Last updated Aug 30, 2024
We spend a lot of time chasing information down, so we can make decisions, collaborate, and do our work. If we can reduce the time and effort it takes to find information in the first place, we free that energy up for more worthy things. Sometimes it’s just a matter of assessing what we need to know. The information might already be there, but it needs to be more accessible. Here’s a look at smart ways you can use a Teamup calendar’s daily agenda to make life and work easier: as a daily task list, an upcoming events list for groups, and more.
What is the daily agenda?
The daily agenda can be a lot of things:
- A daily task list you receive each morning, with all items and scheduled events for the day ahead.
- An end-of-day reminder with a events listed for the next few days.
- An automated upcoming events list emailed to group members.
- An emailed report on staff availability for the day ahead.
- A daily list of priority items that your team marked as needing your attention.
- A customized daily update for each team member on a project.
The shorter answer is that a daily agenda is an automated email of upcoming calendar events. How you set it up makes it uniquely powerful and useful for making work more efficient, communication easier, and life simpler. Let’s take a look at some smart ways to use Teamup’s daily agenda feature.
Smart ways to use the daily agenda
The daily agenda is a customizable email notification. When you set up a daily agenda subscription, you choose which sub-calendars to include. Then the daily agenda email will list all upcoming events on those included calendars. You can choose what time the daily agenda is sent and whether it includes events for the next 1, 2, or 3 days.
Focus on your daily task list
Get an automated email every morning with your tasks and scheduled events for the day. Set it up by including only your own sub-calendars: Those with your assignments, projects, meetings, and so on. With an early morning arrival time, it’s waiting in your inbox so you can scan what’s ahead, make changes if needed, and choose how to use your time wisely.
- Tip: Use a designated sub-calendar to distinguish Priority items from everything else. When you scan the agenda, you can focus on those important items and tasks first.
- Benefits: Start your day with focus instead of scrambling or getting lost in details; It’s easier to allocate time well when you start with plan.
End the day with helpful reminders
An end-of-day review and mini-planning session can help you make smart decisions and keep up with a complex schedule. It only takes a few minutes to review what’s ahead when you get an automated list at the end of each day. Set the agenda email to come when you’re usually wrapping up your work day or have a quiet moment. Include all the sub-calendars that impact your schedule. If you include events for the next 3 days, you’ll have a broader view that gives you time to make adjustments if needed.
- Tip: Use the arrival of this end-of-day email as your signal to wrap up for the day. Take a few minutes to close the open loops and make notes as you go over the agenda.
- Benefits: Walk away from the workday knowing you have a good handle on what’s ahead and you won’t be sidelined by forgotten tasks, events, or schedule conflicts.
Send an upcoming events list
The daily agenda can make it much, much easier to keep people informed about upcoming events on a public calendar. Even if the calendar is embedded on a website or shared on social media, some people may not need or want to check it regularly. They just want to see what’s on the agenda for the next few days. So, it may be more helpful to allow people to subscribe to an automated email with upcoming events, sent straight to their inbox.
- ⚠️ Security note: Using the daily agenda in this way, with link-based access, is only appropriate for calendars that are shared publicly and do not contain any confidential information. Here’s an example from UN Web TV.
- Get started: Follow this guide to set up a daily list of upcoming events for your group or public subscribers. Be sure to follow the important security instructions.
- Benefits: Make it easier for interested people to keep updates on events and see opportunities they’re interested in.
Get a daily report on staff shifts and team availability
If you use Teamup to schedule staff members, you can get an automated daily report showing scheduled shifts, PTO requests, and availability for the day ahead. This can save a lot of time if you need to make sure shifts are covered adequately or deal with open requests.
You can also use the daily agenda as an automated report on team availability. Get a morning email that lets you know who’s traveling, working from home, or in the office.
- Tip: Set the time to early in the morning for a report of all last-minute changes that might necessitate adjustments for the day ahead. Or, get the agenda delivered at night with the upcoming 3 days so you have more time to cover open shifts.
- Benefits: With a quick scan of the email, you get a full picture of staff availability and know if you need to make changes so things run smoothly.
Get priority items from your team
As a team leader, you need to keep sight of the big picture while also helping your team deal with problems, access resources, or make decisions. But finding out what needs attention from each team member is a big task in itself. Use the daily agenda to get a report every day with all the items from your team that need attention. Create a Priority/Attention sub-calendar that your team can access. Instruct team members to assign a task or event to that Priority sub-calendar (as well as their own) when there’s an important item that needs your attention. The daily agenda gives you an automated list of all items added to that calendar.
- Tip: Enable event comments so you can open any item from the daily agenda and quickly provide a response in the comments.
- Benefits: Don’t waste time tracking down requests for help. Know immediately which items need attention and start handling them instead of chasing down info.
Update team members on project assignments
Team members working on a project together can use the daily agenda to know their assigned work for the day. When one team member finishes their part of a task, they can move it to the next team member’s calendar for the upcoming day. If there’s a meeting scheduled, it goes on the calendars of every individual who needs to attend. Each team member can have their own customized daily agenda, showing all the events and tasks on their own sub-calendar for the day ahead.
- Use case: See how this research team uses Teamup to stay organized and productive with color-coded calendars and automated agenda emails.
- Benefits: Each team member knows what to focus on. Conversations, meetings, and scheduled lab time or resource use can be spent on doing the work instead of figuring out what work needs to be done.
Make life and work easier with Teamup’s daily agenda
These are just a few ideas to get you thinking. The daily agenda can be useful in lots of other scenarios. Think about what you spend time looking for, organizing, asking other people about. You may find plenty of opportunities! With a little setup, you can automate things so the exact information is sent straight to your inbox, or to group members, each day.
