are leading your group to trust and use its Google calendar.  Once they trust the calendar your work load drops.  Next, get a few members to help manage the calendar and now you just raised productivity in your whole group!  Congratulations!  As members can trust the calendar your emails are fewer and shorter.  I am now much more excited about your more effective group!

Devil in the Details:  One of the problems with the old paper calendars were details missing to fit the limited space.  For example Game time but no field address etc.  How is your child care provider or neighbor to find the field?  Insist that your calendar has who, what when where details.  Include potential ending times and check the address at maps.google.com and see the satellite view matches your expectations.  (Generally that task is just one click).  Add links to relevant websites for rain out info and event registration etc.  If the group has questions your entry is probably incomplete.

How to do it:

Now that we have covered the whys lets get into the details of HOW to work with share group calendars.

Short instructions for those who do not like to read.

How far can you get before you get stuck?

5 examples of public Google Calendar I manage in my smartphone.    Naperville Sunrise Calendar  LTRO Calendar    Galaxy 96-97 boys blue   NNHS Men’s Soccer,  NNFBS

a. Create a Google login.  Assuming you do not already have a google or gmail login the  Create a Gmail address and email the calendar creator to request an invite

b. Login at Google.com then look for the 9 little grey dots (3×3).  Choose calendar.  Next add events to the one of your calendars.  (it is not tough)

c. Once you view the calendar in your browser then try your phone or Outlook calendar etc.  (You will want to view all your Google calendars at the same time if practical).

d. Shared calendars means shared responsibility for posting updates. Calendars are truly “garbage in/garbage out.  Let us know about changes and updates because wrong information is worse than no information.

e. Let the calendar owner know of others who can help edit the group calendar.

f.  Sync your personal electronic calendar events into your own personal Google calendar.  Now you can see all events side by side.  See Sync with Microsoft Outlook – Google Calendar Help or App Store – GooCal (Google Calendar™ sync) – Apple etc

g. If you got stuck, skim the information below for additional details you missed or call Jim Ensign

More detailed step by step tutorials for Google calendars: 

1.  Create calendar and invites.  The calendar creator has to invite your email address to a calendar and assign you permissions that match your needs.  permissions can include:  add/edit events, manage sharing,  view only ( I probably did step 1 for you already when I created the calendar.

2. Your Google Login:  You may already have a Google login or a Gmail address.  If you do then this step is already done. Skip to step 3.    However most people have neither a Google login nor a Gmail account.  The trick is to tie the email address that your group already knows for you to a Google account.   It used to be that you could  create a Google login for any email address.  (Those were the days!)   Unfortunately, since the advent of Google+ plus they have gotten very aggressive in encouraging Gmail accounts.  In Mid 2013 Google began forcing new users to tie all Google accounts to a Gmail address.  So here is the work around for tying your regular Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL mail, the email address your Internet provider gave you, or even your corporate email address to your Google account.

a. If you do not have a Google or Gmail login just  Create a Gmail address.   Remember to add you cell phone number and your other email address when creating your Google profile.

b.  Next add your other email address as Alternate Gmail address. See: add an alternate email address and/or Connect other email accounts to your Google Account

3.  Login and find the calendar. At Google.com or GMail.com in your browser just click login.  Once logged in, Choose calendar.  Everybody with a Google account starts with one empty calendar.  People who have been invited to a shared calendar get a second calendar and so on.  Generally events in different calendars display in the same view but use different colors for different calendars.  Cubs are blue, Bears are orange, Blackhawks Red etc.

4.  See all your calendars, add events.  On the left margin you will see My calendars and 1 or more calendars listed.  You should see: NNHSMS or LisleGOP etc or Expand the triangle to see it.  Click the box and the box changed s color.  When the box is colored events will show in that view.  Clear the box to hide the events from that calendar.  Check the boxes to overlay a view of each calendar in the main portion of the screen.  So far I only entered an event on October 3rd.  If you are reading this you are probably authorized to add events to the calendar. Remember you have multiple calendars.  So when you create your events please choose the “your calendar calendar not your own calendar.

5.  Pass the word:.  OK so we now have a calendar with events.  We can email that out,  share it with family and fans

Send out details by saying:      Event name has been added to our group calendar for July 28.   Lead the group to find and rely on the calendar.

6.  View in any browser:  This calendar has been shared publicly so you can view it read only in any browser without logging in:  https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=oh49e0ns5h3n770tvhhr0fvr40%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America/Chicago

7. Embed calendar in your web page.  If you administer a web page you can embed the calendar in that page.  (Viewers are read only.  See examples at  LTRO Calendar,  NNHS Soccer    or Naperville Sunrise Calendar)

8. View your favorite shared calendar in your other calendar software.  Apple calendar, Outlook, and thunderbird users can view (not edit) any ics calendar inside their calendar program.  It requires a little knowledge on your program and the ics link to your favorite calendar below.  See also:  View a Google Calendar within Outlook 2007’s calendar – How-To Geek

Need more?