During your first week, continue to refine your new work environment
- Add Google Workspace on your mobile devices
- Customize Gmail for how you work
- Customize your calendar
Add Google Workspace on your mobile device
With Google Workspace apps on your mobile devices, you have the freedom to work securely from anywhere with your phone, laptop, or tablet.
Before you start this checklist, make sure your phone is charged and your operating system (OS) is up to date.
See Mobile training and help to get you started.
Calendar: Online calendars designed for teams
Running late for a meeting? Use Calendar to reschedule or let people know you’re on your way.
Cloud Search: Search for company content across your Google products
Find contact information for colleagues.
Contacts: Online address book
Quickly send messages or calendar invitations to groups of people you contact the most, without entering their addresses individually.
Google Chat: Chat directly with a co-worker or communicate with your entire team at once
Google Meet: Hold video meetings with people inside or outside your organization
Quickly join a meeting by clicking the shareable URL.
Drive: Online file storage
Docs: Create and collaborate on documents in your browser
Forms: Create and analyze surveys and quizzes in your browser
Manage event registrations, create quizzes, analyze responses, and more.
Groups: Manage and participate in online discussions
Example:
Create mailing lists and share files with team members using one address.
Sheets: Create and collaborate on spreadsheets in your browser
Example:
Did an important deadline or resource change right before a meeting with investors? Update your shared project plan on the go.
Sites: Create and collaborate on impactful websites
Example:
Build public sites, internal project hubs, and more—all without IT help.
Slides: Create and collaborate on presentations in your browser
Make last-minute changes to your project presentation, even if you don’t have your computer with you.
Voice: Get a phone number for calling, text messaging, and voicemail — all on one app that syncs across your devices
Get Gmail notifications on your Android device
- Open the Gmail app.
- At the top, tap Menu
Settings
.
- Select your account and scroll to Notifications.
- Tap Inbox notifications and select your notification settings.
- (Optional) To change notification settings for certain labels in your inbox:
- Tap Manage labels
tap a label, such as Important.
- Tap Sync messages
Last 30 days or All. If you don't synchronize messages, you can't turn on notifications for that label.
- Choose the notification settings for that label.
- Repeat steps for any other labels you want to get notifications for.
- Tap Manage labels
Note: Your Android device has other notification settings that are separate from the Gmail app.
Get Gmail notifications on your iOS device
- Open the Gmail app.
- At the top, tap Menu
Settings.
- Tap your account.
- In the Notifications section, tap All new emails.
- When you see a notification on your device, swipe it to the left to Reply or Archive.
Get Google Chat notifications
- In the Chat app, tap Menu
Settings.
- Tap Mobile notifications and choose an option:
- All Messages
- New threads, threads I’m following and direct messages
- Threads I’m following and direct messages
- Only @mentions and direct messages
- Off
Get Drive notifications on your Android device
- Open the Google Drive app.
- In the top left, tap Menu
Settings.
- Tap Notification settings.
- Choose which settings you'd like to change.
Note: If you change these settings in the Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides apps, they will also change for Google Drive.
Get Drive notifications on your iOS device
- Open the Google Drive app.
- In the top left, tap Menu
.
- Tap Settings
.
- Tap Notifications.
- Turn Notifications Enabled on or off.
Get Calendar notifications on your Android and iOS devices
You can change your notifications settings for a single event, or all your events. To learn more about setting up notifications on your mobile devices, see Change or turn off Calendar notifications.
Customize Gmail for how you work
- Open Gmail.
- At the top right, click Settings
.
- Under Density, choose an option:
- Default
- Comfortable
- Compact
Note: If you choose Default, you'll get a preview of your attachments from your inbox.
- On your computer, open Gmail.
- At the top right, click Settings
.
- In the “Quick settings” menu, go to the “Theme” section.
- Next to "Theme," click View all.
- In the theme window, select a theme.
- For the default theme, select Default.
- For Dark theme, select Dark.
- For a pre-uploaded theme, select any theme.
- Optional: If available, at the bottom of the theme window, you can change the theme.
- To change the text background, click Text background
.
