Our Roundup of Cloud Services Focuses on Saving Time with Effective Scheduling

It’s that time of year when we like to think about cloud services. (I suppose it’s also that time of year when we think about exercising a little bit more, but that’s a separate issue.) We try to take stock once a year of the fantastic cloud service providers that are out there and let our clients and readers know about them.

If you just want our list of must-have cloud services go ahead and skip to the end of this article. But if you would like to learn how some of these services helped us and may help you in the coming year, read on!

I used to hate the process of scheduling meetings. I don’t anymore. I now use a service called Calendly, available at calendly.com. I use the free version of Calendly which is still pretty darn robust. I use it primarily to schedule half hour conversations with clients and prospective clients. My Calendly account is linked to my primary Google Calendar. Because of the linking, Calendly knows when I am available for a conversation and when I am not. I have set short buffers around existing obligations so that it is not possible to schedule a meeting with me that ends just as another begins, or starts just as another ends. Some people may like to schedule meetings like that but I prefer to have a little breathing room in between.

Through Calendly, I have created a personalized link that I can email to a contact. When the contact clicks on the link, they are taken directly to my Calendly page (linked to my Google Calendar) where they can see all the available times I can meet for up to a half hour. The contact chooses a meeting time that is convenient for them and Calendly automatically sends me an email notification and places the item on my calendar. I absolutely love that part of the service. It eliminates the back and forth emails where the contact and I try to confirm times we might be available to meet. I don’t know how much time that saves me, but it seems like a lot!

What I tend to do then is modify the event in my calendar so as to invite the contact to the event and include information about how to join in on the meeting. Then my calendar dispatches an email notification to the contact. (And being an item in my Google Calendar, it’s immediately available everywhere I look at my calendar including phones and tablets.) I do this because I typically use another cloud service provider, Zoom (available at zoom.us), to engage in video conferences and conference calls.

By using a combination of these three cloud services, Calendly, Google Calendar, and Zoom,  I have made scheduling and carrying out meetings a simple and time effective process so I can devote more time to the substance of my work. Last I heard nobody was creating any more time for us to use.

I feel compelled to mention that the only way I would have a stake in your using any of these services would be if you signed up for either G Suite (for the Google Calendar) or Zoom from the GoatCloud third-party referral page, available here: https://goatcloud.com/affiliate-marketing-referrals/. As always, with any cloud service, you need to do your own due diligence and figure out if it is the right solution for you.

Now I’m off to see if there’s room in my schedule for a meeting with the treadmill!

And here’s that list of must have cloud services for 2019!

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