There are a multitude of useful tools at a manager’s disposal and one of the most reliant is the calendar. Many of us rely on digital versions of the calendar to help us keep track of meetings, deadlines, and other important time-specific events. One of the most popular calendar apps is Google Calendar, which has many useful features including Quick Add.

Here is an overview of Google Calendar’s Quick Add feature, how to use it, and a potential issue you should be aware of.

What is Quick Add?

If you create a new calendar entry on Google Calendar, you are usually presented with a form that has numerous options that allow you to customize the event. While this is a great feature, some users want to quickly add an event to the calendar without having to mess with the longer form.

Quick Add allows users to do exactly that – quickly add an event to their calendar by entering all of the most important information at once. Google will then figure out the information and create an event from this

How Quick Add works

If you would like to quickly add an event to your calendar, you can do so by:

1. Opening your Google Calendar.
2. Pressing the down-arrow beside Create.
3. Entering the event information in the box that opens.
4. Clicking Add.

The best way to enter your information in the Quick Add box is to simply write a sentence as you would on a paper-based calendar. In order to use this effectively, you should include:

• What – The main event text, usually a noun like ‘meeting’. The title of the event will be developed from this.
• Who – The person or people the event will be with. You can enter names, but it is best to put email addresses. Be sure to put ‘with’ before the names or addresses.
• When – The time or date the event will start, or the start and finish times of the event. You can use either ‘at’, ‘on’ or ‘from’.
• Where – The location of the event.

An example of this would be: Meeting with Sally@emailaddress.com from 3:00 pm to 3:30 pm on March 2, 2014 at Meeting Room 1. Type this in, and an event will be created on the 2 March, starting at 3:00 pm. The title will be Meeting and clicking on the information will show that Sally has been invited to the event. Sally will also see that the event has been automatically added to her calendar.

Be warned: This feature could cause trouble

While Quick Add is a useful feature, especially for the busy manager or business owner, it can cause problems. There are reports on Google Forums of people who have added a reminder using this feature, only to have the reminder also sent to a colleague or boss.

If you were to add an event that says: ‘email to John@email.com about a raise‘, John could be added to the event and be able to see this. This may not be in your best interest. So, if you are going to use this feature you should be aware that if you add email addresses in the Quick Add field an invite will go out. That means you should be sure that when using this feature that you only add people’s email addresses if you want them to be able to see your message.

This is a great time-saving feature, and could be quite useful if used correctly. If you would like to learn more about using Google Calendar in your office, please contact us today.

Published on 19th December 2013 by Jeanne DeWitt.