Keeping yourself organized at work is imperative to become an industry leader. It helps you strike a balance between work and life, meet your deadlines effectively, and get your creative juices flowing. In the old days, successful people always had a planner or to-do list—in this modern era, though, people often choose a digital option, and the best way to sort out your business and personal agenda is to use an online calendar.
So, why should you use an online calendar over a planner? Nothing answers this better than the comfort and features that online calendars provide to their customers. From instantly modifying your plans to notifying your attendees regarding those changes, online calendars allow you to communicate without wasting a minute. Just scroll through your mailbox, make a rough plan in your head, arrange meetings with your colleagues, and add the details to your calendar.
Let's take some time to explore the features that make online calendars the best choice for your workplace planning and productivity.
Set up team meetings and events instantaneously
Most teams have scrum meetings at the start of each day, or at the beginning of every week, to discuss the status of their work in progress. As meetings are a crucial component of work culture, an online calendar will ensure you have an efficient way of planning and organizing them. Just add an event on the calendar and select your guest list. The invites for the meeting will be sent to everyone on the list and their RSVP status will be automatically updated on your calendar—at which point you can choose to proceed with the meeting or reschedule it to a better time.
Online calendars also provide you with the option to look up the availability status of your guests before adding an event and sending invites. This way, you can figure out the best time for a meeting without having to call your guests individually or host another meeting to discuss their availability. You can also make changes to the event any time you want and notify your guests about the updates. If you have recurring events, you can create it once and set it to repeat for a specific period, and the event will be automatically created from then on.
Right from your mailbox to your calendar
If you use a mailbox that comes integrated with a calendar in the suite, you're in for a real treat. Online calendars usually provide you with the option to add events straight from your inbox to the calendar. This saves you the time spent on creating events manually and also helps ensure you don't forget any upcoming important meetings.
Configure reminders and never miss out
When you add an event to your calendar, you can configure reminders for that particular event. Depending on the conditions you've set for your reminders, you'll be sent notifications about upcoming events on your agenda. You don't have to worry about forgetting important meetings or deadlines—the notifications will show up just when you need them.
Fix appointments in the blink of an eye
If your work schedule involves meeting and interacting with lots of people, online calendars can be used to embed appointment request forms on your website. Using this feature, a visitor can fill out a form to request an appointment, and once you choose to approve or decline, a notification will be sent to the visitor. No need for a personal assistant to set up appointments for you—do it yourself, automatically!
Run through your schedule, anytime
One of the best parts of an online calendar is the ability to quickly peruse past and future events. You don't have to rummage through your planner to find out what happened a month ago, or wrack your brain to remember when you scheduled that important meeting for.
Since schedule changes are common, online calendars let you adjust your agenda and make alternative plans quickly. Instead of wasting time, just jump to the appropriate view to look up your schedule and make changes.
Access your calendar from anywhere
Whether you're at home, shopping, traveling, or at work, online calendars can be accessed from anywhere. All you have to do is download the calendar's app on your mobile device. Now you can check your calendar whenever or wherever you want.
Apart from using app-based online calendars, certain service providers give you the option to sync your online calendars with your local device using CalDAV sync or Exchange ActiveSync. After synchronizing your online calendar with the native calendar on your device, you can view and make changes as if you were sitting at your computer.
Multiple calendars for multiple objectives
If you're someone who carries multiple planners for multiple reasons, you need to get rid of them right now. Why would you go through the hassle of carrying different notebooks with you, when you can fit all your planners into one device, in one application, right in your pocket? Online calendars should be the obvious choice when it comes to planning multiple events, as they provide you with an option to create as many calendars as you need. You can maintain calendars for work, personal events, and special occasions separately and host events on each calendar, separately. You can also view all the events for each calendar in one unified view, to make sure that nothing's clashing.
There are ample options for online calendar services on the web. Zoho Calendar is one such service that provides you with the elements to make your scheduling as simple as ABC. Start using it now and take more control over your day-to-day planning.
Get the complete Zoho advantage: you can now use Zoho Calendar along with the broad suite of products that Zoho offers by signing up for Zoho Workplace or Zoho One.
How can I create an appointment request form? Any step by step guidances? Regards, Charly
Hi Charly, You can take a look at our User Guide for Appointment Scheduling to create an appointment request form. Hope this helps.
ok
My CRM Calendar and Mail Calendars do not sync. It odd that an application is not fully integrated across all offerings, which makes it difficult to use all the offerings. Please make the effort to ensure that all the applications work together instead of adding things and not fixing others.
I completely agree with Paul on this. I have a ZohoONE subscription and getting a unified calendar across apps would definitely make it "stickier" for customers.
Hi Paul, Sorry for the bad experience on the Zoho Calendar-CRM sync. We are currently working on it and trying to make this sync handy. You can see it get better in the updates to come.
Exact same issues here - a unified calendar solution across Zoho is the only way to go. Would also make Zoho Calendar a easy sell.
Hello, I am glad to see in the comments that you are working on updates. For us personally, the Zoho calendars are inefficient because they are not well integrated. Feedback: 1. Zoho CRM is the core of Zoho yet can't integrate other calendars into it. You can only integrate other calendars into Zoho calendar. As your premier product we would like to see Zoho CRM integrate with other calendars, especially from your own products. OR allow Zoho calendar to display in Zoho CRM or something that allows an integrated calendar in Zoho CRM. 2. Re: above Zoho CRM calendar and Zoho Projects have no integration. I've seen many complaints on the forum from angry users who don't want to have to check two calendars. 3. The Zoho Projects to Zoho calendar (or to Google calendar, same difference) is worthless. Events show up once a day or something like that. Anything other than real time integration is worthless. Thank you for listening.
