Jack Wallen reveals you four ideas on how you can include Google Calendar to aid with your project management needs.
Image: PixieMe/Adobe Stock Task management can be a workable obstacle or a budget-busting proposal. Although huge and intricate jobs do require the aid of particular software application and services, some jobs lend themselves to other options for their care and feeding.
SEE: Hiring kit: Project supervisor (TechRepublic Premium)
For instance, did you know that Google Calendar is a fine alternative to help you handle those jobs? I understand it sounds crazy, specifically considered that Google Calendar is complimentary and isn’t actually made particularly for task management, but anyone who utilizes technology enough comprehends that so much can be used beyond its stated purpose. That consists of the tools found in Google Office.
How do you include Google Calendar into your project management workflow? Let me give you a couple of guidelines so you can start right away.
What you’ll require to use Google Calendar for project management
The only thing you’ll need for this is a Google Workspace account. You can do this with the totally free version, which is terrific news if you’re dealing with a tight budget plan or start-ups just getting off the ground.
How to turn your Google Calendar into a task management tool
Create a project-specific calendar for your project
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When you utilize Google Workspace, you can develop as numerous calendars as you need. Numerous users forget this alternative and just deal with the default calendar. That’s not a great concept. Rather of choosing that default calendar, you should develop a project-specific calendar for every job. By doing this, you have more control over who can see what and how each user can interact with each calendar.
Here’s how to produce a new calendar in Google Work space:
- Log in to your Google Work space account.
- Open the Calendar app.
- Find Other Calendars in the left navigation.
- Click +.
- Click Create New Calendar from the pop-up.
- In the resulting window (Figure A), give the calendar a name and a description and alter the timezone if necessary.
- Click Develop Calendar.
Figure A
The Google Workspace Calendar creation window. As soon as the calendar is produced, you’ll then require to share it with your team
- . Here’s how: Locate and click the brand-new calendar in the left navigation.
- In the resulting window, try to find the Share With Particular People section.
- Click Add People.
- Type the names or email addresses of those who require access to the calendar.
- As you include a brand-new name, make certain to modify their approvals accordingly (Figure B).
- Set the consents as required from the Permissions drop-down.
- Click Send out.
Figure B
Sharing your new calendar with team members. It is necessary that you take care with the authorizations. You might have staff member who just need checked out permissions, whereas other members might require read and write permissions, while others may require read, write and manage authorizations. If you pick those permissions sensibly, your group calendar will serve you well.
Add your calendar to the company site
Rather of pointing your team to Google Calendar straight, you can include that calendar to your company website. This will probably have to be done by your web designer, but if you utilize a tool like WordPress, it’s in fact rather easy.
Near the bottom of the new Calendar alternatives page, you will discover an embed link. You can use this to include it to your internal site so your team members do not need to leave the business website to see the calendar. Simply make sure you utilize the embed code for this and not the public URL or address.
Location that embed link sensibly and your groups won’t need to bookmark or hunt for their task calendar.
Utilize the integrated Tasks include
Google Calendar has an included Task option. Instead of developing whatever on the calendar as an occasion, you need to utilize Jobs. With Task development, you can assign a task to a classification. Even better, when you include a job to your brand-new Google Calendar, it appears as a Task, which you can access from the right sidebar (Figure C).
Figure C
< img src ="https://d1rytvr7gmk1sx.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/calendarpmc.jpg?x85972" alt =""width= "551"height="286"/ > A brand-new job added to the calendar also appears in Jobs.
Usage marketplace combinations
If you find Google Calendar alone isn’t enough, you can always add integrations. You’ll discover a lot of project management-specific integrations in the marketplace, such as those for:
And numerous, much more. Each of these integrations provides a various function set, but the majority of them will occupy your calendar with jobs and cards from the third-party service, that makes it an exceptional addition.
4 suggestions for Google Calendar
There you have it: Four ideas to help you turn Google Calendar into a practical job management tool. Who understands– you may discover this fits perfectly into your workflow and can conserve you some money along the method.
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