6 Google Calendar features that LEVEL UP your meetings! Find out what they are...

"I love meetings!"

- No one has ever said that sentence.

Running and attending meetings is part of working in the corporate world. The perception that meetings eat up too much time is widely shared, and I believe that's your reality too. This article from Você SA magazine points out that 31% of meetings are useless and digs deeper into the consequences of that figure.

Even though this is a global problem involving a broad discussion about culture, values and behaviors, there are features that can help ease the situation in your day-to-day work.

The good news? You don't have to be a hostage to this sad reality.

In this article I show you, in practice, 6 Google Calendar features that definitely elevate your meetings. These tips are genuinely useful when you take on the responsibility of being the ORGANIZER of the calendar event. Check it out!

Google Calendar features to use in your meetings

1. Create meeting notes 📄

One of the biggest problems with meetings is that they happen and nobody takes notes on the decisions, agreements and next steps. As a result, important information that was discussed and decided gets lost. To solve this, you can use the Create meeting notes feature.

This option sits inside the calendar event, under "Event details." When you create the notes, a Google Docs document is generated and automatically saved to your Google Drive.

This document is shared with the invited people and is created with a structure for attendees, notes and next steps.

By the end of the meeting you'll have a formatted document, already shared with the attendees and ready to be sent to the other stakeholders.

💡 Tip: to use this efficiently, you can ask a participant to help take notes while you run the meeting, that way you split the work and focus on facilitating. If the meeting is recurring, you can also agree that a different person is responsible for notes each time, which engages and involves people. You can also agree that the event's co-host handles this task.

2. Add a description 📝

How many times have you found yourself in a meeting with no idea why you were even there or what it was for?

Using the "Add description" field helps communicate relevant information ahead of time. The field sits inside the calendar event, in the Event details tab.

You'll use this field to describe the objective, the agenda, and attach reference files that participants can check before (preparation), during (facilitation) and after the meeting.

Getting an invite with a description considerably elevates the level of your calendar.

💡 Tip: start with a description of the objective, list the agenda items that lead to that objective, add the participants needed to contribute to each agenda item, and attach the documents that provide the data needed to run the meeting.

3. Attendance tracking 🙋🏻‍♀️🙋🏿‍♂️

Know who's usually the first to complain about not being involved or not being up to speed on decisions? The people who didn't attend the meeting, or who were there in body but not in mind. Having attendance tracking is essential for maintaining compliance and understanding the reasons behind misalignment of information.

The attendance tracking feature emails participation reports to the organizer.

How to enable the tracking feature:

1. Video call options (gear icon).
2. Host controls
3. Enable Attendance tracking.

You can send the attendance report along with the meeting notes and elevate the professionalism of your meeting even further. Imagine the value of confirming attendees at events like training sessions, webinars or board meetings.

4. Take notes with Gemini ✨

Taking meeting notes (the first step in this article) takes a lot of effort, time and understanding, and something always slips through. If your Google Workspace plan has Gemini available, you can use the Take notes with Gemini feature.

How to enable the notes feature:

1. Video call options (gear icon).
2. Meeting recordings
3. Check the Take notes with Gemini option.

At the end, you'll get a summary of the meeting in a document shared with all the invitees. The notes also include the transcript (if enabled) and a definition of next steps as a task list. Now, just send it by email and elevate your calendar's level even more.

5. Record the meeting 📹

Know when someone misses a meeting and you have to repeat the same content to someone else? It's not always possible to have every invitee present at the meeting, so the need to repeat it becomes real. If your Google Workspace plan has Recording available, you can use the Record meetings feature.

How to enable the Recording feature:

1. Video call options (gear icon).
2. Meeting recordings
3. Check the Record the meeting option.

After the meeting, a video is generated inside your Google Drive. It's shared inside the calendar event and the link is also sent to the invitees.

You can share it with other people involved in that topic. For training sessions, this feature is very interesting, you can even record the event and later make relevant clips to share just that portion.

6. Co-host Attendees 👥

Running a calendar event alone is a lot of work, and organizers often get lost between running the agenda and managing the meeting. To get help and give autonomy to the person who'll help you, you can use the Co-hosts feature.

By adding them, they can mute participants (which is wonderful for muting those participants whose mics pick up background noise and interfere with the audio), present their own screen, record the call, accept visitors and add other co-hosts.

How to enable the Co-hosts feature:

1. Video call options (gear icon).
2. Guests tab
3. Add co-host

💡 Tip: let the person know they have the co-host role and feature. They'll contribute positively and have all the tools they need to help you run the meeting.

Practical demonstration of how to use the features shown 👨🏻‍🏫

In this video I demonstrate the use of the 6 features and the tangible results of using them. Check it out!

The goal now is for you to put these features into practice in your meetings. The initial challenge is remembering to set things up, but once you've started, it'll quickly become a good habit and your meetings will be perceived as having a much higher level of organization.

If you found this content useful, you might also like this article, where I teach a simple technique that puts you back in control of your actions. Check it out!

Share it with your coworkers and get the most out of Google Workspace in your day-to-day work.

Take care!