How to Embed Multiple Google Calendars

One of the advantages of Google Calendar is the ability to share it. Embedding a Google Calendar in a website or blog is not only possible, but very easy.

As an example, take a principal who uses Google Calendar. He or she places personal events on the calendar. In addition, this principal has created a second calendar called "School Events." The principal enters holidays, report card dates, and dates of various happenings at the school. Our principal would like for parents to be able to view all of these school events without having to re-enter them anywhere else.

Our principal can go to the settings for that particular Google Calendar copy the embed copy, and paste it into the website or blog. To see an example of such a calendar, visit the Raymond L. Young Elementary School Blog and scroll to the bottom of the page. The items on the "School Events" calendar will show, but the items on the principal's personal calendar will not appear.

Let's look at a more complex scenario. The athletic director at a school is using Google Calendar to keep up with the games for each sport and the practice schedule for each sport. Down the left-hand side of his calendar is the name of each sport with one calendar for it's games and one calendar for it's practices. By toggling each calendar on and off, the athletic director is able to see calendars in combination. The list may look something like this:

• Varsity Football Games
• JV Football Games
• Boy's Basketball Games
• Girl's Basketball Games
• Volleyball Games
• Varsity Football Practice
• JV Football Practice
• Boy's Basketball Practice
• Girl's Basketball Practice
• Volleyball Practice 

The athletic director wants to publish these calendars in such a way that players can see the calendars which pertain to them. In other words, he wants to publish a calendar for the varsity football players which would show both their practice schedule and games (currently two separate calendars in the athletic director's Google Calendar). He would like to embed a calendar for the volleyball players which would list both the practice schedule and games. For the general public, he would like to publish a calendar which would show all of the games for all sports but not show any practice schedule.

As you can see, the question becomes, "How can I embed multiple Google Calendars in a website or blog?" Whether you already know how to embed any single calendar or whether you are totally new to this concept, the following video demonstrates the concepts you will need.




The video was created by Melinda Waffle. You can also watch this video on YouTube. I found it to be easy to follow. It certainly answered one of the "how to do it" questions I had.

Syncing Multiple Google Calendars to iPhone

I have been a proponent digital calendars since I made my own transition from paper to digital in 2001. I currently use Google Calendar. Actually, there are three calendars: mine, my wife's, and an "FYI" calendar. Having all three, or any combination of them, display on the computer screen is a plus. Having the same capability on my mobile devices is highly desirable.

I am not an iPhone user, but one of the questions I often hear is how to sync multiple Google Calendars with the iPhone. The scenario I hear is when one opens the Gmail app on the iPhone and logs in, the main calendar appears. The other calendars do not.

A Google search for "syncing multiple Google calendars to iPhone" yields many results, particularly links to bulletin boards where people are asking for help, receiving proposed solutions, and reporting back as to what did and did not work. I have also seen explanations which seemed too complex and knew there had to be an easier way.

One person answered the question with a single link:

https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect

The link took me to a screen which listed my calendars with check marks beside each one. I assume you put a check beside each calendar you wish to appear on your iPhone and save. That's a simple solution, and if it indeed works, is almost too good to be true.

For those who use an iPhone, what has been your experience? What did you have to do to get multiple Google calendars to appear on your iPhone?

Syncing Multiple Google Calendars on the BlackBerry PlayBook

One of the nice things about Google Calendar is the ability to have multiple calendars. I have three:

1. My calendar is the main calendar, telling me where I am supposed to be. 
2. My wife's calendar lets me know about her commitments. Knowing where she will be at any given time is important information for me to have.
3. An "FYI" calendar lets me know about events which may be of interest or may impact decisions I will make.

Being able to overlay those calendars, or isolate them, allows me to see the bigger picture or zero in on any of the three areas. Having those multiple calendars sync across all of my devices is important.

My phone of choice is an Android. The day I purchased it and logged into Gmail, all three of my Google Calendars appeared and have synced beautifully ever since.

When RIM released the PlayBook 2.0 software update featuring a native calendar, I synced it with my Google Calendar. I wrote about that process in this post. Since I did run into a snag and then found a solution, the post explained both what I did wrong (though it seemed logical to me at the time) along with what I did to get the sync happening.

