It’s actually not too difficult of a workaround to get multiple Gmail calendars on a Windows Phone device, and the solution is nearly identical to the one I found when the first Apple iPad was launched. Back then, I had to do a similar little trick. Normally, you can configure Google Sync, a service that sends mail, calendar and contact information to non-Google devices, right on your handset. In the case of a Microsoft Windows Phone device, that standard method doesn’t work. Here’s the step-by-step process to get multiple Gmail calendars on a Windows Phone by using Safari on the desktop.

1. Open Safari, then view its Preferences pane. In Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and check “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” If you already have this checked, you can skip this step. Close the Preferences.

2. In the Safari menu bar, you should now see a Develop menu option. Select it, choose the User Agent option and pick “Mobile Safari 4.3.3 — iPhone”. This tells web sites that you’re using the iPhone’s browser. You need to do this to open up the mobile site for the Google Sync service.

In Safari, browse to
http://m.google.com/sync
, and sign in if needed.

3. Now go to the Develop menu in Safari and choose to Disable JavaScript as shown by the check mark below.

4. Still in Safari, choose to manage your Windows Phone.

5. In the next window, you’ll see that Google says you can sync up to one calendar to your device. Ignore that message because the workaround allows multiple calendar selections. For instance, I chose the calendars for my wife and children.

6. Once you’ve made your selections, click the Save button. That should do it, so don’t forget to undo the User Agent change and re-enable JavaScript in Safari. On the Windows Phone handse,t you may not see results immediately. To speed up the process and see the new calendars, just go into Settings, Email + Accounts, and tap/hold on your GMail account. Choose the Sync option.

Here’s a before and after look on my own phone: All the shared Gmail calendars I need are on my Windows Phone.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

Email and calendars. Email is, unsurprisingly,  still the most important mobile app. According to Forrester, 87 percent of smartphone workers use email on their devices (which leaves me wondering what other 13 percent use their smartphones for), and collectively, they do 32 percent of their email on a smartphone. While most smartphones come with their own email and calendaring tools most users will use, there are some third-party options worth considering:

• Gmail and Google Calendar. If you use Gmail, it’s worth noting that the mobile-optimized versions of the Gmail and Google Calendar sites are pretty good. They are fast and have a great UI, and one of the advantages of using them is that you can seamlessly switch from device to device without having to set up IMAP details in your various devices’ email clients.
• Touchdown. Brings superb Microsoft Exchange support to Android devices.

Document-based collaboration. Mobile workers need to be able to access their documents while out of the office on any of their devices. Cloud-based document collaboration tools need to include mobile access to be truly effective.

• Documents to Go. Dataviz’s Documents to Go is a popular mobile document editing app. It’s available for a variety of platforms, including iOS, BlackBerry, Android and Palm. When combined with a cloud file sync service like Dropbox or box.net, it enables users to access and edit their documents no matter where they are.
• Soonr. Soonr is a cloud-based document sync service. However, it also offers integrated MS Office document editing capabilities , which means users don’t need to use a separate app like Documents to Go.

Web conferencing. According to Forrester, 18 percent of information workers and 34 percent of senior staff use web conferencing at least weekly. Mobile access means being able to attend meetings even while away from the laptop.

• Fuze Meeting. Fuze Meeting’s impressive service is accessible with mobile devices. Its new Telepresence Connect service can extend traditional room-based telepresence to iPads and Android tablets.
• Join.me. LogMeIn’s simple and easy-to-use web conferencing app is accessible through iOS and Android apps.

Activity streams. Forrester thinks activity streams are becoming a critical resource for organizations that work collectively: sales teams, project teams, and executive staff, for example. Mobile support is crucial as it enables workers to stay updated no matter where they are.

• Yammer. Yammer is a popular enterprise social networking tool very much like a private Facebook for the enterprise. It offers mobile support though mobile apps available for a variety of platforms.
• Socialtext. Socialtext is another enterprise social networking and collaboration app that offers activity streams. It offers mobile support via an optimized version of the website.

