Getting the Most of Google Calendar: What is a Group Calendar?

You’ve got Google Apps. You’ve heard of Google Calendar. Now use this handy Apps for Work feature to get everyone on the same (digital) page.

There’s one major drawback of our mobile-enhanced life: we’re trying to cram even more stuff into any given day. We’re in a multitasking world, where even lunch breaks are no longer sacred.

The downside to all this flexibility is that it’s that much more difficult to stay on track ourselves, much less juggle the schedule of an entire group. If only there was an interactive timekeeping program that would do this. If only everyone in the organization could access it. If only there was some kind of self-reminding digital assistant to keep our schedules orderly.  

Not surprisingly, there is.

Google Calendar: An Overview

If you’re one of the roughly 1 billion people on the planet who use Google’s Android operating system, you’re probably familiar with the stock Calendar app that came with your device. I use mine all the time, but, as it turns out, I’m far from a power user.

Google Calendar is an awesome thing. It keeps track of what we’ve been up to and what we’ve still to do. It reminds us, silently or with a chirp, of meetings and appointments. It even translates multi-time-zone meetings into the local time of each person. Calendar also integrates with Drive and Docs for document collaboration and Hangouts for easy communication.

However, if you—like me—strictly use Calendar to keep track of your own work happenings, you’re leaving about half of its real usefulness behind. Google Calendar is made to share, and that makes it a powerful tool for small businesses on a tight budget.

Using Google Calendar for Groups: A Preview

In upcoming posts, we’ll delve deeply into the features of group Google Calendars, how to set them up, and how to use them across mobile devices. Scheduling meetings just got easier and so did real-time collaboration with out-of-office coworkers. And booking a conference room with a sign-in sheet? So 2010.