Keep organised. Use a digital diary

Organising a modern family isn’t easy. Parents are often busy at work – or doing stuff around the home – and kids are naturally distracted and uncommunicative.

The result? Snatched conversations over breakfast and half-made arrangements because someone is texting, reading the paper or watching the news, and sticky notes on the fridge that get ignored or flutter to the floor, lost forever.

An alternative to this chaos is to create and use a shared calendar that can be accessed from all sorts of electronic devices, from a desktop PC to a smartphone.

With this enabled, the digital diary can push out reminders to the whole family – helping mum, dad and the kids see what they’re supposed to be doing today, tomorrow and beyond.

In this article we’ll demonstrate how to do just that, using the free Google Calendar service to help a busy family get its organisational act together.

Creating the calendar
Let’s set the scene. The Metaxas – Harold and Maude, their son Benjamin and daughter Leoni – have decided to get themselves organised. To do this, they’re going to use a shared online diary provided by Google Calendar.

Mum and dad have Google accounts already and use the Gmail webmail service to send and receive emails, so the first step is for one of them to create a new calendar using their Google account. (If you don’t already have a Google account, click here and when the Google accounts page loads, click the ‘Create an account now’ link and follow the prompts.)

Mum goes to Google's home page and signs in as usual and then, when the inbox loads, she clicks the Calendar link at the top left of the screen (in some cases, it may be necessary to first click More).

At the next screen she checks her basic details (name and location) and ensures the time zone is set correctly, then clicks the Continue button. After a moment an empty schedule appears on the screen.

Clicking the cog symbol at the top right opens a menu from which Calendar settings can be chosen. When the next screen loads, she clicks the Calendars link at the top and at the following screen clicks the ‘Create new calendar’ button.

At the next screen there’s space to name the calendar, give it a description (Maude is calling hers ‘Metaxa Family Calendar’), set the location (useful if it’s a public calendar, but since this isn’t, it’s left blank) and time zone.

Sharing the calendar
Matriarch Maude doesn’t want to make the calendar public (so everyone can see it), but she does want to share it with the rest of the family, starting with partner Harold; this is easy because he already has a Google account.

With the Create new calendar screen still visible, the next step is to scroll down to the ‘Share with specific people’ heading and type in the email address of the person who’s going to be invited to share the calendar – in this example, haroldmetaxa@gmail.com.

Next, it’s important to open the dropdown menu under the Permission Settings heading and choose the appropriate level of access. Maude is going to share the running of the calendar with partner Harold, so she can give him the highest permission setting – ‘Make changes AND manage sharing’.

To finish, all she does is click the Add Person button and then click Create Calendar at the bottom of the page. After a moment, the main schedule screen appears together with the new calendar, listed on the left. Can’t see it? Click the little arrow next to My Calendars to open the dropdown menu and there it is.

Joining the calendar
That’s mum’s bit done. Now all dad has to do is log on to his Google account as normal and then, when the inbox opens, click the Calendar link at the top left.

Looking at the list of calendars in the panel on the left, the new Metaxa Family Calendar has appeared underneath his personal one and he’s now ready to start adding appointments; as these are added, they’ll automatically appear in his partner Maude’s view of the calendar as well.

If they want, either of them can integrate the family calendar with their existing work calendars (which might run on Microsoft’s Outlook or Apple’s iCal).

Adding a shared appointment
Now the parents want to test out the new shared calendar to make sure it works properly before they add the kids. Sticking with dad for the time being, he starts adding appointments in the usual way – almost.

Here’s how it works. Scrolling to the time slot for a new appointment, an office party, for instance, Harold clicks in the empty slot, types in a name for the appointment and then instead of clicking Create Event, opens the dropdown menu next to the Calendar option and chooses Metaxa Family Calendar from the list, rather than his own, default calendar.

By choosing the shared family calendar, Harold ensures that anyone who’s currently sharing it (i.e. his partner Maude) will also see the appointment in their copy of the calendar.

Having chosen the correct calendar, clicking Create Event adds the appointment and it’s then easy to adjust its length by hovering the mouse pointer over the coloured block in the calendar and then dragging up or down to alter the start and end times. Because the appointment has been created in the correct calendar, it is shared automatically.

Note that when someone has more than one calendar, Google assigns different colours to each one so it’s easier to tell them apart. Don’t like the colour? Click the arrow to the right of the calendar name in the list on the left and choose a different one from the pop-up palette.

Adding the kids to the calendar
Since Benjamin is 16 and Leoni only 13, we’re going to set different permissions for each but first we have to share the calendar with them. Neither currently has a Google account, so the process will take a bit longer.

