Google Workspace for Education Plus

Below are links to information on key areas such as creating an email, organizing your email, and replying. These are geared to assisting you to understand and more.

• How to access Gmail
• Differences between Outlook vs. Gmail
• Make Gmail look like Outlook
• Send email
• Reply to email
• Organize email
• Create email templates
• Choose your inbox type—set up priority, tabbed or multiple inboxes
• Set up multiple inboxes
• Send or unsend Gmail messages
• How to sort your inbox by sender, subject and label
• Set up mail delegation
• Create rules to filter your email
• Create labels to organize Gmail
• Send and open confidential emails
• Request or return a read receipt
• Gmail cheat sheet

In order for Gmail to open email links (such as “mail to:” or “email class” from Web4) you must first select Gmail as your email handler in your Chrome browser. Follow the instructions below to complete this process.

• Make Gmail your default email handler in Google Chrome

Below are links to information showing the easiest ways to navigate your Google Calendar especially with common tasks such as sharing calendars, creating and responding to events and customizing your calendar view.

• Differences between Google Calendar vs. Outlook Calendar
• How to access Google Calendar
• Customize your calendar view
• Create events
• Creating events in Google Calendar (video)
• Responding to events
• Share Google Calendars (video)
• How to share your calendar with someone
  Note: You don't need to share a calendar to only see if someone is busy/free.
• Google appointment slots
• Google Calendar cheat sheet

On your computer, follow these steps to open Google Calendar:

1. Go to google.com and login if you haven't already
2. Click the menu icon (nine squares in a 3x3 grid) in the right-hand corner
3. Click the calendar icon
4. Note: You can't share calendars from the Google Calendar phone app

On the left, expand the My calendars section

Hover over the calendar you want to share then click on the menu icon, which is three vertical dots

Select Settings and sharing

How to Share Your Calendar With Specific People

Click Share with specific people

Click Add people.

Add the person or Google group email address. Use the dropdown menu to grant them the appropriate permissions. Choosing See all event details allows them to see details for your calendar events (not just busy/free times).

Choosing Make changes to events allows them to make appointments for you.

Click Send to email the people you've shared your calendar with, letting them know you've given them access to your calendar.

Note: After you've shared your calendar with someone, that person needs to Subscribe to it on the Settings page of their calendar.

How to Make Your Calendar Publicly Viewable

BE CAREFUL with Access permissions! Misconfiguring these settings can unintentionally make the contents of your calendar publicly viewable.

To broadly share your calendar, configure the settings under Access permissions. Select the appropriate check boxes and dropdown menu options based on:

1. Who you want to share your calendar with, and
2. How much information you want them to see

In the example below, everyone at Fitchburg State University can see free/busy times on the calendar, but they can't see any event details.

• Using Google Appointment Slots for student meetings (video)
• Using Google Appointment Slots for student meetings—slides presentation

• Google Assignments help

• Get started with Google Chat
• Create chat rooms
• Rooms vs. group messages
• Google Chat tutorial (video)
• Google Chat for online learning (video)
• Google Chat for online learning—slides presentation

• Google Classroom help
• About Google Classroom

• View, group and share contacts

• Google Docs beginner tips
• Google Docs training & help
• Google Docs cheat sheet

• Organize your files in Google Drive
• How to use Google Drive

• Google Forms training & help
• Create quizzes in Google Forms

• Create and save a jam
• Write, draw, and add notes in a jam

• Google Meet training & help
• Google Meet cheat sheet
• Google Meet accessibility features
• Tutorials for Google Meet
• Google Meet Help Center
• Start a video meeting
• Join a video meeting
• Present during a video meeting
• Record a video meeting
• Google Meet tutorial (video)
• Google Meet: The Basics (video)
• Google Meet: Advanced (video)

If you have included external (non-FSU email) participants in your Google Meet, you will need to accept them into the meeting when prompted:

You can either send the invitation through your Google Calendar or separately. If you send them an invitation through your Google Calendar, you will be prompted to allow the invite to go out to an external participant email address:

• Each individual participant can turn on captions for themselves during a meet.
• For best connectivity and video clarity, a computer is the preferred device option. However, a phone or tablet can be used as well.
• Muting all the microphones except for the speaker significantly enhances the quality of the call.
• A Chrome browser is recommended for Google Meet.
• When you want to record your lecture, yourself and/or work on the whiteboard, etc., you don't need to "present" your screen. If you present your screen and you record yourself, the screen will flip and your recording will display backwards.
• If you are showing an item on your computer screen then select "present". Otherwise, to record your lecture, enter the Meet and record yourself speaking.
• When presenting in a Meet and using PowerPoint presentation mode you will only be able to see your slides. If you prefer to see your slides and others on the call, minimize the presentation and the thumbnails on the left of your PowerPoint. This displays only one slide at a time; use your arrows to click through the slides as you are presenting (see photo below).
  