- To make the corners darker, click Vignette
.
- To blur background theme, click Blur
.
- To change the text background, click Text background
- Click Save.
Note: To use Vacation responder, your account must be at least 24 hours old.
- Open Gmail .
- At the top right, click Settings
See all settings.
- Scroll down to Vacation responder and select Vacation responder on or Vacation responder off.
- If you turned on the vacation responder, enter the dates you're away and add a message. Then, select who should get a response.
- At the bottom, click Save Changes.
Read, respond to, and search Gmail messages when you aren’t connected to the internet. Your messages will be sent when you're back online.
On your computer, make sure you've downloaded Chrome. You can only use Gmail offline in a Chrome browser window, not using Incognito mode.
- Go to Gmail offline settings.
- Check "Enable offline mail."
- Choose your settings, such as how many days of messages you want to sync.
- Click Save changes.
Enable Gmail offline on each device for which you want offline access.
Tired of typing the same reply every time someone sends you email with a common question? Compose your reply once and save the email as a template. Later, you can open the template and send it again with just a few clicks.
Enable templates
- Open Gmail.
- At the top right, click Settings
See all settings.
- At the top, click Advanced.
- In the Templates section, select Enable.
- At the bottom, click Save Changes.
Create or change a template
- Open Gmail and click Compose.
- In the Compose window, enter your template text.
- Click More
Templates.
- Choose an option:
- To create a new template, click Save draft as template
Save as new template.
- To change a previously saved template, click Save draft as template and under Overwrite Template, choose a template and click Save to overwrite it.
- To create a new template, click Save draft as template
- (Optional) To send an email, compose your message and click Send.
Insert a template
- Open Gmail and click Compose.
- Click More
Templates.
- To insert a template, under Insert template, choose a saved template to insert in your email.
- Compose the rest of your message and click Send.
You can move the Chat panel to the right or left side of your Gmail inbox.
- On your computer, open Gmail.
- At the top right, click Settings
See all settings.
- At the top, click Chat and Meet.
- Next to “Chat position,” select Left side of the inbox or Right side of the inbox.
- Click Save Changes.
- Next to Type of response
, click the Down arrow
Edit subject.
- Enter a new subject.
Customize your calendar
You can choose how many days you see at a time in your calendar view. Select the option that’s best for you at the top of your calendar.
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- In the top right, choose a view: Day, Week, Month, Year, Schedule, or 4 days.
- Right-click an event.
- Select a new color.
Note: If you change the color of an event, the original color is represented as a vertical line on the left side of the event.
Add world clocks to Calendar
Show the current time in time zones of your choice at the left of your calendar:
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- In the top right, click Settings
Settings.
- In "World clock" click Show world clock.
- Click Add time zone
choose the time zones you want to see.
Add a time zone to your calendar
Display time zones as columns in your calendar, to help schedule events across time zones.
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- In the top right, click Settings
Settings.
- In the "Time Zone" section, click Display secondary time zone.
- Click Secondary time zone
choose your time zone.
Change the time zone for all your calendars
- On your computer, open Google Calendar.
- In the top right, click Settings
Settings.
- In "Time Zone," click Primary time zone
choose your time zone.
Set preferences for all your calendars
- In Calendar, click Settings
Settings.
- On the left under General, click Event settings.
- Click Notifications and select an option:
- Off
- Desktop notifications
- Alerts
- (Optional) To set up a sound for your incoming notifications, check the Play notification sounds box.
- (Optional) To manage your notifications, on the left, click your calendar
General notifications.
- Next to each option, click the Down arrow
and select None or Email.
Customize preferences for one calendar
You can change notification preferences for specific calendars you own.
- Open Google Calendar.
- In the top right, click Settings
Settings.
- On the left, under "Settings for my calendars," click the calendar you want to change
Calendar settings.
- Under "Event notifications" and "All-day event notifications”:
- To edit your notifications: Choose if you want to receive a notification or an email. You can change how often you want to get alerts in advance.
- To add another type of notification: Click Add notification.
- To remove a notification: Click Remove notification
.
Next steps
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