Presence and chat. Knowing whether a colleague is available or not is a killer feature when out of the office. While this category of app lags today, Forrester expects adoption to accelerate. These types of features are often also often included in other mobile collaboration tools.

• eBuddy. A multi-protocol mobile chat app that supports AIM , ICQ, Google Talk, Yahoo! and MSN Windows Live Messenger within a single interface. It’s available via a native client for Android and iPhone and there’s also a mobile-optimized website.
• IM+. Another popular “all-on one” IM app that supports a variety of protocols, including AIM, iChat, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and Skype Chat, and works on a number of different mobile platforms.

Social collaboration. In this category, Forrester includes access to internal blogs, wikis, community sites, and social networks from a tablet or smartphone. Mobile access allows every professional will remain connected and part of the collaborative process.

• IBM Lotus Connections. IBM’s social suite is supported on a range of mobile platforms, including Android, iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Nokia.
• Jive Software. Jive Software’s enterprise social suite provides mobile  access though apps for iPhone and BlackBerry.

Expertise location. Forrester says this type of application is on the rise as firms look for ways to make mobile employees productive by helping them identify experts from anywhere. This type of app brings together presence, notifications, social profiles and data from HR. Many social business tools provide this kind of functionality, including:

• IBM Lotus Connections
• Jive Software
• Yammer
• Socialtext

Video conferencing. Skype has some 170 million active monthly users, and 39 percent of those people use Skype for work. Web conferencing vendors are also adding video to their products. Due to heavy resource requirements, there are few multi-party mobile video conferencing apps, though.

• Skype. Skype provides video calling for mobile platforms including iPhone and Android.
• Fring. One of the first apps to bring four-way video calls to the iPad, Fring provides native mobile apps for a variety of platforms, and also has mobile browser access.

Personally, I’m not convinced expertise location is really a “must-have” category of mobile collaboration app just yet. Do you agree with Forrester’s categories of “must-have” apps, and which apps do you recommend for each category?

Photo courtesy Flickr user Yagan Kiely

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Forecast: the converged mobile messaging market
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Appointment slots are shown on a booking page, which you can embed on a website or share with colleagues or clients. People visiting that page will then have their own personal calendar overlaid over the available appointment slots and can click to book a time; a shared calendar event is then created for both users.

Here’s a short screencast showing how to set up appointment slots and how the booking process works:

Google Calendar’s appointment slots are easy to use and should greatly streamline the process of booking appointments, eliminating email back-and-forth. However, unlike dedicated meeting scheduling tools like TimeTrade, Tungle and Setster, which also offer this kind of appointment-booking functionality but only require the person advertising their availability to sign up for the app, Google’s feature requires both the person broadcasting their availability and the person booking the appointment to use Google Calendar. So while appointment slots will probably be very useful within companies where everyone is using Google Apps, it’s not going to be suitable for, say, a personal trainer offering appointment bookings on a publicly accessible website.

Note: While I have access to the appointment slots feature on my Google Apps account, I don’t yet see it on my personal Google Calendar, so it may be that it hasn’t been rolled out to all users yet.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How emerging technologies will influence collaboration
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

Business Calendar is about as full-featured as you can get for a calendar app. It supports any number of Google calendars. I have at least seven going at one time because each member of my family uses a shared calendar, plus I have a few for work purposes. The software offers multiple views as well: agenda, day, week and month. That sounds like standard fare for any calendar app, but Business Calendar takes things a useful step further with on-the-fly visual adjustments.

In month view, for example, tapping one icon either adds or removes text from calendar events. Tapping on a specific date in month view brings a pop-up message with the scheduled events for that day, each of which can be tapped for details. The weekly view is highly customizable as well. A scroll bar at the bottom lets you change the date range from between a single day to 14 days. If you have a packed week with a ton of appointments, you can use a pinch-and-zoom gesture to hone in on additional event details, which is super for smaller-screened devices. Searching for events is supported too.