To invite Benjamin, mum clicks on the arrow to the right of the family calendar in the list on the left and chooses Share this Calendar.

When the page opens she types in Benjamin’s email address, then opens the dropdown menu under Permission Settings and selects Make changes to events. Clicking Add Person and then Save, completes the invitation process.

Back at the calendar, Google displays a message saying that the person she wants to add to the shared calendar doesn’t have a Google account and offers to send an invitation to their email address when mum clicks the Invite button.

When Benjamin next checks his email inbox there will be a message inviting him to join the shared calendar and register for a Google account. Clicking the link opens the Google Calendar page and then by clicking the Create an account button, Benjamin can get started.

He then signs up for an account using his current email address, creating a password, adding first and second names, confirming his location, time zone, adding his birthday, then finishing off the form by typing in the Captcha word at the bottom and accepting the terms of service by clicking the ‘Create my account’ button.

Next, click the ‘Verify by signing in at hotmail.com’ button (anyone using a different email service will see its name here instead), type in the password normally used for this account and click Sign in.

At the next dialogue box, click Yes to allow Google to access the email address. After a moment, the new calendar appears in the web browser together with a message asking if Benjamin wants to add this calendar (the name of the calendar – in this example, Metaxa Family Calendar – is clearly displayed in the dialogue box): clicking the ‘Yes, add this calendar’ button will display the shared calendar that has been created by his mum and dad.

Benjamin will be able to see events and add his own appointments but can’t add anyone else to the calendar or change anyone’s sharing settings.

Mum or dad can add 13-year-old daughter Leoni in exactly the same way with one exception – when it comes to setting permissions, they could choose ‘see all event details’ which will allow her to see what’s going on in the family calendar but not add appointments or change anyone else’s.

Remember that mum and dad (who have the highest level permission) can change what the kids are allowed to do at any time.

Setting up alarms
Each person in the family who has permission to create events (i.e. mum, dad and Benjamin) is responsible for setting up their own alarms and notifications.

There are several options on offer. With the calendar open, click the arrow to the right of the family calendar as it appears in the left-hand panel and choose Notifications.

When the settings screen appears, click the Add a reminder link and then use the controls there to define whether to get a reminder by email or pop-up message and then set the amount of time the alarm should appear before each event.

Underneath that is a section designed to allow people who use the calendar to invite others to events and meetings but this is more of a business tool so we’re not going to bother with it here.

However, underneath is a link that allows Google Calendar to send event reminders to mobile phones, which is a useful feature for a family calendar.

Click the link to get started, make sure Google’s picked the correct country and then type in the full mobile phone number into the space provided and then click the Send Verification Code button.

Google sends an SMS text message to the mobile phone that includes a number – type this into the empty box next to Verification code. Click Finish Setup and after a second the mobile phone will receive another text message to confirm that it has been verified.

Now, return to the Event reminders section on the same page and click the Add reminder link. Open the dropdown menu and SMS has now appeared as an option alongside Email and Pop-up. Choose SMS, set the time delay and then click the Save button.

From now on, when an appointment is created, Google Calendar will send out an alert by email, pop-up message or text message, depending on which option has been selected. Remember that although the calendar is shared, each person will have to set up their own notifications individually.

More on calendar sharing
Sometimes an event will come up that shouldn’t be shared with the whole family. For example, it’s fine that everyone knows about Benjamin’s upcoming birthday, but not the surprise party mum and dad are planning for him.

Sharing via Google Calendar is a bit of a blunt instrument and having set up permissions there’s no way to change them for a particular one-off event such as this.

It’s not a problem though, because mum or dad can create a new calendar (as we did at the beginning of this article) and then share it between themselves, daughter Leoni and, assuming they have their email addresses to invite them, all of Benjamin’s friends.

In this way it’s possible to plan an entire celebration on a ‘secret calendar’ – assuming nobody blabs about it. Once the event has finished, it’s possible to ‘park’ the calendar until it’s next needed by clicking on the cog icon at the top right and choosing Calendar settings, then clicking the Calendars link at the top, then finding the calendar and removing the tick in box under the Show in List column.

Alternatively, remove it completely by clicking the Delete link that’s associated with the relevant calendar on the same page.

A final note on sharing. From the Calendar settings screen, it’s possible to make a calendar public so that anyone can see it, either in Google’s search results (after a time) or by using the URL that’s created when a calendar is made public. Google has lots of information about public versus private shared calendars.

Stay organised
Google Calendar is not perfect by any means but it’s free, easy to use and does a great job of allowing a busy family to share what’s going on in their lives across a wide range of devices including computers, smartphones and tablets.

However, as with all technologies like this, all Google can do is deliver the means – it’s up to us to take advantage of it.