  

• Live stream a video meeting

By default, only guests within Fitchburg State can view the live stream. In order to share the live stream with non-Fitchburg State participants, create a view-only event. The event is added to your Calendar and includes the link for view-only guests. You can add up to 100,000 view-only guests.

Have a fan running in the background? Traffic noise? A dog that likes to bark? Google can analyze the sounds you're transmitting and filter out everything except your voice. To turn this on when in a Google Meet:

1. Click on the 3 vertical dots
2. Choose "Settings"
3. You'll see the option under the "Audio" tab

You can toggle this on or off as needed—it retains whatever your last setting was.

If you have a busy background or want others to focus on you, you can select this option and it will blur the background around you. If you open the meet window (you can just type in "meet.google.com" in your Chrome browser, you can turn it on and off to see what it does. The icon appears in the lower right for me, and looks like:

You also have to have Google Chrome hardware acceleration turned on.

Why can’t I see the background blur button?

This feature requires Chrome hardware acceleration to be enabled to function properly. To turn it on, follow the steps below:

1. Click Chrome Menu
2. Select Settings or Preferences (depending on whether you're using Windows or MacOS)
3. Select Advanced
4. Select System 
5. Turn on Use hardware acceleration when available
6. Restart Chrome

In Google Meets with five or more participants, attendance reports can be sent to the meeting organizer after the meeting ends. During early access, attendance reports will be sent automatically.

Attendance reports are CSV files containing the names of all participants and key data such as each participant’s email, the length of time each participant was on the call and participants' initial join and exit times.

Example

Here's an example of the email the meeting host will receive:

Here's an example of the CSV file containing the attendance tracking data:

The option Check your audio and video can be used to check your video and device quality before joining a Google Meet call:

You can use this functionality to confirm that your devices are properly configured and corrected, to check that your network connectivity is good, and to understand the impact of noise cancellation on your audio. When a problem is detected, you’ll see a warning and tips for troubleshooting common issues, like granting your browser permission to use the microphone or camera.

Using this feature you can, for example, catch issues like:

• An unintentionally muted microphone
• A secondary display monitor with a missing headphone or speaker connection
• Other audio issues, such as poor sound quality, audio that’s too loud, or your microphone amplifying background noises

1. To use the Q&A feature (available to all meeting participants in the meeting), click the Activities icon in the top right corner of your meeting.
2. Select "Q&A"
3. If you are the moderator of the meeting, you must toggle "Allow questions" on to allow participants to ask questions in the meeting. This option is available in the Q&A panel. Note that by default, question submission will be disabled. 
4. Participants can click "Ask a question", type the question, upvote questions, and click “Post”. 
5. Moderators will be able to mark a question as answered, hide or delete a question.
6. Following the meeting, if the Q&A feature was used, Moderators will receive an email linking to a Sheet with all Q&A data.

1. To create a poll (note: only available to meeting moderators), click the Activities icon in the top right corner of your meeting.
2. Select "Polls" and click "Start a Poll" to populate the fields with a polling question and multiple choice answers. 
3. Once you've finished your poll, you can either Save it (to launch later) or press Launch to post immediately. 
4. Once you've launched your poll, you can choose if you'd like everyone in the meeting to see the results or only allow the moderator to see the results. 
5. Following the meeting, if the feature was used, moderators will receive an email linking to a Sheet with all polling data.

1. Click on the top-right menu (activities) of the Meet call while on a web browser. Please note that this used to be on the bottom-right corner of the Meet call.
2. Select the Breakout Rooms option
3. Next, configure the rooms and participants
4. Click the Create button to invite the participants to their corresponding rooms

Breakout Rooms will be available for everybody with a signed in Google account. As a moderator you need to use the web version of Meet and be logged in with an Enterprise or Enterprise for EDU account. As a participant you can also join via the Gmail apps on Android and iOS, as well as the Meet apps (Android support is currently rolling out).

Only the meeting moderator logged in an Enterprise account or Enterprise account for EDU will see the Breakout Room option while on a web call.

• Google Sheets training & help
• Google Sheets cheat sheet

• Google Slides training & help

• Google Slides cheat sheet

• Google Slides: Q&A Feature (video)

• Google Slides: Q&A Feature—slide presentation