At any point when looking at the month view, you can focus on the calendars of your choice. Each calendar appears as a small tab on the bottom of the app; simply tap one to hide it or add it to the view. Another extremely handy feature on the monthly calendar is swiping your finger over a few days or a week to quickly switch to the week view. And although the top bar in any view normally displays the time period shown, you can tap it for contextual help.

Of course, Android is known for its widgets, and Business Calendar adds a dozen to use. Essentially, they’re all the same widget, but vary in terms of size, ranging from a 2 x 1 widget all the way up to a large 4 x 4 size. The widgets are fairly full-featured and completely customizable to show different details across various date ranges. Tapping the widget opens the Business Calendar app ,although that’s not always necessary since you can add events or change views directly in the widget.

With so many features and smart user interface cues, the app is well worth a $4.99 purchase. At free? It’s a no-brainer, since you can always uninstall it. But I suspect most who try Business Calendar will keep it. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing Google buy the software outright and integrate it with Android as the native Calendar application. For folks who can’t get the free version from Amazon, there is a no-cost, ad-supported version in the Android Market to try. I highly recommend it.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

That’s the idea behind Noteleaf. The service has just been in operation for a couple of months, having received funding from Y Combinator, but Noteleaf is already adding features. As of today, its SMS notifications will include some new data:

• Participants’ last three tweets, plus links to their Twitter feeds. Twitter handles are retrieved from LinkedIn profiles, but the actual tweets are pulled directly from Twitter.
• A list of connections you share with each participant.

Some of Noteleaf’s features will sound familiar to Gist users, which we’ve written about several times. But Noteleaf’s co-founder Jake Klamka assures me that the company isn’t interested in competing with Gist or Plaxo; rather, he and his colleagues want to maintain a service that’s extremely simple to use, and requires no special apps or changes of behavior. Indeed, it’s likely that once users sign up for the service, they’ll hardly ever need to visit Noteleaf’s website again.

The signup process is very simple indeed. Authenticate your Gmail or Google Apps account through OAuth, do the same with your LinkedIn account, and (optionally) provide your cellphone number for delivery of text messages, and that’s it. If you don’t have a U.S. or Canadian cellphone, Noteleaf will insert the information about meeting participants into your calendar’s notes.

At the moment, Noteleaf’s notifications only work for meetings scheduled through the web interface of Google Calendar or Google Apps Calendar (only the primary calendars are recognized). And it helps if you’ve had Gmail or Google Apps email exchanges with the participants before the meeting. But Noteleaf plans to expand the services with which it’s compatible.

Meanwhile, though, Noteleaf’s extreme simplicity should appeal to teams that coordinate meetings using Google Calendar. The service is currently free while it’s in beta; the developers are considering a freemium model in the future.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Web startups: How to guard against security breaches
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout

The problem is — using a Microsoft Exchange setup for Google accounts currently works for one single calendar on the iPad. I can’t have that, so I scoured the web for a workaround, found one in a MacRumors forum, and used it successfully. Here’s the method to use until Google addresses the issue for Apple’s iPad — you’ll need to use the Safari browser, although this might work with user agent string spoofing on other browsers too:

• Open Safari and then view its Preferences pane.
• In Preferences, go to the Advanced tab and check “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” If you already have this checked, you can skip this step. Close the Preferences.
  
• In the Safari menu bar, you should now see a Develop menu option. Select it, choose the User Agent option and pick “Mobile Safari 3.1.3 — iPhone” This tells web sites that you’re using the iPhone’s browser. You need to do this to open up the mobile site for the Google Sync service.
• In Safari, browse to
  http://m.google.com/sync
  and sign in if needed. Normally you’d do this on your mobile device, but Google isn’t yet recognizing the iPad properly. If you try to configure Google Sync from the iPad, it will say “Sorry, Google Sync is not supported on this device.”
• Now go to the Develop menu in Safari and choose to Disable JavaScript as shown by the check mark below.
  
