Google Calendar as Part of Your Online Real Estate Business Suite

Fast and Efficient Entry of Events & Meetings in Multiple Ways

The Google Calendar isn't as full-featured as Outlook and other software. However, in going totally online for my business management, the way that Google's Calendar integrates with Gmail offsets some of the functional drawbacks. What I want is an easy maintenance system that doesn't take too much of my time for maintenance and posting. The ability to get meetings, events and tasks into the Google Calendar in multiple ways, including calling from my cell phone, make it an excellent tool for me. As with Gmail, I'll link you to our About.com experts on setup and use of certain features, rather than try to duplicate their information here.

Since you have your Gmail account set up, you'll see a link to "Calendar" in the upper left corner. Just click that link and sign up for the Calendar from your Gmail account. Going in this order, all your Google services will tie back to, and be accessible from, the Gmail or igoogle window. We want you to learn how to use these tools in your real estate business. Here are links that will help you with this step:

A review of Google Calendar.

Creating a Calendar Event from a Gmail message.

One of the features that make it easier to use the Google Calendar with Gmail is the recognition by Gmail of emails with meeting information in them. It isn't infallible, but in most cases, Gmail will recognize an email that says something like "Let's meet for lunch at Gregory's Friday at 11:30." When Gmail recognizes the date and time for a meeting or event, you'll get a new option to the right of the individual email while you're viewing it. It will ask if you'd like to add it to your calendar. Click on the link and it will take you to the calendar and a window with the event details ready for edit or additional comments. Just save it, and it's in your calendar! In a step later in this tutorial, I'll show you how you can call in on your cell phone and have a meeting or event entered into your Calendar as text from your voice.

As with Gmail, you have a place to customize your Calendar at the "Settings" link at upper right. Here is where you can add outside calendars to supplement or display separately from your own. The first that everyone needs to add is U.S. Holidays. When you're setting a closing date or delivery of documents, you certainly don't want it to fall on a banking holiday. You do this by going to Settings > Calendars > and Add a Calendar. You'll go to a window to search for the type of calendar you want. Once installed, you can elect on the main calendar view when to display that calendar. I display the holidays calendar along with mine. I have another calendar for weather which I choose to display only when I want to see it.

As a real estate agent or broker, there may be special dates about which you want to be reminded. Whether it's a special client's birthday, or anything else, you can place them in this calendar directly, from an email or with your cell phone. It just doesn't get any easier or more convenient to keep your events and meetings organized, even if you're out and away from the computer.

Now we'll go to the Remember the Milk step and deal with our tasks, to-do's and transaction management.