This post is the 2nd in an ongoing series about how web-savvy home office types can free themselves from their businesses one step at a time using Google Apps. Topics I’ll discuss in the series include:
- Read Google Liberates the Home Office, Part 1-Gmail
- Google Calendar to manage scheduled actions and commitments
- Staying current with Google Reader
- Research and note-taking with Google Notebook
- Google Docs as THE alternative to Microsoft Office
Google Calendar is the single most useful tool for any home business owner, and gives specific advantages to husband and wife teams. Here is how I arrived at that opinion.
My wife and I were running 3 separate businesses between us. I also held a part-time job with a wildly varying schedule, which I wrote down on tiny slips of paper and brought home. We were also busy parenting a toddler and a baby.
Needless to say, scheduling our life was just ridiculous!
I used my little slips of paper, she used her Palm Pilot and sometimes iCal on her Mac. Pretty primitive setup, I’ll admit, and it did not allow us to manage our lives in any meaningful way.
We needed a solution that would:
- Show different colors for each individual (and grouping) in the family
- Allow both of us to view and edit the schedule without a bunch of B.S.
- Send reminders when and where we can best use them
- Display the most current version of the ever-changing family/office schedule
Google Calendar Delivers the Goods!
After way too much research into desktop software packages that would satisfy these goals, I decided to give Google Calendar a whirl. And boy, am I glad I did!
Google Calendar has a simple interface that displays all your events with colors assigned to each person or group. Adding an appointment is as easy as clicking any open space on the calendar or using the “Quick Add” feature.
Check.
Sharing a calender with a coworker or partner is simple yet sophisticated. As you create a new calendar, edit the calendar settings and type in the email address of the person with whom you want to share. Make sure you enable “Make changes AND manage sharing” if you trust the other parties. If not, either fire them or set a more appropriate access level from the four options. Your choice.
Share your calendars and set your permissions correctly, and it will be like your personal calendar software is installed on every computer in the world. Access and edit anywhere. I love this!
Double-check.
Of course, what good would your calendar be if you had to constantly remember to look at it? Google Calendar’s killer feature is SMS text reminders so you can relax your mind and focus on taking action in your business.
You can also do this by email, but SMS is the most convenient and useful because it delivers me the reminder wherever I am on a device that I always have on me: my phone.
Triple-check.
And the fourth requirement in the list above—always having the most up-to-date schedule information—is handled readily by the fact that all of this calendar mumbo-jumbo resides on the Internet.
Check. Check. Check. Check. All requirements met!
Google Calender is a robust, convenient solution for any business you run out of your home, and liberates the home office family from a nightmare of schedule management.
So, step two in your journey to liberate yourself from your home office may be to migrate to Google Calendar. You can start here by creating a Google Account. Also take a look at Google’s Getting Started Guide.
Let’s dig deeper!
What is your favorite Google Calendar feature? Let me know in the comments below.