• Still in Safari, choose to manage your iPad. In my list, it’s the most recent device, but if you use Google Sync across multiple devices, it could appear anywhere in the list.
  
• In the next window, you’ll see that Google says you can sync up to one calendar to your device. Ignore that message because the workaround now allows multiple calendar selections. For instance, I chose three primary calendars and three shared calendars, offering both work and family events in one single view.
  Once you’ve made your selections, click the Save button. That should do it, so don’t forget to undo the User Agent change and re-enable JavaScript in Safari. On the iPad, here’s what the result looks like less than a minute after I ran through these steps:

I’m sure Google will address the one calendar limitation with Google Sync, but until they do, you can easily work around the issue in just a few minutes. Hopefully that helps — and now I’m off for some more iPad playtime so I can share all my thoughts soon.

Related iPad Content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d)

The new gadget, available in Google Calendar Labs, is called Smart Rescheduler. And it is dead simple. Once turned on, you can select an event and click “Find a new time” and the machine does the rest, offering up multiple options for folks to chose from.

Cyrus Mistery, Product Manager for Google Calendar told GigaOM that there are over 2 million businesses using Google Apps and many of them are large companies with many executives. “It becomes very hard to schedule meetings,” he said. While it is easy to find the next open spot or as Mistery called it, “a trivial computer science problem”, the harder problems emerge when say a meeting needs to happen before end of the week, without open slots and one person is in a remote location.

Cyrus Mistery, Product Manager for Google Calendar told GigaOM that there are over 2 million businesses using Google Apps and many of them are large companies with many executives. “It becomes very hard to schedule meetings,” he said. While it is easy to find the next open spot or as Mistery called it, “a trivial computer science problem”, the harder problems emerge when say a meeting needs to happen before end of the week, without open slots and one person is in a remote location.
David Marmaros, creator of the gadget, writes on the Gmail Blog:

[W]e decided to apply some of Google’s search experience to the problem of scheduling. We experimented with using ranking algorithms to return the most relevant meeting times based on specified criteria like attendees, schedule complexity, conference rooms, and time zones. Just like Google search ranks the web, our scheduling search algorithm returns a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times. [...] You’ll see ranked list of possible times for your meeting. By investigating the calendars others have shared with you, Google Calendar can make some educated guesses about how easy it might be to reschedule a conflicting meeting and even find you a replacement conference room nearby. This process is 100% automated [...]

I just tried it out, rescheduled a meeting, and yes: it works as advertised. For once, I am not going to complain about a Google product. :-)

Additional reporting by Liz Gannes.

Customize Your Calendar

Like most apps, GCal isn’t “one size fits all”. You can customize several elements to make the calendar fit your needs. Here are some settings you can change:

• Custom views. By default, GCal gives you the following views: Day, Week, and Month. The day and week views can be too short for some, while the month view can be too long for others. You can create a custom calendar view by going to Settings > Custom View and select anything from two days to four weeks.
• Multiple timezones. Since most web workers have professional contacts all over the globe, it might be a good idea to include multiple timezones in your calendar. Just remember that you need to use the Day or Week views to see the timezones compared side-by-side.
• Aesthetics. Apart from the color of each calendar you set up, you can’t really change much of the visuals within GCal itself. Here are some alternative ways to change the calendar’s look and layout:
  • Helvetical. For a minimalist calendar design, you can install Ad Taylor’s Helvetical user script which gives GCal a simpler, cleaner look. If you’re working with a small monitor or a netbook, keep in mind that the large Helvetical header may lessen your usable screen area.
  • Better GCal. This add-on by Gina Trapani is handy for netbook users, as it allows you to collapse the header and the right sidebar, which is handy if you want to install some GCal gadgets but can’t afford to have them hog your screen. It also comes with a sleek gray skin for your GCal interface. I can’t seem to get some of the other features to work, though.

