Google Integrations That Will Make You Happy!

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

 Sometimes I like doing things the long way. For example, I might take the scenic route home from Chicago to enjoy the beautiful scenery on Sheridan Road. Or, if I am making a new recipe I will make sure to follow all of the instructions and not use any shortcuts until I have made it at least once.

One area where I really don't want to do things the long way is when working in Google products. I appreciate all the shortcuts and I'm super excited to share some with you that you may not know about.  You think you need all those tabs open but maybe you can close some!

 These shortcuts are little things that can add up to big time efficiency.

Let's get into it!

First, let's take a look at gmail. Look at the right side of your screen and you will see some icons.  Don't see them? Click the arrow in the bottom right corner of your screen to open the side panel. You will see a similar side panel within most Google products. 

These icons probably look familiar to you but just in case they don't, here is a quick rundown.

At first glance, you can see that by clicking on these icons the coordinating product will open up in a side panel. But if you continue to explore you will see that there are many time saving features now embedded within the Google environment. I would encourage you to go ahead and click and try a few things. You may be surprised at how easy it is to discover the new capabilities. 

• Calendar/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Google Calendar icon. At the bottom of the side panel, click Create An Event. You will notice that the new event is automatically populated with the subject of the email. You can grab the details from the email and include them in the description of your calendar event. Click save to save your new event to calendar without actually opening calendar.

• Keep/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Keep icon. At the top of the side panel, click "Take a note". A new Google Keep note will be created. You can title the note and add whatever relevant information you need. You will notice that on the note a link to the email is automatically created for you. No more copy/paste from gmail into keep! While we're here talking about Google Keep, if you open that note in Keep you can click the bell and set a reminder. It will auto-populate to your calendar. 

• Tasks/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click the Tasks icon.
• You can then click and drag an email into Tasks and it will automatically create a new task for you with the same title as the subject of the email.
• Once your task is created, you can add a date and time and it will automatically add it to your calendar. If you have notifications enabled you will get a calendar notification on that date and time.

• Contacts/Gmail:
• When you have Gmail open, click on an email message and then click the Contacts icon. 
• On the side panel you will now see the contacts of everyone on that email thread.
• Within the side panel you can add them to your contacts with one click on the add to contacts icon.

You will notice similar functionality within Google calendar. If you click on a calendar event and then click the Google keep icon and click "Take A Note", you then have a Google keep note with the calendar event linked directly to it.

These icons are also available in Google docs, sheets, and slides. If you have a doc open and click the calendar icon and click "add event" it will automatically give your event the same title as your document and gives you the ability to seamlessly attach that Google doc to your calendar event. 

Here's the moral of the story, if you see a little icon while you are using Google applications, go ahead and click on them. I promise you won't irreversibly break anything and you just might discover your new favorite productivity tool. 

Check these out and let us know what you think.