Your Cell Phone and Google Calendar

Your Cell Phone and Google Calendar

Receive appointment updates, reminders, and ready-to-dial phone numbers directly to your standard (not so smart) cell phone.

They say the best things in life are free and Google may be out to prove this statement with many of the applications and tools they are building for the consumer and business market.

Google Calendar is one of the applications you get with your Gmail or Google Apps account. Besides the standard appointment calendaring, Google calendar supports multiple color-coded and customizable calendars, calendar sharing, and a variety of reminder or notification methods.

One of those notification methods is via text message or SMS (Short Message Service). This does not require a smart phone and works with virtually any cell phone provider or service that supports text messaging.

HOW IT WORKS

First Step: Setup Your Google Calendar Mobile Settings & Notifications

First, I am assuming you have a Gmail or Google apps account. If not, sign up. It only takes a moment and the number of useful tools associated with Google accounts is extraordinary!

Next, go into your Google Calendar and enable your mobile settings.

Here’s how:

In the upper-right hand corner, go into Settings:

In the settings screen, go into Mobile Setup:

Enter your cell number in the box provided and click on the send verification code.

Typically, you will receive a verification code via text message within 10 seconds. Enter the verification code in the box provided and press “Finish setup”.

You will receive another text message that your phone has been verified. Now you can put it to use.

Set your default calendar notifications:

After your phone is verified and you press “Finish setup”, you should be brought to your “Notification” settings. Here you can set your default notification settings for appointments. These can be altered individual for any calendar appointment, so simply establish a normal set of notifications here.

I’ve chosen to receive an Email 1 day prior to an event and a text (SMS) message 10 minute prior to an event.

You can add multiple email, popup, or SMS notifications.

Google calendar will also send you a daily agenda every morning at 5AM if you wish. That checkbox is at the bottom of the “notifications” page.

PUTTING IT TO USE:

I enter my appointment:

Noticed that I entered Joe’s phone number as well. This is important to how I use this feature.

I have the default notifications to the right – an Email 1 day prior and a SMS message 10 minutes prior.

Now, 10 minutes prior to my meeting with Joe, I will receive a text message with the meeting information.

But Matt, why is the phone number important?

Oh.. that. Here’s why.

I am pretty good about maintaining appointments and being on time. But, there are times that unavoidable events cause me to run late. When that occurs I want to ensure that I let the person I am meeting know.

I could look for their phone number on my phone’s contact list, while I am driving through traffic. But, that is both dangerous and in some areas, illegal.

Most phones (all phones I’ve used in the past 10 years) will “detect” phone numbers inside of a text message. So, if you have text message with a phone number in the message, you only need to press the “Send” button on your phone and it will show you any phone numbers identified.

You can then select the number, press “Send” again, and the number is called without dialing or locating their name in your phone’s contact list.

Here are images shots from my cell phone’s screen showing this functionality.

The message as sent by Google Calendar to my phone.

I press “Send” on my phone and it shows me the “Extracted Numbers”

I highlight “Joe’s” number, press send again, and the number is dialed.

Here is a video of this feature in operation.

Go ahead, say it.. “Wow! That’s neat!”

Important: Phone numbers should be entered using the following formats:

(###) ###-#### or ###-###-#### or ##########

If you use periods or other non-traditional characters in the phone number, it is very likely your phone will not recognize it.

If you want multiple phone numbers, simply separate them with a space, as in:

555-555-5555 ###-###-####

When your phone extracts the phone numbers, it will show you both phone numbers and you can select either to call.

This is an extremely useful feature and is a great way to guarantee you are both notified of appointments and that you can easily contact your appointment if something comes up.

I also use this to remind me of critical calls that are time sensitive. I simply create an appointment with the contact name and number for the selected time and set an SMS reminder 2 minutes prior.

* In order to keep my regular calendar uncluttered with “call reminders”, I actually created a special calendar that I name, “Phone Reminders” and place all my call reminders on that calendar.

The ability to create multiple calendars – and view them alone or overlaid together, is one of the many great features of Google Calendars.

Coming soon, I’ll cover why how I use text messaging and Google’s chat feature.

If you have any questions on this or any additional information and useful insights, we’d love to hear from you. Leave a comment here.