When in my home office, I rely on the Google Calendar on my desktop computer. When I am anywhere else, I rely on my phone's calendar. I rarely refer to the PlayBook's calendar, and therefore just realized only one of my Google Calendars (the main) one was syncing. 

If it's just as easy to have something working 100% as not, I figured a Google search would probably reveal someone else who had the same problem and someone who found a solution. (That last sentence reminds me of a recent post I wrote.) I was correct. After throwing some search terms into Google, in less than 30 seconds, an article exactly on-point on the screen.

In "How to Sync Multiple Gmail Calendars on Your BlackBerry PlayBook," Kerri Neill explains step-by-step what to do. Rather than repeat the directions here, I invite you to read her thoughtful post at the link provided.

The only part of the instructions that caused me a little pause came towards the end: "Once you see a message saying all settings have changed, you can reset your browser settings and you're all set!" I was a little unsure what "resetting my browser settings meant." So, I tried the following steps:

1. I returned to the screen where I had changed "false" to "true" and changed the URL back to "false."
2. In my browser, I selected Tools > Options > Content and enabled Javascript by checking the box. 

On the PlayBook, I refreshed the calendar. Instantly, the additional two calendars appeared at the top of the screen. Within a few minutes, the appointments assigned to those additional two calendars appeared on the PlayBook.

I realize this post is applicable only to a specific subset of readers, those whose tablet is a PlayBook and need to sync multiple Google Calendars. However, for that subset of readers, the instructions I reference may make a huge difference.

Getting Your Google Calendar to Sync

If you use a Google Calendar and the calendar on your computer is successfully syncing with your mobile devices, you can stop reading now. This post is not for you. However, if you use a calendar on your phone, but your digital calendar is only on your phone, this post can make a difference for you every day. If you are maintaining a Google Calendar on your computer, and you are also entering the same data on your mobile device with two thumbs, this post is also for you.

A calendar which syncs between your computer and mobile devices is something that is great if it's working...and extremely frustrating if it's not. The same holds true for having tasks, contacts, and notes , but those are other posts for others days. Today, we address the calendar.

When life is coming at you, and there is limited time to tinker with the technology, very talented people find themselves "getting by" by doing double entry on computer and phone, printing a calendar from the computer to use when out of the office, or simply trying to remember what was on the computer back at the office. Worse yet, they get used to this madness and never take the time to get the technology working correctly. It is something they will get to when "things settle down." In practice, "things" rarely settle down, especially when time-wasters are built into the system. With a sigh, they say that just "live with it," and continue to live with data which does not sync and calendars they can't fully trust.

If the last couple of paragraphs describe you, read on. Rather that reinvent the wheel by keying step-by-step instructions, I have found where others have already doen the work. In this outstanding article entitled "How to Sync Google Calendar to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone," you will get those detailed instructions for Android, Apple, and Windows Phone and see what you need to do whether you are working with an Exchange server or not.

Michael Hyatt writes a great blog and is a very tech-savvy person. In one of his posts, however, he expresses his own frustration with getting his iPhone to sync with his Google Calendar. If Michael Hyatt can run into problems, don't feel bad if you do as well. Michael went a step further and provided step-by-step instruction for what worked for him, including extensive screen shots. If you are an iPhone user, I recommend you read Michael's post, "How to Setup Google Calendar on Your iPhone."

As I poll participants in my workshops, a huge shift has occurred over the last 5 years in the percentage of people whose calendars reside on their phones rather than on paper. Smartphones are ubiquitous for school administrators and business executives. The compactness, ability to view data in a variety of forms, the search function, and alarms has made us fans of having the calendar on our phones.

Where do you stand? Are you an early adopter who has been syncing a digital calendar with a mobile device since before the new millennium? Are you a more recent convert to the digital calendar, but your sync process is working great? Are you in the group this post targets—someone who would love for the syncing to work, but it's just not? Are you a paper planner devote, possibly looking into whether or not you want to take the digital plunge? I would be interested in hearing your story. Please leave me a comment.