Hi Zohound, We thoroughly understand your concern. We will definitely take note of your requirements and see what we can do to make Zoho Calendar handy :)
Hi, we're looking for a simple to use Calendar where we (my partner and I) can add reminders on dates where we have to create Social Media Content for our clients. Ideally, we'd like to include the pieces of content (the images and texts) so we just need to grab that and add them to our Social Media Content Planner App. Of course, we should be able to share this calendar to one another so we can collaborate. Can we do this with Zoho Calendar? Do you have a tutorial doc or post where we can learn how to start? TIA!
Hi Jose, Thanks for showing interest in Zoho Calendar :) You can explore in depth about the features we provide by going through our User guide. For further assistance and queries, please do drop us a mail at support(at)zohocalendar(dot)com.
the images/infographics you display for how it works are not consistent with this version of the calendar. You set yourself up for a barrage of negative comments when you simply put out a summary of your current features and didn't release any updates or improvements to your system. zoho calendar is nice and above average for sure, yet it feels like it is a dated product that screams for an update. It works for our company and any improvements would simply be above and beyond what we truly need. With technology, you can never stop improving so don't go stale and think you have it whipped.
Hi Mike, Sincere apologies from our side for not living up to the expectations. But we have a few updates lined up from our end and you can be assured that we will make the user experience better in the future.
Hi when this new features will be available?
Hi Leonardo, We are trying our best to roll out updates as early as possible. Hopefully, the beta version will be available to the users by the end of this year.
will be interested
Hi Balamurugan, Write to us at support(at)zohocalendar(dot)com for further assistance.
@Bram Anderson: Same here!
We regret for the inconvenience, Doron.
I agree with half of these comments in regards to the Zoho Calendar, but while Zoho is a good CRM it doesn't match the level yet of Google Calendar as far as ease-of-use - the user interface is not as intuitive as competing calendars, appearance, overall not quite there. I only just recently began using Google Calendar a few months ago when I became fed up with trying to subscribe to something with Zoho. It was so difficult that I opened up my Google Calendar for the first time and immediately fell in love with how easy it was. Now I use Google Calendar religiously, but I did first try to use, and even sent several support inquiries, with Zoho first.
Apologies for the glitches you faced while using Zoho Calendar, Chelsea. We are working on making the UI more intuitive and user-friendly in the updates to come. Meanwhile, if you need any assistance regarding the issues in Zoho Calendar, write to us at support(at)zohocalendar(dot)com and we will get back to you at the earliest.
Mail not received
Hi Marimuthu, Please reach out to us at support(at)zohocalendar(dot)com :)
ok
Thanks.
excellent calander
Hi Sher Khan, We are glad that you love Zoho Calendar! :)
Welcome for any time.
So CRM calendar is really weird in Zoho Calendar, not really a unified solution but rather a inconsistent mess across app and web. CALdav is unstable, Goggle, Apple and Outlook invitations does not work, the calendars of CRM colleagues are just thrown into one big bundle called "others" with no way to discern what is what. And what about the disconnect when looking onto CRM app and Calendar app? What is the master calendar supposed to be? Not a happy camper!
Hi Bram, Sorry to hear that you faced hassles while using our service. If you are torn between the CRM calendar and Zoho Calendar, you can manage your CRM calendar on Zoho Calendar itself by using the CRM sync option on Zoho Calendar. In case you face any issues regarding the same, do write to us at support(at)zohocalendar(dot)com.
Seriously? This “sync” is what I was describing in the above post: - The “synced” calendar does not show in the mail/cal app - Does not show CRM cal through caldav sync to desktop cal - Co workers calendars are just thrown into one calendar called “others” (why on earth not just like any other sane calendar system with delegation) - invites sent to other calendar systems are not handled properly when the invitee uses the built in reply options in Outlook, Google cal or Apple cal. Probably because the ics files Zoho cal sends have a bug. So combined these shortcomings makes Zoho Calendars sync a no go. Why not do as Zoho Analytics and build a true master calendar for all Zoho apps. Enabling it would replace or completely merge the app calendars and delegation, working invites and complete support of all caldav functions is a given.
We would like to get more details to see how we can address this issue, Bram :) Our support team will get in touch with you regarding this.
Sheryl, Hi, this is great add to Zoho, Im already working with zoho one, this is included as app and ready to work with?
Hi Arturo, Zoho Calendar comes bundled with the Zoho Mail suite of apps and Zoho One. You can enjoy the free services of calendar by visiting calendar.zoho.com or you can login to your Mail account and check out the Calendar. If you want to access Zoho Calendar on your phone, you can download and use it from the Zoho Mail app. Hope this helps :)
great
Thank you, Dirk Sass! :)
This article is not fair. Zoho calendar UI is at least a decade old and even in term of functionality it stand no where to other two big competitors. Same is the case with Task module( Taskz) of Zoho. Without updating these two Zoho suite will remain incomplete.
Hi Shivam, We absolutely understand your concern. We are working on our product and will be coming up with updates down the line to make your user experience better :)
Totally agree, especially if you try and use it with CRM
Awesome!
Thank you, David! :)