Use Your Calendar as a To-do List

This may seem like common sense — after all, many people use Google Calendar to record their tasks. But my approach helps to keep me organized and gives me a sense of accomplishment.

I created a new calendar and named it “Done”. Whenever I’m finished with an item on my list, I simply transfer it to the “Done” calendar. This calendar is hidden, so if I do all my assigned tasks for the day, my agenda for the day becomes clear and empty, giving me the same feeling of accomplishment when I achieve Inbox Zero.

To add a bit of fun, I uploaded a background image so that when my schedule clears, I can see the word “Done!” for that day (see screenshot below).You can upload your own image for this purpose via Settings > General > Calendar Background.

Use GCal an an Appointment Scheduler

It’s easy to book appointments with Google Calendar if your clients and colleagues have Google accounts, but what if they don’t? Some third-party tools can help:

• Darrell reviewed ScheduleOnce a few months ago, and the Firefox add-on can be found here.
• Earlier this month, Simon brought our attention to the Setster widget, which you can set up on your web site for appointment booking. You can integrate this with your Google Calendar.

Use GCal For Invoicing

If you want to use Google Calendar for invoicing, you can do so with Google Calendar Invoice Creator, a free Adobe Air application. To see how it works, check out the review and tutorial that Thursday wrote. gTime is a similar application, but you only need your web browser to use it.

GCal + Google Docs + Gmail = Collaboration

Apart from just scheduling meetings, you can also use a combination of GCal, Google Docs and Gmail for minimalist project management. The calendar sharing option makes this possible.

Here’s an example: When there’s a new design project for my team, I add a new event on our shared calendar and invite them all to it. I’ve enabled the “Attach Google Docs” feature from Google Calendar Labs, so I have the option of adding a design brief that everyone can refer to (see screenshot below). Unlike using Google Docs by itself, this allows you to attach group-wide email reminders and deadlines to your files. Just remember to share both the calendar and the file.

Also, if you need to add a calendar item while reading your email, simply click on the “More Actions” button, then “Create Event”. Gmail Labs also has Google Calendar and Google Docs gadgets for your sidebar if you need to refer to them often in one interface.

Integrating these three apps isn’t necessary if you already have existing, more robust collaboration software. But if your team is hesitant to use new tools or if you can’t afford to pay extra fees, this simple freebie approach is worth a try.

Search for Past Events

The search function is Google Calendar’s simplest and most overlooked feature. It comes in handy if you want to know the last time you did something, whether it’s a maintenance task for your car, cleaning up your hard drive, or sending greeting cards to your clients. Google’s own Matt Cutts uses this feature to keep track of his haircuts.

How do you use Google Calendar? Do you customize it in any way to suit your needs?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

The idea is simple: If you’re already keeping track of the hours it takes you to work on specific projects in Google Calendar, the invoice creator can use the RSS feed from your calendar to automatically create invoices from your tracked hours. It’s easiest if you have a separate calendar for each project — rather than keeping all your projects and appointments on one calendar — but adding a new calendar to Google Calendar is a simple process.

Google Calendar Invoice Creator uses the titles of your specific “appointments” to group hours onto invoices for each project. It’s important to consistently use the same project names to keep your invoices updating correctly. As the application receives new information, it calculates the total hours you’ve worked on each project and generates an invoice for that project. You can create your invoices as either text or HTML files. In the HTML version of your invoices, you can control the layout for a more professional look. You can also create a summary report of how you’ve been spending your time.

There is certain information you’ll want to add to the system before you start creating invoices, like your hourly rate and your client’s details. Once that information is in the system, the application will be able to turn out invoices with minimal effort on your part. You can just attach individual invoices to an email in order to pass them along to the appropriate client.

There are some drawback to using Google Calendar Invoice Creator: It’s meant for just one user, so if you’re trying to generate invoices based on several people’s hours, it’s probably not the best option. Similarly, billing different tasks at different rates can be a bit tricky. More complex invoicing applications do have more features, such as the ability to send invoices directly from the application, and easy availability from any computer. It is also worth noting that this application is not an official Google product.