From Outlook to the Google Calendar

For years, I have thought of the Google Calendar as a good auxiliary tool. Principals often ask about structuring a method for their administrative assistants to see the principal's Outlook Calendar if they are not on an Exchange Server. My recommend has been to download a free tool called Google Calendar Sync. The tool syncs the Google Calendar it finds on that computer with the principal's Google Calendar. The principal then shares that Google Calendar with the administrative assistant, granting privileges to view or privileges to view and edit.

Likewise, I have used Google Calendar Sync to give my wife access to my Outlook Calendar. So, even though I have used Outlook for my calendar and synced that calendar to my BlackBerry, the same information has also been available to me in my Google Calendar.

When I moved from the BlackBerry to an Android device a month ago, syncing my Calendar was easy. Since the data was already in a Google Calendar, logging in to my Gmail account on the Android imported all of my calendar data into the native calendar on the phone.

With the Google calendar automatically syncing over the air with the calendar on my phone, I do all of my work on the Google Calendar rather than opening Outlook. Having worked with both calendars and comparing ease of use, I have suggestions for Google Calendars users:

Use multiple calendars, but not too many
While I could have multiple calendars on Outlook and multiple calendars om the BlackBerry, I could choose only one to sync through the BlackBerry Desktop Manager and only one would to sync with Google through Google Calendar Sync. For that reason, I was limited to one calendar on Outlook.

My Google Calendar now consists of three calendars. First is the main calendar, the one which was synced with Outlook. Second, I have a calendar for my wife's appointments. Finally, I have a calendar labeled "FYI" where I list events I might want to attend or might impact my planning.

Those at all familiar with Google Calendars know I can turn any of these three calendars on or off. I can overlay the FYI calendar on top of my main one, or I can turn off the FYI and see only the events that I will actually attend. The color coding allows me to see which entries belong to which calendars.

If an "FYI" items turns into a something I will attend, or if an appointment for my wife turns into one we will both attend, pulling from a drop-down list allows me to change that event from one calendar (and color) to another. When I view the calendar on my tablet or phone, I see the same three calendars and have the same ability to turn any one of them on or off.

Learn the keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts are a time-saver in any program. Every time we grab for the mouse, we lose speed. I have used "Control+P" to print, "Control+C" to copy, and "Control+V" to paste for as  long as a I can remember across a wide variety of programs. In Outlook, I have made great use of these shortcuts:

• Shift+Control+A creates a new Appointment from anywhere in the program.
• Shift+Control+C creates a new Contact from anywhere in the program.
• Shift+Control+T creates a new Task from anywhere in the program.
• Shift+Control+N creates a new Note from anywhere in the program.
• Shift+Control+M creates a new Email Message from anywhere in the program.

As I was trying to decide if the Google Calendar was going to function for me as well as Outlook had, looking at the available keyboard shortcuts was important. As it turns out, there are some good ones, and they are not hard to learn. To access the shortcuts, while looking at your Google Calendar, hit the questions mark (while holding the Shift key):

• n and p move the calendar to the "next" or "previous" day, week, or month, depending on the current view.
• j and k serve the same function as "N" and "P." Their location makes them a little easier, but the word association is not as strong. Take your pick between these two alternatives when you need to look forward or backwards on your calendar. One advantage of learning "J" and "K" is that they move through the list forwards or backwards in Google Contacts and Gmail.
• t returns the calendar to "today."
• d, w, m, and a changes the calendar to the Day, Week, Month, and Agenda view respectively. The numbers 1, 2, 3, and 5 will be the same thing.
• x or 4 changes the calendar to the "Custom" view. If seeing the entire week is too much, but today alone is not enough, in the calendar settings, find the "Custom" drop down and define it as being 2 days, 3 days, etc.
• c creates a new event. A screen appears and all information is added there.
• q is for "quick add." Instead of opening an entire screen, a single line opens, Enter the event, date, and time on one line. Hit "Enter," and the event appears on the calendar. Quick add understand phrases like "tomorrow," or "Friday at 8."
• Delete an item by clicking on it and hitting the "Delete" key. This motion is quicker than grabbing to the mouse to click the "Delete" link.
• Control+S saves (just as in many other programs).
• / moves the cursor to the search window.

