Over our past few newsletters, we've discussed some extra, bonus, "pro" tips for LACRM's most important features (if you missed those newsletters, here are our tips for filtering, and using our pipelines)
So it's about time to talk about probably our most-used feature: LACRM's calendar. Here are some 🎩 lesser-known top tips.
#1: Customize your default event duration
Did you know that when you create an event in LACRM, it doesn't have to be an hour-long event by default?
Yup, if your typical call or meeting is 30 minutes or even 15 minutes, you can set that as your default event length for your calendar under your Calendar Settings!
💡 This setting is great at saving you time (heh) -- no more having to keep tweaking the end time of your events whenever you create one!
#2: Choose the best "view" of your calendar depending on what you need for the day
Our calendar by default will show you a week's worth of events and tasks, but we also offer 3 other types of calendar views: day, month, and agenda. Here's the difference between each view, and the pros and cons of them:
- Day view: The day view calendar shows you just a single day (by default, the current day) and is best if you want to tightly focus your tasks and events for the day. Because it's only showing a single day, event and task names are larger and easier to read -- great for smaller screens!
- Week view: The week view calendar shows you 7 days of events and tasks, and lets you plan for the upcoming week. If you have a calendar packed full of tasks and events, this view can seem pretty cluttered, and distracting, but will definitely help ensure nothing catches you by surprise!
- Month view: Perfect for planners, the month view calendar shows the full schedule for the current month. This is great for scheduling events (or vacations!) but because there's less real estate per day on the screen, if you have lots of events/tasks, some of that may end up hidden. Best for getting a bird's eye view, and may not be the best for staying focused on today's work.
- Agenda view: For the minimalist, the agenda view gives you a list of the events and tasks for the week, and nothing more. Best for extra small screens, and for those on-the-go!
💡 Switch the view you're looking at based on the device you're using! Some views (day view and agenda view) are especially great for mobile screens, and month view is best for bigger desktop screens.
#3: Mark your contacts as "attending" or "not attending" after an event to help you keep track of invitees vs. attendees.
LACRM's "RSVP" tool works on both users and contacts added to an event. Though we don't currently send out event invites to contacts on your behalf (it's coming!), it's still a good way to help you more clearly see who has attended an event -- just make sure to mark attendees as having attended the event, and instead of removing non-attendees, mark them as "not attending"!
💡 By marking your contacts as "attending" or "not attending" after your event, you can more easily see who was invited to your event.
This way, an event will still show up on John Smith's History even though he didn't attend the event and this lets me know he was invited to the event nonetheless!
#4: Set multiple default event reminders on multiple devices
It's easy to get caught up in emails and forget about an upcoming call. But it becomes much harder to forget when you receive emails and texts before the call starts!
One handy trick is to create both email and SMS reminders for your events -- perhaps an email 30 minutes before and an SMS 5 minutes before -- to make sure that you're getting all the heads up you need before important events.
💡 You can set multiple email reminders, or multiple SMS reminders, but I personally like to set one of each just in case I'm away from my computer, or away from my phone!
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