On the plus side, Google Calendar Invoice Creator can run on a variety of operating systems. It doesn’t take long to learn to use, unlike many more robust bookkeeping applications. As long as you’ve already figured out Google Calendar — not a difficult learning curve — coming to grips with Invoice Creator is easy. It’s also free to download and use. If you’re in need of a quick tool to crank out invoices, this application can be quite useful.

What invoicing tools do you use?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast

If you’re running Office 2003 or Office 2007 and you can’t wait for Office Web, there are some applications available that can help you get your Microsoft Office data into the cloud, via Google Apps or Zoho Business. These applications can give you piece of mind that your data is backed up and accessible anywhere, and can also help you test the waters for a full migration to a web office suite.

Syncing Applications
While syncing can be a somewhat of a dark art (even with established applications, getting your data to sync properly can be tricky), here is a roundup of some of the more popular syncing apps:

• Google Calendar Sync lets you sync your Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook calendar data. Unfortunately, Google Calendar Sync does not yet support Google Tasks.
  
• Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook let you sync Microsoft Outlook email, contacts, and calendar with Google Applications Premier Edition. Unfortunately, installing Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook disables the ability to search Outlook data.

Microsoft Office Add-Ins and Windows Applications
There are a number of Microsoft Office add-ins that enable you to move your Microsoft Office data to the cloud, including:

• Zoho Plugin for Microsoft Office enables you to access and edit Zoho documents and spreadsheets offline using Microsoft Office. You can also publish local documents to to the cloud via  Zoho Share.
  
• WebWorkerDaily covered OffiSync, which allows you to use Google Docs file storage and collaboration from a Microsoft application toolbar.
• Google Docs Uploader is a simple Windows application that enables you to upload Office documents to Google Docs using a simple drag-and-drop interface. You need to be running the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher.
  

Hosted Applications
Moving your Microsoft Office data into the cloud doesn’t necessarily mean using Google Apps or Zoho Business. We covered the launch of Microsoft Online Services, which provides hosted SharePoint and Exchange services. I like the thought of Exchange and SharePoint hosted in the cloud, although my experience with SharePoint hosted through third parties has been less than favorable. As Online Services is hosted by Microsoft, I’m hoping it will provide a better experience. Microsoft Online Services makes these services more accessible to freelancers and small- to medium-sized businesses that lack the personnel and resources normally required to run them.

Applications for Neglected Mac Users
I count myself as one of the Mac users stuck in Microsoft Office. As Darrell Etherington wrote about on TheAppleBlog, Mac users are going to have to wait for the Office 2010 goodness. However, there  are some third-party applications available that can help put your Office data into the cloud while you are waiting:

• Spanning Sync can sync iCal and Address Book with Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts.
• MobileMe can sync Microsoft Office data from Office on the Mac to the cloud. Unfortunately, I encountered way too many issues with MobileMe after its amateurish launch so I didn’t renew my account. Apple tried to be everything to everybody and stumbled when it came to cloud computing; my plan is to revisit MobileMe in a year to see if Apple has gotten its act together. MobileMe is a fee-based service.
• GDocsUploader, previously covered by WebWorkerDaily, is nothing more than a small applet that enables you to upload documents to Google Docs via a drag-and-drop interface.

Can Microsoft Office and Web Offices Coexist?
While these third-party and vendor applications, add-ins and services may seem like a rag-tag bunch, they do build a case for coexistence of the desktop-bound Microsoft Office and the various web office suites, although sometimes there are incompatibility problems. I’m hopeful that the interaction between Office 2010 and its web components will provide a smooth round trip for my documents from Microsoft Office on my desktop to Office Web, without the file compatibility issues from using third parties.

How do you use Office with the cloud?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Personal tools lead to practical business
• Millennials in the enterprise, part 1: strategies for supporting the new digital workforce
• A 2011 NewNet Forecast