As I was learning the shortcuts, I forced myself to refer to shortcuts chart. At first, it would have been easier to grab the mouse and click in the obvious places. I knew, however, that if I started off clicking, that is the habit that would form. If I took the time to learn the shortcuts, they would become second nature. Within a few days, I was comfortable enough with them I no longer needed to refer to the chart.

Again, you can access the shortcuts by going to the Google Calendar and hitting the "?" while holding "Shift."  Here is a chart you can view to see the shortcuts.

Syncing with the phone and tablet
Syncing with phone and tablet was easy. Logging into my Google account brought over Gmail, Google Contacts, and my Google Calendar.

Summary
I am finding the Google Calendar to be as easy to use as my Outlook Calendar. The synchronization between it and my phone and tablet have been quick and free of problems. Because of the ability to have multiple color-coded calendars, I find myself more willing to add items to the "FYI" calendar than before when all items appeared on a single calendar.


For those who are already making extensive use of the Google Calendar, what have I left out? What are other tricks and tips you can offer?

Super Demonstration of Uses of Google in the Classroom

This is an outstanding 13-minute video spotlighting practical uses of free Google tools. The intended audience for this video is the classroom teacher.





After watching the video, what concept did you see that you now want to begin to use?

Syncing Google Calendar With Your Phone

I have yet to find anything as efficient and powerful as syncing Outlook to the BlackBerry. All four modules (calendar, tasks, contacts, notes) share information beautifully. But, there are many who use other tools and are looking for a way to input information on their computer and also have it available on the smartphone.This post is for those people.

The following video talks about Google Sync for mobile phones including what you need, what it will do for you, and which phones are compatible with it:

Google Sync and Outlook 2010

For Outlook users, Google Calendar Sync provides a superb way to view your calendar from any computer with internet access as well as a way to allow selected others to be able to view and even edit your calendar. I had written about the topic in this post.

The only problem is that those who have upgraded to Outlook 2010 found that Google Calendar Sync did not work with that version. That problem is no more. If you have Outlook 2010, read this post from Official GMail Blog which explains the solution.

Google Tools in Comic Form

Google has a great little online comic book which outlines the free tools available. Click here to take a look.

Google Tricks

Google has a number of little-known tricks. This post from Lifehacker.com was the third most popular post of 2008 from that site. It contains 10 tricks worth knowing.

Syncing Google Calendar to Outlook

This post covers two points:

• The ability to sync Outlook with a Google Calendar
• The rationale for doing so

I was surprised at how easy the process was. If you are sitting at a computer which houses your Outlook data, you are about 5 minutes away from being able to see your Outlook dates on Google Calendar.

You must first have a Google account. The next step is to create a Google calendar. You will see a list of Google features. If "Calendar" is not one of them, look for "More" and click there. Once you have created a Google calendar, you can now sync with Outlook.

Click here to see an easy article that takes you through the process.

I was prompted to download and run an installer. On my desktop, I then had a shortcut which would take me straight to the Google Calendar. In the Windows System Tray, I had an icon which allows me to edit settings and manually sync. It was that simple.

Why would you want to be able to sync Outlook with a Google Calendar?

• One tremendous advantage I see is that if someone else has some responsibility for managing your appointments, Google Calendar is the perfect way for that person to view and add to your calendar. To begin, the other person would need to sit at the computer which actually houses the Outlook pst file on it and go to their Google calendar. That will set up the link between that particular Outlook pst file (the file where Outlook data is kept) and that particular Google calendar. From there on, that second person can view and add items from his/her own work station and the results appear on the Outlook calendar.

• Similarly, one spouse may want to create a Google Calendar to view the other's Outlook calendar.

• A person who houses their calendar on Outlook yet does not sync it to a smartphone could certainly benefit. Syncing Outlook to a Google Calendar gives the ability to view it from anywhere. In particular, web access from a smartphone would keep a person in touch with their calendar just by pulling the smartphone from their pocket.

I do not think that a Google calendar is the answer for everyone. Personally, syncing my BlackBerry to Outlook gives me my calendar, tasks with all of the related details, a very complete list of contacts, and tones of "Notes" information, and it's all a couple of clicks away. I am not dependent upon quality or availablility of cell phone reception in order to see where I am supposed to be or what I am supposed to be doing. For many others, a Google Calendar synced to Outlook may just be what the doctor ordered.