Some Tasks You Can’t Perform from the Phone

If you’ve used a calendar at work,you’re probably wondering how you can use your phone to invite people to a meeting,create a new calendar,share a calendar,or access a public calendar.Unfortunately,you can’t do any of these tasks directly from your phone,but you can do them from your computer and access some of the functionality from your phone.

Creating a Second Calendar

Let’s start with creating a second calendar,which is a pretty common thing to want to do. Here are the steps:

1. On your computer,open a Web browser and go to http://calendar.google.com.Make sure you’re signed in with the same account that your phone is configured to use.

2. On the left side of the screen,in the My calendars section,click Create to open the Create New Calendar form.

3. Enter the appropriate information in the Calendar Name,Description,Location,and Calendar Time Zone fields.

4. Leave Make this calendar public unchecked.

5. If you want to share this calendar with others,enter their email addresses in the Share with specific people field.

6. Click Create Calendar.

Note: Making your calendar public allows anyone to see it.This might be great,for example,if you’re in a garage band and you want people to be able to find your gigs.It’s probably not such a good idea if you’re creating a business calendar.

After you’ve created a calendar on your computer,you can access it on your phone. 

Sharing an Existing Calendar

Another task you can accomplish on your computer is sharing your calendar with other people.We talked about that briefly when we created a new calendar,but you also can open an existing calendar and share that with others.Click Settings in the My calendars section of your Google Calendar to display the view.

To share your calendar,click the Share this calendar link next to whichever of your calendars you want to share.Enter the email addresses of anyone you want to share with,and then click Save.

Adding a Public Calendar

From the main Google Calendar page on your computer,there’s a section for Other calendars. Click Add,and then choose Add a public calendar,you can choose from a variety of popular calendars,click a category of calendars,or search for a public calendar,such as that of your favorite sports team.

As soon as you’ve found the calendar you want,click the Add to Calendar button.All the events on that calendar are added to your calendar.

Inviting People to a Meeting

One last thing that we’d like to talk about that can be done only through the Web interface is inviting guests to events.If you want to invite a guest to an appointment or event,follow these steps:

1. Open the event on your computer by clicking it and selecting Edit Event Details

2. Click Add guests.

3. Enter the email addresses of your guests,separated by commas.

4. Click Save to send the invitations to your guests.

Unfortunately,currently there’s no way to do any of this from your phone,but these features might be added over time.